Saturday, November 29, 2008

Humility

I believe most private companies have the employees' certain "type."
If you are a type of the company, you may be employed. If you are not, you will be not... But another company's employees may be your "type."

In my company(school)'s case, our type is "friendly & humble." I believe so...
Evey employee as far as I have met is very friendly and humble.
Some times I am very impressed by their humility.

For example, I have never met a Japanese teacher (teaching English, of course) who said or acted, "my English is perfect!" at my school.
Some teachers graduated American universities, worked in English speaking countries for awhile, marked a full score of the TOEIC, and married to native English speakers.
For me, their English is just perfect!
But they say, for example, "my English is broken, and too casual. I have to learn appropriate English again." etc...
It could be sarcasm to teachers who are like me...but they never mean so.
They are just really humble. And the humble, friendly co-workers have always made me really comfortable at school.

Also, there is a funny thing.
At the business meeting yesterday, we were talking about our new student.
Toshi, our head teacher, said the student had lived in Canada for seven years and she was very fluent in English, almost like a native English speaker.
Then, Eric, a teacher who are from Australia, said,"Can I...teach her? I'm not a good English speaker! I'm afraid if she is dissatisfied with my class!"
We, the Japanese teachers burst into laughing because it's funny native English teachers might think the same thing with us!
Bob, an American teacher said,"Common! You have been better than me!"
Eric replied, "Bob, you are American! You are good!"

...I know the people here are very humble, but I had never thought even native speakers were also so humble!
What we don't have is...confidence???

1 comment:

Junko Yamauchi, LMFT said...

You are so blessed to be surrounded by good people! I've met quite a few Americans who thought their English was not perfect. Sometimes they say they are ashamed that they only speak one language, English. I don't see British or Australians often here but I think Americans are very humble and considerate like Japanese people.