First Week

I have been hired as an ALT, which stands for Assistant Language Teacher. ALTs get sent to various junior high and high schools and work with a JTE, Japanese Teacher of English. Even though my position title is an ALT, there is no JTE in my classroom.

I am the teacher at 5 different elementary schools, responsible for lesson planning and material gathering. I did not major in Education and I have never received any teacher training. I have no textbook to go by, only my native English skill, which apparently is enough.

I'm not complaining about the position I'm in. I am being paid quite well for a job that, as another JET put it, 'accepts a person in a teaching role based on a couple of questions, an essay about their desire to come to Japan, and a 30-minute interview with some random people who will never have another thing to do with [you]'.

All JET workshops have been geared towards 'Japan adjustment'. Information packets and welcome DVDs have contained information on 'all the fun things you can do in Japan!' But as I learned this week, I also have to teach, too.

Here is a short list of observations I've made over the week:

-Students and staff are groundskeepers. First day of school, I pull up and everyone is sweeping leaves. I also learned they plant the flowers and cut the grass (with scissors!)

-The staff are not interested in my past teaching experience. For each school, I would walk in the teacher's room, introduce myself briefly, and there would be follow up questions. Such questions were usually, "Are you single? She's single!", "Do you have a girlfriend?", and "Are you married?"

-AC only exists in the teacher's room. I've been told no AC makes the kids "stronger".

-One 6th grade class came in late. The teacher had already arrived, so when the kids showed up, he growled some stuff in Japanese. The kids sat down seiza-style (formal Japanese sitting with your knees sticking out and you're resting on your legs), bowed, and said something about "I'm sorry..." in unison. It was amazing.

-Kids find the phrase "My name is..." funny. When said with a Japanese accent, it comes out "mai neimu izu", which sounds like "mayonnaise".

-All elementary school kids are expert unicycle riders. Each school has about 20 of them, and the kids ride around in their free time. In America, this would be a law suit waiting to happen.

-Some of the schools have more interesting staff than others. At one school, during lunch, people sat in silence for about 15 minutes while eating. Some lady decided to break the silence by asking me, "Are you Christian?"

-One 6th grader had a Grateful Dead pencil case. I asked her if she knew what it said and she had no idea.

-Kids serve lunches to each other everyday. They dress up in white aprons and wear these little white hair caps. It's so cute.

-One kindergartner showed me his bug collection. LIVE bug collection. He tried to give me one of his grasshoppers. I declined.

Overall, the week went well. Being in freak-out-mode, I over planned for everything. But with the first introduction week complete, I'm now faced with planning a balanced curriculum for all grades at each school. I've found they can sing their ABC's, count to 10, and know the days of the week and the days of the month. But when you ask, "How are you?", they freak out. Got to fix that.