I would imagine that we’ve all, at some time, worked with JTEs who were on one of the two extremes of the good / bad spectrum or who had interesting personalities. Obviously we’re not naming names, but let’s hear some stories.
Mr I: Probably the best I ever worked with. He could get a bored, indifferent group of kids buzzing like they were on a Red Bull drip in no time at all. But he was also a brilliant team teacher and knew how to get the ALT involved.
Mr Young Dude. Don’t remember his name, but he was fresh out of university. Nice enough guy and had decent enough English, but for some reason I never found out, he was unpopular with the students (and thus with the parents) and he ended up taking sick leave for stress.
Ms. H: Lovely lady, but had a fairly typical JTE problem. Extremely high TOEIC score, probably knew the grammar of English far better than I did, but her pronunciation was…um…what’s the word…unique. A two-syllable word would end up with about six syllables. I will be forever grateful that I never heard her try and say “internationalisation”.
Ms. O: Old-fashioned, knew everything there was to know about traditional Japanese culture. Unfortunately she assumed that the students would find it as fascinating as she did, as she sometimes tried to design lessons based on it. She was also helpless in the face of indifferent / disruptive students; instead of *telling* them to be quiet, she *begged* them.
Mr Ex-Kocho (forgot his name). He was a former principal who came back as an English teacher and you could tell he was a former principal because of the way he commanded the classroom. He was funny too. Whenever we did the greeting, I’d ask him how he was and his typical response was “I’m disgustingly fine, thank you”.
Ms. X (forgot her name too). She was clearly a very well qualified JTE (apparently had a qualification in linguistics on top of having a teaching license), but it was equally clear that she absolutely *resented* having to team teach with an ALT, who she basically employed as a human CD player. Some lessons, outside of the opening and closing greeting, I’d literally stand there for 45 minutes doing nothing.
Mr M: First JTE I ever worked with. The quintessential humble Japanese guy, despite apparently being an extremely high ranking player of either Shogi or Go, don’t remember which. On the rare occasions he lost his cool with the kids, he would intone “shaddup” and “shut your mouth” in this unforgettable manner.
Anyway, let the stories begin. Let’s try and keep a balance of good and…less good.
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Ms.M loved English, loved teaching, loved the students. She also was really happy to team teach, enjoyed Project based learning and got amazing results out of her students.
Mr.M (no relation) loved soccer, loved coaching soccer after school, loved the boys in his club, couldn’t care less about English. Used to read the newspaper at the back of the class while I taught.
Banana teacher. 14 years of failing the demo class section of the JTE license, still able to work in schools, just not paid very well. Would spend an entire hour or so meticulously writing out a lesson plan, checking it with me and the head of department. Then he would walk into the classroom and forget everything, panic, and pull out a stuffed banana from somewhere and pronounce to the 中3 class, “dis is a banana! It’s cute!” And stand there awkwardly. Also every afternoon he would pull out the biggest dictionary he could find, open it to a random page, point at something with his finger, then fall asleep.
Mr. Y – The most amazing teacher I’ve met in the years I’ve been here. He had an old-school strictness streak in him, but it only came out if he needed to use it. Otherwise the man knew how to really bring out the best in every student, and teach way beyond their expected levels. He had my 6th graders learning JHS 1st and 2nd year words and expressions and they were just eating it all up. He inspired me to realize that every student is capable of learning more than they think they’re able to. Everyone loved him and was really sad when he retired.
Mr. F – On the opposite end of the spectrum, this man hated teaching but you knew he was there for the paycheck. Every time I went to do a class observation, the guy put on an obvious fake face, and it reflected in his team teaching and how his students responded. Watching his classes was like pulling teeth and nothing was ever his fault. He’d push blame on how things went wrong in the class towards his ALT or the students. What made it more ugly was he really knew how to suck up to the prefectural bosses. All the other teachers barely tolerated him, and he disappeared eventually.
I’ll start by saying that for some reason, my First year and Third Year JHS JTEs end up being the most memorable. Unfortunately, the former are memorable in not so good ways, and the latter were almost always AMAZING to work with. Which kinda shows the overall dynamics of JHS.
Ms. M: one of the first JTEs I worked with, and a third year JTE. She was always fun to work with, and was always open to my suggestions for class.
Ms. F: also a third year JTE, and another excellent teacher to work with. She loved any suggestions I had, and always wanted me to talk with the class about anything. Which I happily obliged.
Mr. M (completely different city and prefecture from Ms. M): Also loved my suggestions and feedback, and overall we had a great working dynamic. Actually didn’t have his classes so often (getting cancelled or whatnot- this was also in the midst of Covid), but he was a blast to work with.
Then you had my first year JTEs…
Ms. K: actually, I liked her a lot. She was always polite and kind to me… but she was also clearly a fresh-from-college JTE that the school decided to run the gauntlet with. Not only being a homeroom teacher for the first years, but she was also advisor to one of the sports clubs. I liked her (okay, so i thought she was cute too), but what made her memorable was that she had to run her classes with an iron fist, and I could see that she was constantly frustrated by what she had to do for the school.
Mr. S… probably the only JTE that I didn’t like much. I’m also convinced he’s the reason why I was not invited back to the school I had him at. He was an older guy, and clearly used to the “old way” of ALT English teaching. Not only that, but he was made the Head Teacher of the English department. There’s a specific term for what he was (old teachers who for whatever reason are returning to teach English at school), and he never wanted me to do much more than be a human tape recorder and grade papers. Meanwhile, all the other teachers at this school were very open to my ideas, so he was difficult for me to work with. Compound this with the frustration that being a teacher for the first years brings, and it was just Not Fun with him.
Mr. I – English teacher fairly liked. Baseball coach. Nice guy. After working together a few years he started getting comfortable. Showed me his pachinko addictions +- multiple 10,000yen every month. Started asking me terrible questions. “You like JHS girls?”, “Which students would you date?” etc. I think he was just messing around… but jeez.