After chewing away much more at the matters I raised in my somewhat incoherent post Why teachers need time, I think I’ve gnawed right down to the marrow of the issue.

Although it takes a while, most of us find enough time to give students what they want (e.g. responding to student feedback), supplement the textbook, find an interesting text etc – and that is a considerable step up from what someone straight off their CELTA is capable of and what a dosser teacher will see as the minimum they can get away with. However, if we see ourselves as educators (rather than people who work in just another moneymaking industry), none of those things are the nub of what we do. As the Cambridge Delta stresses, the prime focus has to be on finding out what students need to learn and how they can do so in the best way. That really does take a lot of time indeed, though, for example:

– After we work out which games our students are likely to enjoy/ understand/ put up with, working out which of those will teach them best

– Reading up on SLA and pondering on how we can bring some of its conclusions into our lesson planning and teaching in a principled and yet realistic way

– Doing an MA

– Constantly monitoring student progress and thinking about what things need more work, which things are best left to subconsciously stew until later, and which are best just to give up on

– After working out what vocabulary in the text they will find difficult, narrowing it down by thinking about what might be worth learning and what is likely to be learnable

– Debating what students need to learn and how they can do so in workshops, as well as the usual brainstorming of classroom activities

– Blog posts which are the result of a whole lot more reading and reflection than I have had time for in the last few years

– Action research

– Monitoring and reflecting on how much (short and long term) learning our homemade materials have achieved and making suitable changes (probably after fixing other things like typos)

– Thinking about things that “didn’t work” in a learning sense (probably after thinking about things that “didn’t work” in other senses, e.g. leading to bored students or students not understanding)

I do realise that we could easily teach one hour a week and spend the other 39 usefully doing the things above, but the reality for most people is that their schedules and the other much more peripheral things they are forced to do mean that the only way they can spend time on any of these things are:

– Cutting down all their planning so they can do a Delta or MA

– Neglecting some classes which have a textbook/ seem to be quite easy/ have easily pleased students/ seem to be going okay, e.g. spending a lot of their planning time thinking “That’ll (have to) do”.

– Etc

It’s the “It’ll (have to) do” thing which I am feeling most depressed about having to go through on an almost daily basis most weeks at the moment, especially in what is supposed to be one of the most professional schools in Japan. I’ve therefore decided and told them that I won’t be renewing my contract in April, even if that only means moving to the slightly less depressing situation of doing the same in an obviously unprofessional school. The email I sent yesterday was:

“Dear all

This is just to give you all advance notice that I will not be re-signing a full-time contract whenever my present one comes to an end (April I think). This is because I am not able to maintain the standards of lessons that I expect from myself with a schedule and travel like this plus the other demands on full-time teachers (online training etc). However, I’ll be very happy to continue with my present classes or do other contracts with you as an hourly-paid teacher after April if you’d be kind enough to offer me such work.

All the best

Alex”