Reflections of an outgoing GEOS Teacher

Tokyo City, my school. A place where the sun never shines, the birds never sing, yet there's always muzak in the air. The home of my workplace for the past fourteen months, and the source of many of my trials and triumphs in Japan. As an outgoing teacher who has been working for GEOS for about a year and a half, I'd like to share some of my thoughts about working for this company. Would I recommend it to someone fresh out of university like myself? And if I fell back in time, would I do it all again, having experienced the highs and lows and knowing what I do now? (This is an edited extract from my web journal - "Memoirs of a Gaijin.")

Certainly some people have written some very bilious things about GEOS and companies like it on the Internet (one look through the LetsJapan message board should provide a very good cross-section) - and many of the stories are entirely justified. I've also received a couple of e-mails from various people who have come across my webpage ("Memoirs of a Gaijin"), who lauded me for daring to expose the "truth" about GEOS's bastardry.

While I must admit to a dash of pride in feeling a little like Jeffrey Wigand (played by Russell Crowe from "The Insider") bagging my employer was never really the purpose of my webpage. And despite its occasional inanity, GEOS is certainly no Brown and Williamson Tobacco. When I discuss GEOS in my journal, I'm trying to provide a balanced account from the perspective of a (probably) average teacher who has been treated reasonably fairly by his company. I think my story has value, because most of the other tales on the Internet about GEOS are written by current or ex-employees who are very disgruntled, and therefore represent only one side of the story.

Without question, there have been some bad times working for this company. The nadir was in last November (a couple of weeks before returning home to visit my family), when one of my teacher trainers paid an unannounced visit to my classroom on a quiet Friday evening while I was preparing lessons. The visit was to inform me that some of my students had complained my classes were too boring and not "genki" enough, and while the educational content of my classes was sufficient, I had to make it more fun or suffer the consequences.

The bitterness that I felt towards my job at that point was tremendous. I was angry that my students had pretended to enjoy my classes, that they chose to go behind my back to voice their concerns, that my manager had not defended my work and seemed to be utterly complacent with their accusations, and that the matter went through the ears of many Head Office people before finally reaching me. What was truly galling was that the complainants remained anonymous, so I had no idea which classes had problems with my teaching methods. Of course, when I responded to the complaint by trying to inject more energy into all of my classes, other students started to protest to the manager that they were annoyed by all of the jumping up and down and being chased around the room with a rubber hammer.

So for a while, it felt like a definite no-win situation - and I began to truly despise the type of student that I believed GEOS attracted. In my mind, a typical GEOS student was one that had little interest in truly learning another language, but was enticed to join because of the promise of "genki" foreigners with boundless energy and plentiful games, and because learning English was trendy. Students for whom learning was a bitter pill that had to be heavily sugar-coated with tomfoolery and constant excitement. It was a bad time for me, especially as I had worked very hard to make myself a good teacher, and there were moments when I was strongly considering throwing in the towel. As this all happened only a couple of weeks before I visited my home in Australia, I felt very miserable knowing what I was going back to in Japan.

Not wanting to end my time with GEOS because of a setback, I persevered and struggled to make myself a better teacher. And then as my anger started to mellow, I think a new feeling of sympathy and acceptance for my students slowly started to emerge in me. After all, not everybody has to be a die-hard language students - some are just hobbyists who want to broaden their knowledge and have a bit of fun in the process. And after a small internal struggle, I ultimately came to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with that. An example taken from my own, I learn Jeet Kune Do, not because I want to become the next Bruce Lee or because I want to go around picking fights. I study it because it's good fun, I get to meet some interesting people, and I'm improving my body and mind by practising something outside of my everyday experience. There are certainly others who take it far more seriously than myself, who practise for several hours each day without fail. What I came to accept was that there is room in this world for both kinds of students.

Of course, as I have found out, many of my students are also of the hard-core variety - those who study every day, read books, and try to listen to English radio and watch English movies in spite of their heavy workload. Students who are genuinely self-motivated and wholly dedicated, who don't need someone to rouse their enthusiasm. Given the sorry state of my Japanese (and the fact that I usually only study on the train for about 35-45 minutes a day), it is people with this temperament that I truly admire. And some of my students have become very good friends of mine, whom I look forward to seeing every day, and sometimes go out with in the evenings or on the weekend. I've certainly met some interesting people in this job, having taught everyone from a three-year old girl, to a television news reporter, to a company president.

I think I started to become genuinely content with working for GEOS when I finally managed to strike a balance between education and entertaining, between maintaining the dignity of being a sensei and having a bit of fun. In my opinion, what it takes to be a good teacher (GEOS or otherwise) is the ability to bring out the best in your students, whatever their ability. The key to doing this is to remember that the students just want the opportunity to talk as much as possible, and feel confident in their speech. So any game, situational role-play, or miscellaneous activity that can facilitate that, can bring them out of their shells so to speak, is a good thing. It doesn't necessarily mean clowning around, or sacrificing your personal dignity in order to accomplish this. But, a bit of spontenaity can certainly go a long way to making your classes more digestable and enjoyable.

The question remains, is it really education or just eikaiwa? That is to say, is GEOS really giving its students something useful and meaningful for their money, or are they merely paying for the privilege of being able to enjoy the antics of a know-nothing native speaker? Remember that very few GEOS teachers have formal academic qualifications in education or ESL. Most of us come from other disciplines and have been taught everything we know by the company itself. In spite of this, I feel that what we do is ultimately worthwhile. And GEOS, to its credit, tries to be very innovative in creating new textbooks and training its staff. My experience has been that my students have shown real improvement over their time with me, and that they have new confidence to do things they never would have considered doing before beginning their study with us. Like one of my students who gained the courage to speak with English clients over the phone, or other students who have gone on to study overseas. It's small, but significant achievements like these which do swell the pride of teachers like myself.

I think the key to enjoying GEOS though is to remember that you are not employed as a professional teacher, even if you have the qualifications. For one thing, your teaching method (known as the 3 P's to all GEOS veterans) is dictated by company policy rather than based on an academic theory. And unlike a school teacher, you don't have to create a "master plan" curriculum for your students. Rather, you come to work every day and teach a (company-approved) textbook unit that has been assigned for that day.

As many have mentioned, GEOS also has a strong sales component to it, for which teachers are expected promote new contract options and supplementary textbooks to their students. There is of course, an obvious conflict of interest between a teacher using their position of authority and trust to dispense "impartial" educational advice, and then receiving money and/or performance evaluation points for every book sold or contract renewed. It's always been something that has made me a little uncomfortable, and would probably be deemed ethically suspect by most professional associations in their codes of conduct. So, it sits slightly better with my conscience to regard myself as a kind of sales professional with teaching responsibilities (rather than as a "real" teacher), which I believe is a more accurate reflection of this job.

Likewise, another pearl of wisdom is not to let the little incidents bother you. And believe me -- there will be a fair number. Many workplace annoyances can be traced back to a single Japanese cultural aspect, known as "wa" - the ideal of preserving social harmony and peace within the workplace. Now, what's the problem with this, you might ask? The upshot of wa is that co-workers and bosses are often very indirect with one another when there is a problem, and tend to rely more on suggestion and group blame instead of outright criticism of an individual. For protecting a person's feelings and saving them from embarrassment, this can be an effective "softly-softly" way of discreetly dealing with a problem in some situations.

But on the other side of the coin, such an approach sometimes achieves the exact opposite of cultivating peace. One incident that comes to mind is when I decided to teach a childrens' class in my regular classroom, rather than the assigned Children's Room. Later that day, I was "recommended" by my fellow NET (Native English Teacher) to stop doing that and move to the correct room. She let it slip that it was actually one of the Japanese teachers who wanted her to ask me to do this. As both of these teachers work on the other side of the building to me, the only way they could have found out about my "bad behaviour" was through the other Japanese teacher who worked in the room next to mine. It was indeed a minor request, but I found the thought of being reported on and this "spy-ring" rather disturbing. Not to mention taking umbridge to the fact that one of my fellow teachers thinks she is my boss! So while the outward appearance of harmony had been preserved, this was done at the expense of my inner peace, having left me feeling somewhat distrustful of the people working around me. In that sense, I feel that the pursuit of wa can often be hypocritical, and more geared to avoiding unpleasant conversations than promoting true harmony and happiness.

While GEOS can certainly feel a little Kafka-esque at times, in lighter moments you will find yourself becoming highly amused at some of the silly protocols and priorities of Japanese corporate life. For instance, one of our teacher trainers was telling us about an incident where one of their Head Office Japanese co-workers was fretting at lunch, because he realised he'd had left an empty Coke can sitting on his desk! And not so long ago, our school received a fax that explained the company was laying out some guidelines for preventing inappropriate physical contact in childrens' classes. To ensure the accountablity of teachers in childrens' classes, they wanted us to leave our classroom doors open to make our classes as visible as possible, but of course we weren't allowed to move any of the manager's advertising posters to improve visibility! It's neat little contradictions and incidents like these which are really fun to observe.

And one should remember, even though your Japanese co-workers' idiosyncracies may annoy you, you can always go home and get another job. They, on the other hand, will be caught in the culture they engineered for a lot longer than you! Trained to work for a single company with few opportunities to find another employer. Bound by many arbitrary conventions and social rules, and ever-fearful of being socially excluded for making a minor faux-pas. And if you're a GEOS manager, you can expect to work six days a week, for longer hours than your teachers, and for less money. Not to mention receiving abusive faxes and telephone calls if you fall short of your sales and interviews target. So do feel a touch of sympathy for all the hard-working salarymen and office ladies out there. In my opinion, not getting too wound up about the little things, forgiving the inanities of your co-workers and simply enjoying yourself are conscious choices - and will help to keep a smile on your face even on the worst of days.

So, what can a new teacher expect from an average day? Well, GEOS has become a heck of a lot busier over the past year, largely because most schools have started accepting children of all ages to be students. My youngest student is about 3 years old, and my oldest is about 65. So prospective teachers will need to be quite versatile, and absolutely must have a lot of patience! I currently have about 6-7 classes a day, which may seem quite daunting - but it's actually not too bad. Nowadays there is a lot of repetition of classes as GEOS has moved to a fixed schedule, and consequently there is less weekly lesson planning. New teachers will undoubtedly find lesson preparation quite hard going at first, but will suddenly find it a heck of a lot easier after six months when they start teaching from the beginning of the textbook again. There's also quite a bit of paperwork to be done. Once you master the system, it's really then a simple matter of keeping up to date. The only time that I've spend hours on end working on paperwork was just before our half-yearly performance (TCP) review.

And now the big question - knowing what I do now, would I do it all again? My answer is absolutely. Coming to Japan, living and working here, and experiencing its culture - all of this has been one of the most interesting and character building experiences of my life. The friends I have made here and the things I have seen will be with me always. Now it seems I would be able to go just about anywhere in the world and run into an old colleague. So, even if you're like me and don't intend ESL teaching to be your lifelong career, take the plunge! And if you do intend this to be your career, there are actually a lot of places you can go within GEOS when you tire being a teacher (for example, a friend of mine has just been given a position in their publishing department). There are also courses you can take, such as the CELTA or a TESL course, which can certify you as a real ESL teacher. Combined with your practical GEOS experience, you'll be able to find work anywhere in the world where people want to learn English.

Even with all of the negative aspects I've mentioned here, I have no regrets about coming to Japan or working for GEOS. It's been a fantastic way to see more of the world, and I would encourage anybody in my position of a year-and-a-half ago to do the same and take the plunge! To quote Vinnie Jones from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - "It's been emotional!"