Book Club - Embrace Your Insignificance

“I’ve been asked to check the second-year students’ summer homework. They were asked to do a journal page on their vacation. I find myself grading their lives: are they interesting? Are they creative? Are they rich enough to have had an exotic vacation? After reviewing about 30 or so assignments you get a feel for where a class is. I should give them an A, B, or C with a plus or minus…..Most kids have a regimented life. I think I would be quite unresponsive if I had to go through what they go through. This assignment seems to be one of the only assignments I can remember recently where kids could just write whatever they wanted.” (p82)

In this Japanese school that attempting their best to teach Japanese students English, many of the students do not care about learning and opening themselves up to the English language. American English teacher, Bob Gaulke, has been given the struggle to teach these first, second, and third-year students who are learning English in order to advance towards a job, a higher education, etc.
Throughout the book, Gaulke explains his difficulty in trying to grade the Japanese students since many of them disrupt that class and do not put forth the effort in the day-to-day worksheet activities that are planned. After reading the situations he is put in, I believe that he is faced with great difficulty in grading these students. English is an exceptionally hard language to learn because of all the different grammatical rules, spelling, etc. that is enacted into our language. Many times Gaulke wants to give extra points or disregard some of the wrong answers so his students can gain confidence in their English and be motivated to learn.
The reason I found Gaulke’s experience with grading papers on a personal experience so compelling deals with an issue that we have talked about in class. Students take greater pride and are more motivated to engage in writing when they are dealing with situations that they have experienced themselves. Here, Gaulke cannot give the students a grade based on their experiences like he has stated. Instead, he is able to see the students’ identities and maybe can see why many of them are not inspired to learn English. As he states, “students lives are regimented”, which means that day-in and day-out they are doing the same exercises, activities, and learning techniques to learn English, yet they are not understanding it and applying it to things they know. I believe that Gaulke understands the importance of allowing students to free-write every once and a while to see the progress that has been made, and needs to be made in teaching.
Discussion Questions:
1. Analysis: Compare and contrast how Gaulke’s mindset about teaching the students English differs from the other teachers located in his school.
Gaulke differs in many ways from his colleagues in teaching the students English, although he has the same common goal as the other teachers which is to teach the students and help them ready themselves for the future and the tests. Gaulke seems more concerned about the students using English outside of the classroom and in regular conversation and makes more of an effort in going out of his way to talk to the students about things that interest them. He uses activities that will interest the students and making learning English fun, instead of using repetitive worksheets that are fill-in the blanks.
2. Evaluation: Assess Gaulke’s performance as an English teacher for the Japanese students and if there is anything he can fix or improve upon.
Overall, I think that Gaulke was an effective teacher in the Japanese school. At times, he gave up on himself or the ability of his students which disheartened me due to the fact that these students needed a lot of help. However, I think that he cared more about his students than his colleagues did and found ways to engage with students inside and outside of the classroom. He took the time to understand their lives and empathize with them in order to effectively try and teach.
3. Application: Gaulke and the teachers use many different techniques in the classroom to teach the students. What are some techniques and activities that were used that you would find helpful to incorporate in your future classroom?

There were many activities that were used in Gaulke’s classroom and other teacher’s classrooms as well. I really enjoyed the idea of the Haiku poems that were used because I believe that students are able to grasp individual word meanings and can create a simple writing piece that is comprehensive by everyone. For many of the students not understanding English and grasping it, some of the poems were very well done.