My first post on Medium — revisited
The Accidental Teacher
How did an introvert ever get into becoming a school teacher?
One of the skills teaching requires is the act of speaking in public. From childhood to young adulthood, I was terrified of speaking in front of people. I avoided it like Covid. In fact, I still do. Give me a mask.
Flashback to a talk I had to give in middle school on a topic I no longer remember. I kept stuttering and repeating ums and uhs. The salty sweat from my forehead streamed into my burning eyes.
Fast-forward to my undergrad biology research presentation. Again, I experienced the same responses to having classmates stare at me with awkward concern as I struggled to talk about my findings on the negative impact of human activities on the baleen whale life cycle.
Fast-forward yet again to my job induction training as a new corporate company recruit in Japan. Similar dilemma. Just the act of introducing myself in front of a large audience caused me to forget my name. The only difference was the English ums and uhs were replaced with their Japanese equivalents: ah-noh and ehh-toh.
Proficiency in either language was not an issue. Ironically, my state of panic was perceived as a deliberate comedic act by a repatriated national.
“Oh, such a funny guy, like an American standup, neh.”
So, returning to the question of why I became a teacher, two factors compelled me to take on a vocation that dictated certain qualities I initially did not possess.
One is the ability to stand in front of a group of people and talk coherently without imploding. If pigs can fly…
After college, the initial excitement I had of becoming a sarariiman (salaryman) in Japan Inc. dwindled into disillusion by my third year. Fitting into Japanese corporate life was akin to playing the role of a dispensable character in a VR game adaptation of Shogun (2024, FX).
Feeling bored and insecure about my day job, I began moonlighting at a small English language school after work. One day, I stumbled upon their leaflet, promoting an English rakugo event there. An elderly student happened to be a famous rakugo performer.
Rakugo （落語）is a traditional form of spoken storytelling that has its Buddhist roots going back as far as the 9th century. Mantras evolved into their modern form of entertainment during the Edo Period (1603–1867), becoming more accessible to the general public.
Comedians, or rakuga, perform alone and sit down on flat cushions on stage, in contrast to the more familiar “stand-up” comedy in the West. I was intrigued. To a rakugo show, I will go.
I arrived early at the school on the night of the performance. I waited in a tiny lounge along with a couple of other people who were regular students there. We chatted in English, sharing stories and laughing at my quirky anecdotes of working in Japan as a Nikkei, an expat with Japanese ancestry.
Just before the show started, they had asked how long I was an instructor there. I replied that I was not. After a brief awkward moment of silence, they laughed, saying they had thought I was subbing for their usual teacher who had called in sick.
To this day, I do not know if these individuals had anything to do with the school suddenly contacting me the following week to offer me a job.
An unattractive, orange neon signboard marked the entrance to the school. It was a four-room flat with classrooms furnished with IKEA tables, chairs, and whiteboards.
As an English conversation instructor at “Hello Café” (a pseudonym), I was tasked to teach new vocabulary and sentence patterns to facilitate group discussion for adults. They were mostly professionals seeking hobbies, distractions in life, or skills to enhance their respective careers.
As weeks became months, I reclaimed my mojo and took on more students with additional shifts. My students loved karaoke. An activity they often requested was singing in chorus to the Beatles’ Yesterday, The Carpenter’s Yesterday Once More, or Stevie Wonder’s Yester-Me Yester-You — songs a little before my time but slow and easy to follow nonetheless.
Another regular activity, mainly with my advanced class, was reworking the role-playing scripts of situational dialogues into an interview. One speaker pretended to be a celebrity and the other played a Rolling Stones reporter. As a warm-up or introduction, I often performed a one-man show playing both parts and hamming it up for dramatic effect by altering my voice and exaggerating facial expressions. Then, I encouraged them to imitate me. I was rewarded with giggles or boisterous laughter.
Did I say I mention that I am an introvert?
A student’s feedback still sticks with me to this day:
“I discovered something new about myself through acting in English.”
Over the next two to three years, I continued to balance my day job with my evening job and part-time schooling at a teacher’s college. By my fifth and final year of working as a corporate “suit”, I became a licensed teacher and landed my first full-time job at a private all-girls high school in Osaka.
It was an exciting new chapter in my life. I had transformed from an extremely introverted, spotlight-evading nerd to a more sociable one. By the age of 30 — nearly a generation ago — I had finally felt I had found my calling in teaching, albeit accidentally.
Schools have changed, along with cities and countries of residence. After 12 years as an EFL school teacher in Japan, I relocated to Australia to expand my career as a teacher of science and Japanese as a foreign language. Seven years after that, I relocated yet again to China to teach science in English at a couple of international schools until 2020. COVID-19 prompted me to flee to Taiwan, causing a domino effect that has flipped and transformed my life.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether all the changes in workplaces reflect incremental shifts in my character, my teaching, or my ideals. Or am I just an older version of the same insecure, lost, and awkward introvert?
The way must be in you; the destination also must be in you and not somewhere else in space or time. If that kind of self-transformation is being realized in you, you will arrive. — Nhat Hanh Thich
Update: I no longer teach in schools and now write English press releases for published research papers at a national university in Japan. (as of June 2024) However, I will return to Taiwan this summer to become a research student in Austronesian studies. I can’t seem to stay away from the classroom after all.
Source: All Good Tales; Storytelling traditions across the world: Japan; 2018; https://allgoodtales.com/storytelling-traditions-across-world-japan/
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This article was published on June 13th, 2024 in Long. Sweet. Valuable. publication.
