Survey Says
Don’t ask for permission. I started this post weeks and weeks ago. Due to being a responsible netizen, I have postponed publishing it until today. I made a foolish error in Japan – I asked permission to do something. The old adage about forgiveness being easier to obtain than permission rings true here. It’s completely insane. Folks who have been here for a bit understand that if you want to do something you should run with it and include people in it as it matures, or just let the payoff be shared by all. (If something tanks, bury it. Duh. That’s true everywhere.) When you ask someone permission to do something, you are inadvertantly making them responsible for your action. If they sign off on it verbally, they become part of the blame train should it go badly. Therefore, nobody wants to give you a greenlight for random ideas you might have to improve things. Ok, ok, I’m off of my soapbox. The point is, I ran this by a friend of mine at CLAIR, and it sent his world into chaos for a bit.
It turns out that by asking if I could post about some of the results from CLAIR’s 2006 Questionnaire for JET Programme participants (including ALTs, CIRs, and SEAs), I accidentally lit the fuse leading to the powder keg labeled (in big, thick, Sharpie block lettering) COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT CONTROVERSY. I directly participated in the survey, and as a sort of thank you I was sent the results once they were compiled and analyzed. The statistics were explained thoroughly. In fact, they were so impressively organized that I wanted to share them with people who are thinking of applying to become a JET. I read through the fine print, and nowhere was a copyright to be found. I decided to be on the safe side, and emailed my buddy who works for CLAIR. That is when everything went south. You see, unlike most JET Publications, this one isn’t up on the JET Programme Official Site. I wish they’d make this a PDF you could download. Doesn’t seem likely. Anyway, I have finally been given permission to do whatever I want to with the results, provided that I do not misrepresent the JET Programme. In the interest of keeping my job, I’ll simply sidestep the whole affair. I will, however, summarize the points I wanted to make without giving you official numbers or duplications of the graphs. (This was much more interesting when you could see what I was talking about. Sorry.)
Why are you (dis)satisfied with your job? (Choose one.)
- (no) sense of purpose
- good (bad) relationships
- good (lousy) money
- for the (lack of) challenge
There were a few different of the “select one of these reasons” questions (see above example). I don’t like them much. Also, keep in mind that roughly 48.5% of the people answering these questions were on their first year here – within their first 3 months of residency. (I’m one of those people.) For me, it casts suspicion on the validity of a few of the answers – though certainly not all of them. I really didn’t like being pidgeon-holed into answering a reason-justification question when my reasons weren’t listed, but such is life. I also don’t like how the reasons for or against job satisfaction were exact opposites. Sure, it may be easier to quantify, but the helpfulness goes down the drain. I, for instance, was really frustrated with transportation and the general spread of my schools. I wish I could have communicated that. (This has changed, though, just so you know. I’m not a discontent.) It turns out that I am one of the few who live in a rural area and do not drive. But it’s waaaay cheaper to use the public transport (especially with reimbursement) and my bicycle. I do dream of owning a scooter, though. I won’t lie. Anyway, the long and short of it is that there is an inverse direct correlation to the size of your city and the likelihood that you will drive.
How awesome is it that the majority of JET participants have no idea if they’re being evaluated or not? Nearly 60%. I was one of these. There are calendar days marked as evaluation periods and things like this, but it must be a silent, non-interefering version. I never heard a word about it. Kind of made me nervous, to be honest. In fact, on an old piece of paper from 6 years ago that I shredded today, I found the following paragraph.
Evaluations, please!! Not knowing how one is perceived is a major source of sterss to many ALTs. When the BOE gets the evaluations, the content should be passed on to the ALT. Also, keep the evaluations so the BOE in time gets a historical base of reference: Some schools and teachers will complain about the same things regardless of ALT, in which case it can’t be the poor ALT’s fault.
Guess some things don’t change easily. Anyhoo.
Most people (the vast majority) had no misunderstandings with their host institution. The ones who did tended to have trouble negotiating their work timetable and holidays. That’s common. I haven’t really had any problems so far, save a few glitches here or there. But they’re fixed within an hour usually. Won’t lie, though, Japanese language ability helps, because the problem is usually with the school clerk’s records or my having forgotten something. (When I wrote this entry, I had a different school clerk. That’s how long it took. Ha ha.)
Most teachers teach between 14 and 20 hours a week. Most teachers claim to prepare between 4 and 8 hours for classes. YEAH RIGHT. I wish I had more classes. From the same piece of paper, I found another gem.
An ALT that is being utilized will obviously be more content than one who is chained to the desk or abused.
In our culture, it is wasteful and frustrating to hang around if there is nothing to do.
Ahem… Maybe I’m bitter from coming off of a 7 week streak without a single class. Maybe it’s that in the last 2 weeks, I’ve had 3 classes total – 2 of them today. I dunno. When my visitation schedule is in full swing I feel stressed out and stretched thin, but full of work-related satisfaction. During the lulls, it’s hard to deal with pretending to work. I want my teachers to think I am useful. I hate being looked at as the guy who comes to school, sits at his desk, the corner nook, and the computer alternately, and then goes home before everybody else. Especially when it’s true. Ha ha. It’s kind of embarrassing to get paid to do nothing. Luckily, that will change as soon as I get my visitation schedule from the Board of Education………..I hope.
More than half of the respondents speak to their supervisors in English (or their native language). The next most likely outcome is to speak in a mixture of Japanese and your native language. My supervisor is great. Vague sometimes, but great. Took me a while to figure out how to deal with her, but I think we have an understanding. (I still need to work on the “fair warning before class” issue, though.)
ALTs are unsure if they are helpful or not, but 1 in 3 place the blame on the students not being motivated. Students are also the leading problem reported in teaching classes. ALTs seem to think of them as too shy or too unruly. Again, when 48.5% of those surveyed have been here for 3 months, I’m not sure how much meaning this question has.
They asked where we got beneficial information from before coming. My only wish is that they would separate the leading answer into distinct answers. My predecessor, Zoe, was infinitely more helpful than the Board of Education was. It’s not their fault, they’re busy and far away from where I work. Zoe was here the whole time and eager to share. So, I’d have ranked predecessor far higher than Host Institution. Unfortunately, the top rated answer was “Host Institution and Predecessor.”
About 40% of the accepted JETs got the placements they wanted (and had requested), but a mere 4% or so are dissatisfied with their placements. This is interesting, too. Placement is the worst wait ever, second only (possibly) to the wait over whether or not you got in. Yay! I imagine that the number of perfect matches will go down due to the mass influx of people last year, though. On the other hand, I imagine that most everyone will love their placements too.
I’m in the top 10% of language proficient ALTs, probably. There were three other main brackets, each encompassing about 25-30% of those surveyed. All of them attempt to speak in words and phrases, and the biggest difference is ease of use and depth of conversation. (Saying things like “the paper is on the table” or “the urban voting turnout changes, depending on the weather and other factors.” Depth. Yup.) Frequency of use helps, and I assure you that if you give it a shot, you’ll be speaking conversationally in no time.
Flexibility is the number one attribute that current JETs chose as beneficial. That is what the JETs themselves think that the program is looking for. If this describes you, the current JETs would ok you to come onboard. (Though, let’s face it, this has no bearing whatsoever on the actual preferences of the program itself.)
That does it. Hope it was mildly interesting. I’ll just be glad to see this leave my drafts stack. Ha ha. 
