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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by Tasty_Comfortable_77