Any advice or thoughts to share with the rest of us current and incoming JETs? How do you feel about your departure? Was it your fifth year or did you choose to leave sooner? How’s the leaving process?
I’ve been here for 3 years, most of which was during the Pandemic, aside from my first 6ish months. This is what I got:
1) Set clear boundaries with your school.
2) Remember that in the end of the day, as ES or JHS ALTs ,we are not there to TEACH English, we are there to EXPOSE kids to English. Having a bad day, lessons not working out? Did the kids hear English today? Then you did your job. Chalk that up as a (deserving) win and move on!
3) Nip the “Super ALT” concept in the bud early and firmly — you are not expected to fill those big shoes and certainly try not to be one! Why would you? You’re going over-and-above, giving yourself extra work and stress, for what? Self-centered contentment? Think of your successor, make their lives a little easier, Do your job, but set that bar low!
Don’t force yourself to be who your pred was. Teachers and students will learn your way.
Communication is a two-way street. Learning even a little Japanese will go a long way.
JET is going to be a lot of what YOU make of it. Try new things. Meet new people and network. Work on skills that will help you in a future career. You don’t want to end up 5 years in with nothing but “I can sorta speak Japanese”
You’re going to have a lot of positive experiences, but some negative ones too. I hope you get all the right kinds to make your time on JET worth it.
For teachers going to JHS and only getting to see each class once every two or three weeks, it is okay to be a little over the top crazy and have fun with the students. For my school at least, I was there just to break up the normal English classes by bringing in a game or making the speaking exercises more interesting. I would use crazy examples, take things too literally if a student made a mistake, or sit and talk about fun things with the teacher. A fun thing to do was ask a student how to spell something, then literally write everything that they say. I would end up with words like, “y e l l l l l l l l ののののの back back back o w” (yellow) on the board. Of course you need to know the students that are okay with this kind of joke or you will have a pretty bad time. If you are having fun the students will notice and have fun with you.
Get a social circle outside of your school and neighbouring ALTS.
It’s alright to have them as well, but if all you’re doing is being around school and talking about school it gets tiring really quickly.
​
Don’t know the language? Join a club that you’re familiar with. I had no clue about the language but I joined a rugby club. I could still run all of the drills and do all of the training and games with super limited Japanese because I knew rugby inside out.
​
Also, you’re not obliged to be friends with other JETs/ALTs just because of proximity. There’s a lot of people here that are fundamentally different people to me and if I was in my home country I wouldn’t be friends with them. Just because I’m in a foreign country now, doesn’t mean I have to be friends with the foreigners.
My advice is about the leaving process. If you live in BOE provided housing that isn’t professionally cleaned between JETs, make sure you throw your food and dirty furniture away when you leave. It’s gross, and no one wants to have to clean up someone else’s mess to make their home livable.
Also, if you want to find direct hire ALT jobs after JET, do a Google search for 英語指導助手 募集 and click through the BOE websites that come up until you find one that is currently recruiting. You’ll probably end up in a better situation this way than you would if you resorted to a dispatch company.
Yes. This is a job above all else. Of course, you can make friends and have fun, but you will spend most of your time at work. And if your Japanese isn’t good, you’re less likely to have a decent time at work. If you take this job, think long and hard about whether you want to sign on for another year, provided your BoE offers. Life is short and time is limited. I’ve been here for four years, and I think it’s permanently damaged me in several ways. Don’t end up like me.
Skipping ahead a bit: when you do leave, it is a million times easier (and probably cheaper) to pay to check an extra suitcase rather than mail your stuff home.
Get on HelloTalk and make Japanese friends you can ask for advice and guidance – some of the stuff the English-only community in Japan thinks is just flat out made up doomer stuff. Having Japanese friends online will help you get better at handling all kinds of relationships in real life too. (Micro tutorial on how to make friends on HT: post photos of things you did for the first time accompanied by simple sentences describing how you feel. Many people will like your post. Pick someone with good English and like and comment on their posts now and again. When you have trouble in life or get confused about something, ask them questions. Soon u will have a friend because they will definitely ask you stuff too.)
Study for JLPT. Study for tasks you want to be able to do independently. (Buying a hamburger is a task, falling is love is a uh… task. In this model.)
Read the CEFR descriptors and know your own level and your students level.
Buy a copy of the Oxford Modern English grammar. Flick through it. People will ask you grammar questions you have no idea to answer, and you been tell them you’ll look it up in the book and tell them when you know.
If people ask you “do people really say x” type questions, look it up on english-corpora.org. It might not be notmal in your dialect but very common in the language as a whole.
Don’t do things you don’t want to do just because you think you have to. You’re here for your own reasons and what to get involved in and how to live is up to you.
Make use of the Skype counseling service if you feel like you need someone to talk to even a little bit. Free counseling is no joke. Take advantage of it.
Don’t be hard on yourself for being bad at everything in Japan. You’re cultutally like zero years old when you arrive and it will take all long time until you even have the cultural competence of a Junior High student. It’s fine. You’re lucky enough to have an adult from a foreign country directing the entire operation so you’ll learn faster than kids do year for year, providing your Japanese keeps up.
Ultra niche tryhard bonus advice: Ask someone competent in English to explain the basics of the new curriculum requirements from the government to you. Assessment is undergoing some significant changes, especially as it’s hitting high schools starting this year, and students are now evaluated not only for their skills and knowledge, but also for critical thinking ability and judgement, as well as their ability to be an independent learner. This changes what we do in class and it’s thrown a lot of teachers who are used to standing at the lecturn and holding forth for a loop. If you can figure out how active and interactive lessons are supposed to work in this new framework, and pull off classes that engage and motivate students to express themselves and learn independently, you will be a huge asset to your school. The ministry of education has videos in Japanese about how this is meant to work, but the teaching happens in all English so if you check them out, you’ll get a better picture of what your coworkers are trying to avoid bothering to do.
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moving is a pain in the butt.
I’ve been here for 3 years, most of which was during the Pandemic, aside from my first 6ish months. This is what I got:
1) Set clear boundaries with your school.
2) Remember that in the end of the day, as ES or JHS ALTs ,we are not there to TEACH English, we are there to EXPOSE kids to English. Having a bad day, lessons not working out? Did the kids hear English today? Then you did your job. Chalk that up as a (deserving) win and move on!
3) Nip the “Super ALT” concept in the bud early and firmly — you are not expected to fill those big shoes and certainly try not to be one! Why would you? You’re going over-and-above, giving yourself extra work and stress, for what? Self-centered contentment? Think of your successor, make their lives a little easier, Do your job, but set that bar low!
Don’t force yourself to be who your pred was. Teachers and students will learn your way.
Communication is a two-way street. Learning even a little Japanese will go a long way.
JET is going to be a lot of what YOU make of it. Try new things. Meet new people and network. Work on skills that will help you in a future career. You don’t want to end up 5 years in with nothing but “I can sorta speak Japanese”
You’re going to have a lot of positive experiences, but some negative ones too. I hope you get all the right kinds to make your time on JET worth it.
For teachers going to JHS and only getting to see each class once every two or three weeks, it is okay to be a little over the top crazy and have fun with the students. For my school at least, I was there just to break up the normal English classes by bringing in a game or making the speaking exercises more interesting. I would use crazy examples, take things too literally if a student made a mistake, or sit and talk about fun things with the teacher. A fun thing to do was ask a student how to spell something, then literally write everything that they say. I would end up with words like, “y e l l l l l l l l ののののの back back back o w” (yellow) on the board. Of course you need to know the students that are okay with this kind of joke or you will have a pretty bad time. If you are having fun the students will notice and have fun with you.
Get a social circle outside of your school and neighbouring ALTS.
It’s alright to have them as well, but if all you’re doing is being around school and talking about school it gets tiring really quickly.
​
Don’t know the language? Join a club that you’re familiar with. I had no clue about the language but I joined a rugby club. I could still run all of the drills and do all of the training and games with super limited Japanese because I knew rugby inside out.
​
Also, you’re not obliged to be friends with other JETs/ALTs just because of proximity. There’s a lot of people here that are fundamentally different people to me and if I was in my home country I wouldn’t be friends with them. Just because I’m in a foreign country now, doesn’t mean I have to be friends with the foreigners.
My advice is about the leaving process. If you live in BOE provided housing that isn’t professionally cleaned between JETs, make sure you throw your food and dirty furniture away when you leave. It’s gross, and no one wants to have to clean up someone else’s mess to make their home livable.
Also, if you want to find direct hire ALT jobs after JET, do a Google search for 英語指導助手 募集 and click through the BOE websites that come up until you find one that is currently recruiting. You’ll probably end up in a better situation this way than you would if you resorted to a dispatch company.
Yes. This is a job above all else. Of course, you can make friends and have fun, but you will spend most of your time at work. And if your Japanese isn’t good, you’re less likely to have a decent time at work. If you take this job, think long and hard about whether you want to sign on for another year, provided your BoE offers. Life is short and time is limited. I’ve been here for four years, and I think it’s permanently damaged me in several ways. Don’t end up like me.
Skipping ahead a bit: when you do leave, it is a million times easier (and probably cheaper) to pay to check an extra suitcase rather than mail your stuff home.
Get on HelloTalk and make Japanese friends you can ask for advice and guidance – some of the stuff the English-only community in Japan thinks is just flat out made up doomer stuff. Having Japanese friends online will help you get better at handling all kinds of relationships in real life too. (Micro tutorial on how to make friends on HT: post photos of things you did for the first time accompanied by simple sentences describing how you feel. Many people will like your post. Pick someone with good English and like and comment on their posts now and again. When you have trouble in life or get confused about something, ask them questions. Soon u will have a friend because they will definitely ask you stuff too.)
Study for JLPT. Study for tasks you want to be able to do independently. (Buying a hamburger is a task, falling is love is a uh… task. In this model.)
Read the CEFR descriptors and know your own level and your students level.
Buy a copy of the Oxford Modern English grammar. Flick through it. People will ask you grammar questions you have no idea to answer, and you been tell them you’ll look it up in the book and tell them when you know.
If people ask you “do people really say x” type questions, look it up on english-corpora.org. It might not be notmal in your dialect but very common in the language as a whole.
Don’t do things you don’t want to do just because you think you have to. You’re here for your own reasons and what to get involved in and how to live is up to you.
Make use of the Skype counseling service if you feel like you need someone to talk to even a little bit. Free counseling is no joke. Take advantage of it.
Don’t be hard on yourself for being bad at everything in Japan. You’re cultutally like zero years old when you arrive and it will take all long time until you even have the cultural competence of a Junior High student. It’s fine. You’re lucky enough to have an adult from a foreign country directing the entire operation so you’ll learn faster than kids do year for year, providing your Japanese keeps up.
Ultra niche tryhard bonus advice:
Ask someone competent in English to explain the basics of the new curriculum requirements from the government to you. Assessment is undergoing some significant changes, especially as it’s hitting high schools starting this year, and students are now evaluated not only for their skills and knowledge, but also for critical thinking ability and judgement, as well as their ability to be an independent learner. This changes what we do in class and it’s thrown a lot of teachers who are used to standing at the lecturn and holding forth for a loop. If you can figure out how active and interactive lessons are supposed to work in this new framework, and pull off classes that engage and motivate students to express themselves and learn independently, you will be a huge asset to your school. The ministry of education has videos in Japanese about how this is meant to work, but the teaching happens in all English so if you check them out, you’ll get a better picture of what your coworkers are trying to avoid bothering to do.
Have fun the job isn’t that serious.