Even outside of the classroom, I seem to continually find myself surrounded by people who place learning above other aspects of their lives. A few weeks ago I was introduced to a mutual friend, and despite the very light context of our shared meal, our conversation repeatedly drifted toward shared ideals in the realm of teaching, learning, and literature. I quickly learned that this person, Marco, left his high school English literature teaching job in New Zealand to become a temporary English language teacher for a public high school in Tokyo through the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Programme. After our initial meeting, we made vague plans for a more in-depth conversation and eventual casual interview which occurred this past weekend.

Marco’s involvement with JET interested me as I had previously heard about this program while looking into various ways to come to Japan myself. At its core, the program was one of the most convenient ways to live in Japan – simply be placed at a Japanese school as a temporary English language teacher and the rest is taken care of. I would be lying if I said that JET wasn’t still something I could envision myself signing up for after graduation, so I was looking forward to hearing all about it from a program participant firsthand. 

After I learned that Marco taught high schoolers here in Tokyo and New Zealand, my next question was about his time in high school. I think it is easy to assume any to-be teacher would be an immaculate student in every way — eager to learn with perfect scores and a cool temperament. Laughing as he thinks about how to answer, he soon reveals that almost none of his teachers would call his time in high school anything close to perfect or cool. I would feel strange about calling 9th-grade Marco a bad student if he wasn’t so clear about this aspect of his story himself. After all, it’s an integral piece of the puzzle that makes his journey from student to teacher that much more insightful. To Marco, there didn’t seem to be any point in trying in school. To put it bluntly, it wasn’t very interesting and nothing was clicking. Eventually, graduation was looking impossible, and his mother had no choice but to try a private tutor. It is this tutor that Marco gives all of the credit. Books suddenly became fun, learning didn’t seem like a chore, and graduation was highly celebrated.

I enjoyed the arc in character Marco seemed to move through that eventually led to his stay here in Tokyo as it greatly emphasized aspects of teaching that I am particularly drawn to in my own life. It is clear that mentorship is a vital part of every young person’s life – it is something that can truly make or break one’s relationship with the world around them. I shared a similar mentor-related experience in the past, but I believe it is even more important to remember that I often rely on mentors around me at Wellesley as well. Although Marco’s story was unique to his own being, its ability to reinforce positive ideas of guidance and support was not lost on me. Oftentimes, actions labeled as mentorship can also be grouped into the larger cosmos of community building. Community, like for most people, is something I truly cannot live without. 

As our conversation drifted toward the daily expectations and experiences of a high school English teacher in Tokyo, Marco noted how almost isolating the job was compared to his teaching life in New Zealand. Community back home was stable and easy, but in Tokyo it has so far required concentrated effort and practice. Between weekly English club meetings and trumpet practice, Marco’s integration into the school community has been slow and steady. Another important, and somewhat obvious, way to garner an easy familiarity with those in the school, is to connect with students – one of the many joys of teaching. When speaking about our own experiences in school life, we found many similarities between New Zealand and America. Some students don’t care about their courses at all, some are grade obsessed, and some love their classes because they love to learn. For educators, teaching to students who connect with the material is one of the things that makes all of the trials of teaching worthwhile. Marco echoed these sentiments, and informed me that this feeling was hard to come by during his time in Tokyo. Because of the school culture of Japan, students feel an immense pressure to perform well on exams. There is little room for the joy of learning. He described the air of defeat within the classrooms as suffocating due to the student’s intense focus on the next exam. Although this unified goal of scoring highly in every subject does make it easier to teach materials, it can be emotionally draining for everyone involved. But, despite these heavy feelings, Marco describes the students as your typical high school age kids – loud, fun, silly, and trying to figure out who they are. 

While swapping some short stories about our adjustments to Tokyo life at the conclusion of our interview, Marco offers the idea that in order to truly love a place, you must hate it. This saying certainly made sense to me when thinking about Tokyo, Boston, or Miami, but I think it resonated much deeper when I began thinking back on my own time in high school.

Like many teenagers, the best moments of my life were not in the classroom. However, it would be amiss to say that my teachers and peers did not have a uniquely profound impact on my life and development as a person. Maybe because our conversation seemed to hover above mentorship and community, I began to reminisce on my days in high school almost lovingly. I quickly became aware that I can now look back with the perspective that many of my teachers probably held while watching me stumble through life. This shift has certainly made me much more grateful for the different teachers I routinely pesterted for advice during those four years, especially as someone hoping to enter a career field that requires an emphasis on guidance. As I grow older and wiser each year, I can only hope that my own mentoring abilities are up to par when a lost student stumbles into my future office one day.