By: Adele-Elise Provost
I was in the grip of a cancer scare that ended up being completely benign, but my memories of the time have the acuity of panic to them. Standing around the grand piano with the wind outside and faded prints of dead composers looking down at me, I remember thinking to myself, If I only have a few short months or years ahead of me, isn't there something else I’d rather be doing with my life?
The answer, much to my surprise, was no.
Teaching English has never been a life goal, and for me joining the JET Programme was more about exchange than education. Of course, there’s a lot to be said for the flicker of understanding in students’ eyes, for watching conversational competency grow and blossom over months and years. But what I realized during that stormy afternoon is that teaching isn't’t just about helping kids get better at English. Teaching might be the most potent, most meaningful way to engage in internationalization. From the tumultuous center of my secret crisis I looked out on the smiling, laughing, open faces of my students, and I realized that we were making a connection, here around the piano, that would change every one of our lives. In small, important ways, all of us were being enriched by the joy of this experience.
Looking back, all my brightest memories of teaching in Japan turn out to be made up of moments like these, moments where, although a teacher, I was not actively teaching: singing with the chorus club, baking cookies with students in the Home Ec room, cheering them on during Sports Day, chatting in the halls. Teaching may have been my job, but it wasn't my mandate. I was here to be me, and to let students take a look through my window on the world.
The Japanese word sensei translates roughly as ‘born before’, and I think that this touches an important point: Teachers, by virtue of their more extensive life experience, have the responsibility of acting as role models for those who haven’t had quite as much time on the planet yet. For the majority of my Japanese colleagues, this responsibility seems to amount to inculcating appropriate values and behavior in their students – important work, certainly, since respect of oneself, others, and the planet are crucial aspects of a functional society – but I think there’s more to the job of the ALT than moral rectitude. We are, at our best, exemplars of adventurousness and optimism, ambassadors not only of our respective countries but of the very idea of internationalization. It can be frighteningly easy, no matter where you live, to forget that there is a ‘rest of the world’ out there, as real and tangible and complex as the place you call home. We come to Japan to remind students of this – and even more importantly, to share with them the exhilarating secret that the ‘rest of the world’ can be within arms’ reach if you so choose.
Life-and-death moments – whether real or perceived – have a way of drawing everything into focus, branding moments in time indelibly into your synapses. As I joined my voice to those of the students on Silent Night, I felt a human connection that overcame age, nationality, and the rest. This, I believe, is how internationalization happens. And giving children the chance to experience it is why teaching in Japan has ended up meaning so much to me. I still don’t expect or intend to spend the rest of my life as a teacher. But now, the JET Programme’s twin purposes – English language education and grassroots internationalization – seem much more like one aim than two.
The famous cellist Pablo Casals once said, “The most important thing in music is what is not in the notes”. Deep in my heart, I feel that the same applies here. Teaching, like music, is a wonderful thing, which connects people by creating experiences that bring our shared humanity to the fore. And just like music is infinitely more than a series of notes, I believe that the most important thing in teaching is what is not in the curriculum.
