“What are the kids studying with their Japanese English teachers?”  “I don’t know.  No one ever tells me anything."

“What kind of disciplinary authority do you have?”  “No one ever tells me anything."

These days, when I hear those six words, I have learned to say, “Right.  So let’s see what we can do to make you someone worth telling things to."

At Project GENIUS, being someone worth telling things to is fundamental to how we operate in schools.

Seek out the Japanese English teachers that work with your kids.  If you are feeling ignored, you need to look at this from the Japanese teacher’s perspective….

Coordinating curriculum can be very challenging.  Depending on the kind of person you are working with — even when working with speakers of the same language — it is fraught with opportunities to offend. 

Even when you and the other teacher agree, there is the additional challenge of agreeing on how to implement what you agree on.

You, the Japanese teacher, are busy, and need to invest your time wisely.  You are probably open to the idea of talking with the foreign English teacher, but a higher priority might be those that you already have a track record of working with successfully, with whom there is not a linguistic and cultural barrier.  The foreigner needs to give you some signal that he or she is worth the investment of time and energy.

Small talk will breech a gap, but probably not the gap that needs to be breeched.

I have seen foreign teachers recognize the need to reach out, but then make a move that would seem, on the surface, to be savvy, but which is generally a profound mistake.  They engage the Japanese teacher in small talk — baseball, music, movies. 

This works occasionally, and it’s great for staving off culture shock, but most of the time, you become identified with your choice of topic.  You become the Japanese teacher’s refuge from office politics.  You, the friendly foreigner, become the last person in the world with whom the teacher would want to talk shop. 

Why ruin the wonderful time that you are having, talking about the Seattle Mariners, by bringing up a topic so thorny as what the proper policy is with regards to sleeping students?

Better instead to risk seeming square and establish the precedent of discussing work-related questions that your colleague might be surprised to learn that you care about.

TALK ABOUT THE KIDS.  Kids are more interesting than baseball anyway — at least if teaching kids is your chosen career.  Even when there is no urgent discipline issue in your class, small-talk can just as easily focus on students that you have in common with the teacher.

TALK ABOUT THE LARGER PROGRAM.  Once you have your sea-legs in lesson planning, if you are any good as a teacher, it is going to become more and more important that you understand how what you are doing fits into the larger whole.  You might learn (as for example, I did) that the chemistry teacher at a top-flight High School for boys has been experimenting with cooperative learning for the past three years.  You might learn that after school, most of the students go to another part of the building and take cram-school-style English test-prep classes.  You might learn that students at your school regularly compete in science fairs, and that almost every year, at least one kid tries his or her hand at an English-only poster presentation.

ASK THE JAPANESE ENGLISH TEACHER ABOUT PEDAGOGY.  No matter what, you should be genuinely curious about exactly how the Japanese English teachers teach what they teach.  Even if they do it “wrong,” you need to know what they are doing so that you can see how what you are doing intersects with what they are doing. 

Better yet, you need to find ways in which what you as the foreign English teacher can AUGMENT what the Japanese English teachers are doing, and vice versa. 

The value of what you can contribute is that you make English a living language.  You can make the clay golem stand up and walk around.

The value of what the Japanese English teacher can contribute is that he or she knows the kids better than you do, and almost certainly knows the parents.  They also are well versed in a particular kind of English teaching.  Most of the language that you will be able to make come out of the students’ mouths will originate in lessons taught by the Japanese English teacher.

It all comes down to being genuinely curious about your colleagues as professionals.

You will become someone worth telling things to as soon as you see your colleagues as being worth asking things of.