So it's no secret that Japanese teachers are some of the most overworked teachers in the world. I was watching a documentary not too long ago talking about how so many teachers are having to take breaks for mental health reasons and how a lot of them are quitting altogether due to the fact that there's a constant demand on them to fill multiple roles, including administrative/counciling roles, as opposed to just focusing on classroom education.
I see it a lot in my own life too at my schools. At my schools, the teachers are there way before I am, which is around 8 in the morning, and they leave way after I do. At my elementary schools, we're doing one of the daily routine units, so I've heard a couple of teachers confess with their own mouths that they get home really late, like 8pm or so, and then they go to bed late at like 11 or so, or even 12 midnight, and then they're up by like 5 because some of them have families to tend to before heading to work to fulfill their duties.
There's one teacher at one of my schools who is CONSTANTLY busy to the point where I feel concerned for her sometimes. She's very dedicated to her work though, but I'm concerned that she's always having to think about work because sometimes she'll message me really early in the morning about lesson plans or late at night. Actually, several teachers have done the same thing. During the time when you think they'd be focusing on their families or themselves, at around 9pm or 10pm at night, they'll send me messages to ask me if I can prepare this or make that. Which is kind of what led me to making this post.
I've been kind of struggling with how to maintain balance in my own life as an ALT. On the one hand, I understand that sometimes it's necessary to do work outside of school in order for things to run smoothly when at school. On the other hand, I really don't want to be worrying about school during my off-hours. When I clock out around 4, I want that to be it. I dislike receiving messages late at night about lessons for the next day or the next week, because even if I don't have to do the tasks right away, I start to feel stressed anyway thinking about the task and how to execute it and where I'm going to fit it into my already crammed work schedule. They asked me how they could best contact me to communicate lesson plans since I'm not at that school the whole week and I ended up giving them my Line, but I kind of dislike the arrangement since it feels intrusive to have notifications in the same space where I talk to my friends that are asking me about work or talking about work. And then I feel kind of guilty as well, because these are incredibly kind and hardworking teachers and I don't want to jilt them or appear to be a rigid/inflexible/selfish ALT.
But part of me really wants to stand firm and resist the whole unpaid overtime thing. I've seen the toll that it takes on these teachers and I really don't want to become like that, especially because they get paid for it and I don't. I feel very strongly that while I want to integrate as much as possible while I'm here, I'm still not Japanese and will never be and so I don't feel like I can just complicity allow myself to do work outside of work hours and do the whole "ganbatteimasu" thing. And I understand that it's not their choice and not their faults they have so much to do that they can't get it all done within reasonable hours a lot of the times, but I just staunchly feel like that's not what I came here for and that's not for me.
So I've been wondering what other ALTs think about this work-life boundary situation. How are you guys handling it? Do you draw boundaries between work time and personal time, or do you spend time outside of work working on school stuff? Should ALTs work as though they are regular teachers, or should they just fully clock out when they clock out? Also, anyone have any advice for how to do that/communicate those boundaries in a way that doesn't make you the black sheep of the 職員室?
by melgawks