{"id":12408,"date":"2010-07-08T15:59:08","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T19:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=12408"},"modified":"2010-07-09T13:08:51","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T17:08:51","slug":"jet-roi-seven-jets-seven-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/08\/jet-roi-seven-jets-seven-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"JET ROI: Seven JETs, Seven Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew R. McCarthy (Akita-ken, 2005-08)<\/strong> is a law student at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law focusing on international trade, business, and tax.\u00a0 He currently runs the blog JETs with J.D.s<\/a>, an information source for current JET alumni law students and prospective law students for career paths and approaches within the current legal market.\u00a0 For those considering law school and trying to comprehend the costs and the risks of such an endeavor, he also recommends The Law School Tuition Bubble<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s the fact that the influence one JET participant has in one town is difficult to quantify.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s the lack of a clearly defined job description.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s simply that the \u201csoft hands\u201d approach \u00a0a Board of Education must take to the internationalization and exchange portion of JET makes it impractical for that same employer to critique and provide feedback on the English education portion.\u00a0 Regardless of the reason, it is incredibly easy and natural to belittle the JET Programme for what appears to be, on paper, a lackluster development of English ability in Japanese schools since 1987.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s particularly easy for the CIRs, SEAs, and ALTs themselves to do the belittling.\u00a0 When I had a Japanese English teacher delegate me as human tape recorder, it was easy to lament that \u201cI had no impact.\u201d\u00a0 When I found myself singing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes<\/em> in front of a bunch of over-enthused six-year olds, I certainly questioned whether my college education was worth it.\u00a0\u00a0 At some of the more difficult moments of my JET tenure, I remember thinking that no matter what I did, I wouldn\u2019t be remembered.\u00a0 I\u2019d be just another foreign dude who arrived in town, hung out for a few years, and abruptly left as summer once again turned to autumn.\u00a0 I figured I would just disappear into the fog of my townsfolks\u2019 minds, nothing more than an occasional afterthought for locals between glasses of winter shochu<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Those doubts have not come to fruition.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, there was plenty of evidence, even while I was still in Japan, that they would not.<\/p>\n

I was the seventh ALT to live in my town.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know that when I arrived, but over the course of my time there, I came to know that fact.\u00a0 I learned this not just from the stories I heard from my neighbors, but because even after being gone for so many years, most of them traveled back for a visit.\u00a0 During my three years there, I met all of my predecessors, except two.\u00a0 And many, if not all, have gone on from JET to do great things\u2014some Japan-related, some not.<\/p>\n

First there was Mike.\u00a0 He only stayed for one year, back in the \u201890s, but still maintains contact with the locals he met in Japan.\u00a0 From what I understand, he took his JET experience home, and is now a school teacher in Alaska.<\/p>\n

Then came Matt, from Georgia.\u00a0 After his JET years, he went into the military and served at Yokota Air Base. \u00a0He fell in love with a Japanese native, married, and named his first child after a dear friend from town.<\/p>\n

Then Charles, from the U.K.\u00a0 His post-JET life is not well known to me, but he is still remembered in town for showing up to teach kindergarten in a three-piece suit.<\/p>\n

Fourth was Simon, from New Zealand.\u00a0 He not only married a Japanese native, but had his wedding in the town.\u00a0 He currently lives in Tokyo as systems engineer, providing his services to a Japanese company.<\/p>\n

Fifth was Geoff.\u00a0 He took his international experience gained from JET and is currently a lawyer with a background in human rights, and spent a summer at the Hague working on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

My predecessor was Walker.\u00a0 With a background in the arts, the locals still remember him for his snow sculptures around town.<\/p>\n

Perhaps when each of these ALTs boarded their flight home, they too thought they had no impact.\u00a0 They may have even thought that their JET background would get them nowhere.\u00a0 But, during my time there, I met many of their former students, now adults, who could still remember who their ALTs were and what they meant to them.<\/p>\n

I, too, had my doubts.<\/p>\n

But then came the emails, the New Year\u2019s cards, and the birthday gifts in the mail.\u00a0 And, one day, over a year after I had come home, I logged onto my email account to see a message from a former student.\u00a0 She had tracked down my email address, was taking a year to study in the U.S., and was excited enough to let me know.<\/p>\n

These are all things you can\u2019t quantify in aptitude tests or evaluations, but the JET Programme\u2019s involvement in that small logging town produced educators, engineers, families, lawyers, close relationships, and inspiration.\u00a0 It broadened the horizons and aspirations of not only the participants, but also the locals.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, perhaps the JET Progamme is simply guilty of trying to accomplish too much, and maybe the experience of the ALTs in my town is unique in the grand scheme of things. But JET is, and will always be, what its participants make of it.\u00a0 While that leaves the door open to abuse by participants who would prefer to do nothing, it equally opens the door for its participants to do a lot of good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew R. McCarthy (Akita-ken, 2005-08) is a law student at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law focusing on international trade, business, and tax.\u00a0 He currently runs the blog JETs with J.D.s, an information source for current JET alumni law students and prospective law students for career paths and approaches within the current legal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[282,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jet-roi","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-3e8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12408"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12423,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12408\/revisions\/12423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}