I want to start off by saying that I understand that “every situation is different” and it is possible no one will have a clear answer to my question.
I am a current JET in Japan who arrived in Japan about a month and a half ago. I have been working at a senior high school in the countryside for over a month now, but I still don’t understand what my expectations are and feel as though I am severely under qualified for my position. Any advice on my situation or the standard expectation for an ALT would be appreciated.
For a little context, I am a recent university graduate with limited teaching experience and no Japanese language skills. I graduated from university with a BA in International Studies and Geography, with a minor in German. As an undergrad, I worked as a German Teaching Assistant and tutor for one year. I have extensive experience for my age studying abroad in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Though I do not know Japanese, I have learned German and French (I have experience with language learning).
My main goal after graduating from university was to work abroad. The pandemic made that extremely difficult, so I thought I would try teaching English abroad. After all, I genuinely enjoyed my time as a German TA and am passionate about studying/working abroad. Though most of my undergrad experience was focused on Europe, I wanted to look for positions in Asia. I have always had a deep interest in East Asia and have wanted to live in Japan specifically for a while.
At least to me, it seems as though the JET Program prides itself on being a job where no prior teaching experience is needed. My job title is **Assistant** language teacher, after all. I thought that my job would involve helping the JTE with grading assignments, reading words/phrases out of textbooks, providing cultural incite when necessary, and being an extra set of hands in the classroom. This is very similar to what I did as a German teaching assistant.
That has not been the case. Aside from receiving no clear expectations from the English teaching staff on my job expectations (which I have asked for multiple times), I have been asked to create lesson plans and take over teaching an entire class on my own. I am almost never working with students directly in the classroom, instead, I am stuck at my desk in the teacher’s room whipping out self-made worksheets, lessons, and activities to give to the JTE. The JTE do not tell me anything about their classes unless I explicitly, and will sometimes just take the worksheets and use them on their own.
Additionally, I have been put in charge of an English Conversation class with no guidance. The primary teacher of the class will review my lesson plans before the class and then sits in the class as a student. The primary teacher is now asking me to make their end-of-semester exam.
Though it might sound like I am constantly busy, I am not. Because I am barely in the classroom, I have a lot of time just sitting around trying to keep myself busy (desk warming). Most of my English teachers have said that I am one of the best ALTs they have worked with and that they are impressed by my work, but I have no idea what I am doing half the time and feel so so under qualified.
**Was my impression of the ALT workload incorrect? Is this type of work a normal expectation for ALTs? Is it normal for schools to ask this much from ALTs?**
14 comments
You sound like you’re managing thus far. If you’re entrusted with making the final exam, how bad could your work be?
Sometimes, schools might not know how to exactly use an ALT and are just grateful to have a native English speaker when making material. Your duties don’t seem all that uncommon from what I’ve read from others.
Also, you’re not underqualified. JET accepts recent college grads with no teaching experience (like myself) every year. They aren’t looking for teachers, they want people who want to be in Japan and that can adapt.
Try to enjoy yourself, do the work, and grow with the experience.
How are you desk warming but creating lessons plans and being in charge of an entire class? I’m also in a Senior High school and out of the 15 or so classes I’m scheduled, I only go to 5 or so constantly. But even though the teachers that don’t ask me to go to their classes, they still have me review/mark essays and such so even if I’m at my desk most of the day, I am still doing something for a teacher. Sometimes I’ll be asked to stay put (meaning, not taking a walk anywhere)so a teacher can ask me grammar questions while he’s correcting papers. Even if I’m not in the classroom, I still consider this doing my job.
A co-ALT who has a second school does the lesson plans for the teachers, so it’s not unheard of. What I don’t think should be happening is you being in charge of a class. As for the teachers not telling you what they expect of you, I’m not aware of how you’ve approached this with them. But I go to the teacher the day before we’re scheduled together (there’s only like 3 teachers that approach me themselves) and ask them if they need me and if they do, I just squeeze every bit of info out of them that I can cause otherwise they’ll just tell me the chapter we’re working on) what chapter are you covering? What exercises are the students going to do? Do you want me to help the students with *whatever they’re doing*? Do you want me to make model answers?
Just anything you can do, ask if you can do it, sometimes it helps them come up with something for me to do, or they’ll say they can take care of that part and they just want me to read the book for them. Out off the 5 classes I do go to, 3 really know what they want me to do and how to utilize me as an AET 🤷🏽♀️
Everything you said seems normal-ish within the range of things ALT have been asked to do. However, the making the final exam thing is weird. I’d double check on that. The real Term exams are to be made by the licensed teachers only. Heck, you aren’t even allowed to be in the office while they’re being graded.
I think many of us felt similarly when we arrived. Actually, if you go back 15 or 20 years ago, there was almost no information online, so when we were trying to lesson plan it was really a big challenge. These days you can get on a couple of the JET wikis and find a ton of activities, and other websites have free downloadable worksheets. If you’re lucky you have YouTube at your fingertips as well.
Although you’re correct in that you’re supposed to be an assistant, in reality many ALTs and up being the lead teacher for many of their classes. Sometimes this is something that you can get changed if you talk to your supervisor, and other times it just kind of is what it is.
That being said, one way that you can lighten your workload is to have some activities that you can repeat or slightly modify and repeat. I could try and list some here, but it just depends what you’re trying to do.
Regardless, your current goal should be to get through the next month and a half so that you hit summer vacation. That will give you a chance to relax, and do some more online research so that you feel a little better in the autumn. And remember that they hired you, a person who’s totally new to the job, they’re not paying you very much, and they knew beforehand that you aren’t certified in doing this job. If there are some rough months or even a rough year or two, everyone expected that and we’re all OK with it.
Since most of the JTEs tell you that you are one of the best ALTs they have worked with, is it possible you are experiencing imposter syndrome? I suffer from this myself from time to time, especially after starting a new job. It was helpful to me to name it because I could start looking for resources of which there are a lot of out there. Regardless, I’m still an incoming JET but it sounds to me like you are doing a great job!
How many teaching hours do you have each week? I have had a similar experience but teaching in Taiwan. If you feel like you’re wandering aimlessly, i recommend asking other teachers questions about their lesson plans – with the purpose of making your lessons more captivating.
One of my teachers has a really interesting teaching format. He chooses a 1 to 2 minute long video in English. He creates a transcript and prints it out. He has a few vocabulary words from the transcript that need to be defined before watching at the top of the transcript. He gives a worksheet to each student.
1) greeting and take attendance
2) Introduce topic
3) Watch video
4) ask them what they saw, call on 2-3 students.
5) hand out transcript, watch the video again
6) read line by line to practice speaking. Explain anything that needs clarification.
7) ask them to translate some parts to Japanese
8) you can match them up in small groups, give each student a role. (Person A, person B)
So it sounds like our situations were/are extremely similar. Like you, I was an international relations student fresh out of college with a lot of experience with other cultures, but I didn’t speak much Japanese at all.
When I was an ALT, I was in a similar position to you. I was expected to create lesson plans and be the primary teacher for almost all of the classes that I taught (I asked my co-workers to collaborate with me and they usually said “I’ll leave it up to you!” or “Whatever you think is best!”). I was in charge of an English conversation class for 3rd years that many of them clearly didn’t want to be in (it was an elective course). I made a portion of the final exam and I even graded essays for classes I didn’t teach (I graded all of the English essays for the entire school— which sounds like a lot, but these are 50-100 word essays). I am surprised someone said that we’re not allowed to make or grade exams, because I did and I know a lot of other ALTs who did too. 🤷♀️
I lead the English Club almost entirely. Which was cool when it was just kids wanting to practice English and talk to me about the music they liked, but it was super annoying when it was basically another class I was expected to teach.
Like you, I had no bloody idea what I was expected to do and like you I had some amazing classes and (unlike you it seems) I had some classes that absolutely bombed. I was shocked when I was expected to plan and lead entire classes by myself. I think this job has a huge learning curve because of the ESID element of it. You’re only a month or so in, so you’re still learning the ropes. It’s natural to not know what you’re doing right away and to have some classes totally bomb/not work. So give yourself a little grace to learn and to figure it out.
I don’t know if it’s “normal” but your workload does sound similar to what mine was. One thing that really stressed me out and I found out was not allowed was that I was teaching 5-6 classes per day at first which was WAY too much (I basically never got a break) so I did end up crying one day (I literally broke down crying, which I don’t recommend but sometimes feelings make themselves known) and saying I was teaching more than I was legally supposed to and after that the next semester I had significantly fewer classes.
If you’re ever feeling really overwhelmed, it’s ok to talk to a JTE you trust and ask them for help/advice.
It sounds, though, that you’re just not sure what’s expected of you and what you’re supposed to teach. What I found helped was asking teachers what grammar points/lessons the kids are learning. I asked them to show me where they were in the book. That way you have an idea of what they know and what they are learning so that you can have a jumping off point for lesson ideas. Look up class ideas online too if you’re ever stuck. You can find a lot of resources online and it’ll help you feel like you’re not having to make new materials all of the time. Also, if you stay another year, it’ll get much easier the second year. By my 3rd year I had made most of my materials already the previous two years so I was just refining my lessons and adding a few new things here and there.
A good way to structure a class is in 3rds— a warm up activity, learning a speaking/grammar point, and then a game or activity for the kids to demonstrate/practice what they’ve learned.
1. Yes and no. You could have easily ended up in a school where your work load would have been nothing but a human tape recorder or what you explained you had expected originally. I think JET likes to sell the idea that the job entails ALT responsibilities to be closely aligned to exactly what you thought it was so that prospecting applicants are more inclined to apply knowing they can do the job without experience, but feel a sense of fulfillment.
2 & 3. This type of work can be considered a normal expectation to some JTEs/schools. Part of it might depend on their past ALTs. Sometimes they set the bar (high or low), and that’s what JTEs may think “oh, this is what all ALTs do” but that won’t ring true for every JTE, ofc.
It sounds like you’re managing fine so far though. If you find yourself creating lesson plans and being the lead teacher in 25 classes constantly, I would consider that beyond an ALT’s expectations, personally. I also think if your JTEs are giving you little to no guidance on what to teach or how to teach, I wouldn’t stress too much. That gives me the impression they don’t care enough, so just do your best and have fun.
Didn’t read all of it, just skimmed. But if teachers say you’re one of the best ALTs they’ve worked with and you still feel unqualified, that’s called imposter syndrome. There are different ways of dealing with it. Here’s a few I’ve heard of:
-“*The shiny people are a lie*”, learned from Jenny Lawson, who writes books about being a depressed, chronically ill mess – and makes it funny. Talk to other people who deal with imposter syndrome and you’ll see that no one actually knows what they’re doing. Anyone who seems to have their lives together is really good at faking it and absolutely is a disaster in some ways you just haven’t seen yet
-“*Mwhaha, everything is going exactly according to plan! I’ve fooled them all*” aka just leaning into it. I heard about this from Meg Syv, an artist who just went from drawing Spiderman comics for fun to getting a job at Disney on the upcoming Spiderman animated show. Feel like you don’t honestly deserve the recognition you’re getting? Pretend you’re so good at being sneaky and it’s all part of your master plan!
Edit: added relevant Meg Syv comics: https://twitter.com/BluDragonGal/status/1376614596631425026?t=TBp5Bpu0Jk_5hHP9joo7gA&s=19
https://twitter.com/BluDragonGal/status/1461008912249876480?t=wTKOAwHjMC8p81iAO8ihrw&s=19
Most JETs are under-qualified for this job if they either give or a fuck or end up at a school that has any qualifications. Most JETs have zero teaching experience when they arrive (I believe it’s about 2/3rds) and many speak basically zero Japanese. The schools understandably have developed low expectations for JETs that let most people feel like they can do the job.
If the school has a good run of JETs the past few years, there’ll be expectations for the new JET.
It’s possible that your JTEs are blowing smoke to make you feel better, it’s possible that you’re the first ALT that’s made an effort for a while. Countryside JETs have a higher tendency to phone it in my experience – it’s not uncommon for nobody at those schools to care about English education.
So many essays in here lol
They will likely ask you to do as much as possible unless you state what you should and should not be doing.
If you’re happy doing everything, great. If not, clarify immediately or it will continue.
If you need support on how to do that ask your PA.
Pretty ESID like you said but the job of an ALT is as heavy as the school makes it. Some schools have the ALT T1ing most classes while others have them just being a wall flower.
Your impression of the ALT workload was incorrect in regards to your current placement. It may be correct for another ALT. The amount of work that’s expected is usually based off of the JTE’s experience with a former ALT. Usually that’s just being able to answer basic English questions and being able to read from the book. Maybe the previous ALT was did a bunch of side projects for the JTEs so now they expect the new one to continue that pattern. Counter to that, maybe the previous ALT did bare minion so the JTEs expect nothing from ALTs.
At the end of the day, ALTs are only as utilized as the school wants them to be. The main job to just be a foreigner in the classroom to give the kids exposure to the natural language, as little as it is. I felt underqualified when I first started as well, mainly due to not knowing what they want from me. But I came to realize I was expecting more than what the job actually entailed and that I’m not expected to have the set of skills a trained teacher does. Provide what you can to the job and that’s that. No need to think any further, really. I’m an artsy guy. I bring that to the classroom. It sets me apart from previous ALTs and my JTEs recognize that’s a strength I have that can be utilized mainly due to me communicating that to them.
I teach entire lessons by myself and thought it was pretty normal. Granted, I have two elementary schools and I previously was a teacher. I make the lesson plans and give them to the HR teachers. I only teach below grade 5 myself. Grade 5 and 6 are more collaborative.
If you don’t enjoy your workload, speak to your CIR. All teachers should be given training on what they expect the ALT to do. What do you want to do in a lesson? I personally don’t mind teaching by myself.
I had a similar situation where i was desk warming a lot in-between maddeningly busy days, i had little idea of what to do or what i was supposed to do.
Best advice i can give is to use the job to your own advantage, you say you’re not good at japanese so buy yourself some physical textbooks and put your nose in whenever you have time. It might seem boring and annoying to spend all day struggling but you’ll be conversational far quicker than you’ll notice and everything will seem better by then. I would also recommend reading and rereading the English textbooks so you really know what the curriculum is, when students learn a particular section and specifically what grammar points they learn. That way when you get to teaching that section you’ll already be familiar with what the jte expects to teach and how much the kids should know.
Think of yourself as an advanced teaching tool for the jte, you’re more there to teach as and when needed rather than a regular teacher so you have to put in your own effort to make this opportunity work for you. It’s not nice and sometimes feels lonely and exploitative but you have to exploit back, learn to thrive on your own independent goals and not rely on being told what to do, those are some skills that you can only really learn from these kind of jobs and will really benefit you in the future.
Also try to understand that culture shock is very insidious, the first year is a real rollercoaster ride and even one bad interaction can put you down for the rest of the day. It will get better, the more japanese you know the better you can interact with people and easier life will be, by the third year you’ll be thanking yourself for putting the effort in so that you can relax easy and enjoy life in Japan instead of constantly worrying about misunderstandings and stewing over every negative aspect of being alt.