When Frustrations Become Something Else

My job is fun and easy because I get to build relationships with my students and watch them progress. I know what I'm doing is working, albeit slowly, and I don't lose hope. Unfortunately, not all teachers are so lucky.

I have a friend who is doing the JET program, where he assists English teachers at public schools in Japan. He wrote in his blog that yesterday, one of the English teachers he worked with committed suicide by jumping from the junior high school building:

"I finally found someone to tell me that the one who fell was one of the teachers at my school – the English teacher I was about to call – and that it was suicide. After an incident with a trouble making student that morning he said "I'm tired." and jumped out of the window in the middle of a class."

It's one of those shocking stories you just hope and pray isn't really true.

To say that his students were the cause of his suicide would be untrue. The teacher obviously had emotional problems, and in Japan, it's nearly impossible to get diagnosed for depression. But it makes me thankful for my job. Sometimes I feel that my work is too small scale to matter. So what if I teach three kids to speak English? But I'm grateful for my position - it may only be three students, but the relationships I build with them are very special to me.

I wish my friend's English teacher had not viewed suicide as the only way out. I can only hope that his death helps lead to improvements in the Japanese medical system.