To participate in an ALT program, the employer should have the following requirements…

7 comments

1. Team teaching is a can of worms. The practice isn’t specific to ELT (K-12 subject teachers might have experience with it). When I was a TESOL instructor back home, I taught in programs that had a form of team teaching, but always between two qualified teachers and or with students doing practica.

   TT is a reaction, not a solution, to the problem of JTEs with poor English skills and random non-Japanese speaking and unqualified ALTs.

2. lol I’m trying to imagine an inaka BOE dealing with a direct hire that only has N4-N5.

3. JET is the only program. Everything else is BOEs meeting a legal requirement.

4. It would be really nice if ALTs and JTEs had to take courses on team teaching. I’ve never seen a single ALT-JTE team that was particularly good at team teaching. Even the rare JTE-JTE team I’ve seen was pretty lackluster. I also had the very rare opportunity to see an ALT-ALT team and it was just as bad.

   I would love for everyone to be trained to team teach so I can finally see if team teaching is actually good or if it’s just as innately flawed as I think it is.

5. The thing is, I can’t imagine most BOE’s wanting direct hires. There’s a reason they pay a tonne to shitty companies. They don’t want to deal with foreign ALTs. They want all that at arm’s length and it is obviously worth it for them to pay for that service.

6. How about no ALTs at all? It’s a waste of the BOEs money – all they actually need to do is require the teachers who teach English to have ESL qualifications.

7. Too many options IMO, gimme three