Teachers and Posers

Last week, we had our second official Midterm Conference in Gifu City. This one differed from the previous one in one crucial aspect. Instead of being populated excluvisely with over-paid, under-worked, and under-dressed JET Program participants, it also included actual, legitimate Japanese Teachers of English, or JTE's, as they're affectionately known. Judging from my previous experience with the first conference, I had full confidence in this one sucking majorly, but to my utter amazement and sheer joy, it was rather pleasant. The inclusion of real Japanese teachers into the mix, our colleagues, gave the conference an air of politeness and gravitas that the previous one was....lacking. Let's just put it this way: I was 15 minutes late to the first one, and 30 minutes early to the second. Pretty much all you need to know.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the day, and definitely the most potentially nerve-wracking, was the part where they split us up into combined groups of foreign English teachers and Japanese English teachers and had us "discuss" our differences and opinions. Seeing as how most JETs view the Japanese system of English teaching as sheer madness, and most JTEs think ALTs squeeze in their English classes between their group orgies and their drunken parties, I thought this would be a 100% disaster. It was surprisingly polite and, dare I say, productive. There were some legitimate opinions exchanged, politely, and I thought there was a pretty good dialogue considering the rifts in culture and the awkwardness of being put in a circle and told to "discuss." "Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island; discuss." I, of course, added nothing, but sat and listened in bemusement until our 45 minutes mercifully ended. I would like to think that I neither improved nor made worse the outcome. Not bad, eh?

The best part of the trip was hanging out with my boss, whom I pretty much think is the greatest guy ever. Sure he forgets to tell me important stuff, and makes jokes about me in Japanese while I'm standing right there, but I got a kick out of seeing him see me interact with all my nutball foreign English teacher friends. It's like he realized I'm not actually as demure and polite as I pretend to be at school. Hope he doesn't tell the others!

Overall, conference = success. My gosh I've become a dork. I'm writing blog entries about CONFERENCES. Jeez...