Job Discussion Forums

[jesszilla]

I'm about to end my first year in Japan as an ALT, and I can only describe my experience as a limping failure. I have decided to stick it out for another year in the hope that my next set of schools will be a different experience.
To sum up, despite my best efforts at suggesting activity after activity, complete with lesson plans, worksheets, and illustrations, I think I taught a total of 10 communicative activities in the three junior high school grades all year. None of these were particularly successful, since the students get a steady diet of grammar worksheets, drill and kill, and lengthy Japanese explanations. They were unprepared for even basic English classroom commands, and froze up completely when asked to speak even one-word answers. The classroom is 90% JTE talk time, of which 90% is Japanese and 10% is textbook repetition of English. I offered time after time to check homework, or their infernal page-a-day vocabulary copying notebooks, to try and familiarize myself with their work, but my teachers refused. I have spent this entire year racking my brains, trying to figure out how to make the best of this situation, and not succeeding.
Since they have no practice speaking and listening in the "safe" environment of the classroom, they fear conversation like the plague. I did my best to build rapport with the kids outside the classroom - I ate lunch with them everyday, and brought an UNO deck and a deck of playing cards. The cards were a limited success; a few times a week, the kids would play with me, but they mostly refused even to say the colors and numbers for UNO in English. I also made an attempt to learn their names, despite the fact that the teachers did not ask them to write their names in English on their books, their homework, or their worksheets. I used the hiragana class lists instead. I also did soji with them. I'm not an athletic person, and my school doesn't have any non-athletic clubs, so I didn't have much of an avenue there.
At the beginning of second term, when I figured out that the classroom situation wasn't going to change much, I started an English newsletter. Each newsletter had a theme, usually a holiday or special event, which was presented in extremely simplified English in a cloze paragraph on the front page, with clip art illustrations of key words. The remainder of the newsletter consisted of word searches, anagrams, crosswords, etc., using the same key words. A few of the kids liked it, but most of them ended up in the garbage.
A few kids - the kids who are going to English juku, and the kids I worked with for the yearly speech contest - have responded to me a little bit, but the vast majority refuse to even answer me when I say "Hello" and "How are you?" Any other suggestions on how to reach the kids when there's no opportunity to teach listening and speaking skills or develop any relationship at all in the classroom?
Also, my JTEs have decided, in their infinite benevolence, to grant me one 15-minute activity for the final lesson of the 3rd year students. I haven't seen them at all in about six weeks, and my relationship with them is effectively zero. Any suggestions for a final activity?

PS Ironically, the board of education thinks I'm a great ALT, and so does Interac, the company that I work for. The BOE has made it a stipulation that they will only continue their contract with Interac if my partner and I sign on for this school district for another year. I can't decide whether to cry or laugh.

[guest of Japan]

Hi Jesszilla, your post actually breaks my heart a bit, because you seem so desperate to be a good teacher, but you're not getting much a chance at all. Like you I live in Chiba. I'm technically called an ALT, but I work in a private high school, so I have a lot more control over my teaching.

I wish I could tell you that your next schools will be better, but it will depend on the teachers.

From what I read into your current situation, the teachers that you work with think that you are a diversion. By having you teach the last class means that you are a time killer much like the proverbial video lesson from your own school days. OK, so maybe it's not proverbial, but give it time. Your job is being a gaijin.

So, your job is being a gaijin, but you want to be a teacher. Here are some things that you can do. 1. Never sit down in the lesson. 2. When students are working on assignments walk around checking and helping them. 3. Tell your co-teachers what you can do to make the classes better, don't ask them - and of course be very nice about it. 4. In the classroom do not try to be a friend - be a teacher.

As far as this outside the lesson stuff goes, I think it is largely crap. Yes, talk to your students in the hallways, use English when you can, occasionally join in their clubs. When you join in anything regularly, it looks like you are supposed to be there and kids think of you as interference in their usual life.

Your schools are using you as a gaijin pet. You've allowed them to do so thus far, so they think the world of you. Unfortunately, this is not satisfying you. Personally, I think you should quit and go back to your home country and pursue a real teaching career because it sounds like you have the heart. Otherwise, push your boundaries as far as you can. If you are only continuing to work at this job in the hope of achieving something then you might as well go all out job be darned.

[jesszilla]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.
As far as your suggestions, guest of japan, I haven't stopped doing any of those things all year. I'm always working with the kids, trying to get them to look at their worksheets and figure out what their mistake is. But the teachers actually get annoyed when I do that...they would rather that the students just do the marubatsu thing. Since the teachers are both good language learners, like I am, I don't think they realize that many students need to be taught skills, not information. They think that if they give the kid the right answer, then the process for arriving at the right answer will immediately become apparent, which usually doesn't happen.
As for telling my co-teachers what makes the lessons better instead of suggesting, I think this may be one of the reasons that they DON'T give me class time. They're both relatively new teachers and they're both younger than I by a few years. They take a lot of flak from the kids about not speaking perfect English, and they haven't figured out how to deflect that and turn it into a positive thing. (i.e. Mistakes are good, because you LEARN from them.) They also haven't figured out how to share the classroom. I started with suggestions, and then I switched to telling them, but ultimately in the view of the other teachers, the kocho sensei, etc., the JTEs are the ones who "run" the classroom. So it doesn't matter what I say. So the JTEs, in a move that they perceive as preservation of face in front of the students, have effectively ignored most of my ideas.
My boyfriend suggested just stepping out in the middle of the lesson and ad-libbing...just diverting from the JTE's procedure completely and taking over the classroom. I don't really think that this is in the spirit of team teaching, either, and it certainly isn't culturally appropriate, since the JTEs, despite being younger than me, are still my senpai in the work environment.
As for being a teacher instead of a friend, well, the students certainly don't consider me a friend, but they don't consider me a teacher, either, since I never get to teach anything. They don't know what to think of me. I'm not even their pet gaijin, I'm just the English tape recorder. Half the time they don't even remember what country I'm from.
Of course, I don't expect them to use English all the time. But they NEVER use it! They don't get the opportunity in class to use it...scrambled grammar sentence worksheets don't count as using the language. They don't write or say anything that would even remotely count as self-expression, not even "I like Orange Range"! It's shameful, in my opinion, when a third year student who is a good grammar student can't answer the question "Do you like German food?".
The worst part is that I genuinely like both of my JTEs as individuals. We get along great when we're not talking about work. And they are both striving their utmost to be good teachers. They work hard, but they are completely disorganized, and they don't have any concept of how to plan, how to work efficiently. So they're continually swamped by work and exhausted, and when I tell them that they need to change the way they're teaching, they can't help but respond negatively. It doesn't matter how tactful I am, they don't have the resources to process what I'm saying to them. So my only recourse is to try and reach the kids by some other means.
I will be teaching at a different school in the same BOE in April, so maybe a few things will change. I guess if I want to find any positive in this experience, it's that I've learned how NOT to teach. I think enjoyment is a bit beyond me at this point...I spend half of my work day sitting at my desk, and the other half going through the motions of activities that don't teach English skills.
I've been working on my Japanese in my free time, but that's another source of frustration. The only teachers I can find near me are untrained community volunteers, and I'm moving at a snail's pace. Since Japanese is my fifth language and I know how to study well on my own, I had hoped to make rapid progress, but it isn't happening. My kanji and vocab are great, but self-study in grammar doesn't work so well for me. Sigh.
Well, to look on the bright side, there's a possibility that the BOE might not renew the contract for second term next year, so Interac might send me to a more urban area. Then, at least, I'd be able to pursue some interests outside of work, which I can't really do now.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and thanks for the feedback. I've been holding it in all year, and I think I just needed to purge

[Glenski]

I agree. Your JTE's don't want a foreign teacher in their school, and they have brainwashed themselves and kids into thinking it is a bad thing.

Interac needs to hear extensive details about this place and give you another school. Their bright, cheery attitude on the promo video needs a dose of reality.

[guest of Japan]

Jesszilla, just to clarify one thing;

I said to tell the teachers what you can do to make the lessons better, not what they can do. The only thing you should ask of them is time and support for your efforts in the classroom. Telling a teacher how to change his or her teaching is not recommended by me.

[jesszilla]

Absolutely understood, guest of japan. When I first said "telling them" above, I meant communicating how I can contribute, not how they need to change.

Telling = "I can do this activity. It will take x amt of time, it will practice y target language, and it can be assessed in z way. By the way, it was suggested by the ALT supervisor at the BOE."

Suggesting = "What do you think about this activity? Let me know if you think it's good. If you think we'll have time, maybe we could do this?"

I guess I did say, too, "telling them that they need to change the way they teach". But from the viewpoint of my teachers, asking for time for myself to do any activity other than grammar worksheets and textbook drilling IS telling them how to teach. They think that they'd have to be eliminating something essential in order to make time for my suggestions, which they view as recreational.
Anyway, the question isn't how to change my relationship with my teachers. I won't have many more lessons with them anyway, and I can always hope that I'll be in a better position come April.
As for Interac, Glenski, I knew what I was getting into when I signed with them. Their promo videos are frankly not very convincing anyway. Team-teaching breakdowns between ALTs and JTEs don't happen just with Interac, either. There are plenty of JET ALTs I've talked to who have the same types of experiences. I already know I'll be in another school in April, so I just have to wait it out.
Thanks again for your thoughts.

[Willy_In_Japan]

Jesszilla,

I work as an ALT also. I can understand what a difficult situation you have.

What I suggest is negotiating with the JTE's that you will do the 'warm up' and do some fun warm up activity. Once you have the first 10 mins of the class, it is easier to insert yourself into the classroom routine.

When I first joined my school, I understood that the previous ALT had very high evalutations and I was worried that I wouldn't measure up. So, the first thing I asked was 'what did the previous ALT do in the classroom?'. 'The warm-up' was the reply I got. I asked ' So, was the warm-up related to the lesson?' and when I found out it wasn't, I decided right off to make it related, rather than just some silly game that uses English.

Eventually, it got to the point where I was teaching half the class in a team teaching manner.

A typical routine in the class is that after the greeting, I ask students "What is the day?", "How do you spell (day)?", "What is the date?", "How is the weather?" and have the students repeat the answers.

Then, we usually sing a song in English, so I ask them to take out their song sheets and we sing. Currently, we are doing "Dancing Queen" by Abba. Then, I usually come up with a warm up activity. It has got to the point where the JTE's are suggesting warm-up activities to me. One JTE decided that on one day, we would do a speaking activity, the other, a listening and writing activity, and the third class in the week, a game. (Hang man, word search, something fun).

Then, we usually present the grammar point by having a conversation that I have created. The JTE asks the students in Japanese if they understood the language, and then it is explained in Japanese. The conversation has English that is similar to the text target language. We then repeat pronunciation of new words, The text book conversation is explained in Japanese, and then practiced verbally. An activity that usually I have created or contributed is then given out. Usually the activity is communicative.

The students do an English diary that I also correct.

I agree with the comment about walking around the classroom and helping the students.

I feel very lucky because my JTE's are very keen to use classroom English. ie 'Please form your lunch groups', 'Please form your rows', 'Please pass these back' etc. and team teach.

When students look dumbfounded, or ignore you when you say "hello" or ask them a question, say it in Japanese and look at them direct. If they answer in Japanese, tell them 'In English please', and help them answer.

I asked the same question, "Do you like German food?" and got a look of panic too.....I just said 'German" "Doitsu", "Food" "tabemono"....."Do you like?" "Sukee desuka?" then I said 'Do you like German food?' 'Yes, I do', No, I don't' and then waited for their answer. After a while, they will skip the mini lesson and just answer the questions I ask.

The last ALT basically had 10 mins and did a fun warm up, but I wanted to do more, and eventually did, by pushing myself slowly into the classroom routine. Get the warm-up time and then start chipping away at any opportunities to get involved in the lesson. Suggest doing a song too!

As far as your last activity with the san nensei students. Why don't you have them doing skits in English saying goodbye to all of their friends at Junior High? Put a lot of useful expressions on the board, and do a model conversation, put them in groups of 3 and have them create a conversation and then present their skits to the class.

Good luck at your new school!

[Sweetsee]

Hi Jesszilla,

I know exactly how you must feel, just remember why you are there.
You are the gaijin mandated by the BOE, you are not there to teach English because that is not a priority, if it were than the JTEs would be able to.

And I know it is extrememly difficult to spend your day's work doing nothing but that is what you have to do. If you are not able to go to work everyday and be happy with the situation the way it is than you should take Guest's advice and bail.

Also, Glenski gave me some good advice in the past: they like the way things are going and there is nothing you will ever be able to do to change it. I know you want to make a difference and you sound like a very good teacher but that's just the way it is. Be happy with yourself and this positivity will affect those around you.


Good luck,
s

[scrying]

hi jess and all other chiba-ken folks...

mind if i ask which BoEs you guys are with? Interac used to have the contract here in Kisarazu but they switched over to my company when they underbid em (though the 7 of us who alt here now are wondering what would happen if we underbid our own company ourselves...hmmm)...

I signed on as an ALT after doing time in an eikawa and fleeing to europe for a bit to get more quals (TEFL)...definitely have preferred the ALT thing, but i think part of it was just massive luck in the schools i was placed with...i've read so many stories about similar situations to jess' that i am worried about moving away from the area next term (want to move to Nagoya, personal reasons). My first set of teachers were definitely a bit of a mixed bag, two 1st years and two vets, with only one person i would say was really interested in diversifying the system, but all seemed really receptive to suggestions, and while some changes were glacial in implementing, and others never came about at all, the overall feeling i had was pretty good...switching to another school for winter term has also been good..the two teachers here have been nice about letting me change aspects of class, we even went so far as to design a speaking test for the 3rd years to give em some practice...
as for outside the class room, i tend to agree that the kids desire to interact with you will be kind of limited. i play b-ball or table tennis sometimes with them, and love listening to those who practice piano, but overall i kind of understand their desire to hang with their friends more than me during their free time.
i'd say the best you can do is keep pushing the envelope as mentioned, do the lil things here and there (the newsletter is cute, and yeah, a 10% take home is a damn good start), and keep positive....i eventually want to teach ESL back in the states myself, and have found the training in patience here surprisingly valuable...)

be well,
will

[jesszilla]

Thanks for the advice, everyone.
Thanks for the good suggestions, Willy in Japan. They SHOULD have helped - I've already tried all of those things. I usually do the greeting, weather, date, etc., but I have less than 2 minutes to do it, and if I make any changes, like asking the kids how to spell "Thursday", the teachers clamp down on it.
The teachers asked me to suggest songs, so I brought in a CD that I compiled and gave them copies of the lyrics. Nothing too difficult, mind you. They are all songs that I know are being taught in other schools in our board of education. The CD and lyric sheets I brought in have quietly disappeared. We are doing the songs from the textbook (One World), and drilling them word by word, to remove any iota of enjoyment they might have once had.
When I tried to start a conversation card activity as a warm-up, they said that it took too much time, so we couldn't do it anymore. I was doing easy questions with the 3rd year students, like "What time is it?" and "How many days are there in a week?". I can't even count how many other warm-up / ice breaker activities I've suggested. The answer is always that there isn't enough time.
I asked about an English diary/journal. I suggested simple guided writing tasks, like doing a 3-sentence paragraph about likes and dislikes when we were covering "I like", "I play", "I have" in first year. This would have the bonus of being learner-centered, and I could get to know them a little bit better. They said it would be too difficult for the students, and that the kids are already doing a page-a-day notebook where they write their vocabulary words twenty times. When I asked if I could check the page a day notebooks to save them some work, they told me that it would be too difficult to explain what they wanted me to do. (?!?) Meanwhile, I've seen how they check them - they don't even look at the words to make sure they're spelled properly. They just blindly stamp "Good job!" on the bottom corner of each full page, whether it's practicing correct spelling 20 times or practicing mistakes 20 times.
We tried doing roleplays to introduce the new grammar for a while, but, again, they decided that there wasn't enough class time. What this really meant was that the JTEs don't have time to review the roleplays I wrote before class, so it's easier to just do the damn worksheet instead.
As for the "Do you like German food?" question, I was POINTING at the German food in question at the time - we were having it for lunch. They understood the question without any problem. When I asked, "Yes?" (maru hand gesture) "No?" (batsu hand gesture) they turned their heads away and ignored me rather than answer. I've been coaching them through questions like this all year, but they have no incentive to respond. I know it isn't a comprehension problem, because I can get the elementary school students to interact with me without any problem. Why? Because I'm the one who teaches the elementary lessons on my own, English only, all the time.
The problem is that the JHS students see how little my presence matters to the teachers, and so they assume that they can ignore me, too. We never do any speaking activities in class and they don't ever have to answer the JTE in spoken English, either.
As for the 3rd year skit idea, that's a great idea. I'd love to do it. But I only officially get 15 minutes, and there's no way it could be done in 15 minutes. After 3 years of "Talking About English in Japanese", it would take 3 full class periods to do something like that. They won't even read out loud from the textbook, much less write and speak their OWN sentences, god forbid. And I have to give the JTEs my ideas before we do the lesson, so they have veto power.
I think we're going to do some kind of jeopardy quiz activity for the 15 minutes that I get. I'm just going to write enough questions for a full lesson, and see how far I can get before the JTEs cut me off.
As for Sweetsee's suggestion that I just accept that I'm doing nothing, I might be able to suck it up, but there's pressure coming from other directions. I can hear the other teachers talking about me, and how I'm not doing anything. They blame it on me, because they don't get to see all the activity ideas, worksheets, lesson plan ideas, etc., that I give to my JTEs. They think that the JTEs don't use me because I don't make any attempt to contribute. (I think this was probably the role of the previous ALTs also.) The kyoto sensei, who is an extremely nice guy, is starting to think the same thing. There's also pressure from the ALT supervisor at the Board of Education, who has progressive ideas about communicative, learner-centered lessons. She spends an hour every Monday making frenzied attempts to pass on new activities, songs, etc. Her current push is content-based learning. And the ALTs keep saying, "We KNOW. We keep TELLING our JTEs about these great ideas. But they don't want to hear it." She's made many similar suggestions to the JTEs during the feedback sessions for demonstration/observation lessons, but they fall on deaf ears.
I don't know. At this point, I'm just trying to survive the next five weeks without breaking out into tears on school property. I like the kids, I love the work when I get to do it - elementary school lessons rock my world. I just have to hope that my next school is more open-minded.
I don't think I realized just how bad it is here until I started to set it all down on these posts. I keep saying to myself, "It must be me. I must be doing something wrong." But now, reading over these posts, it seems like it can't be just me, either.
In defense of my JTEs, though, they're both relatively new teachers, and they have a lot of classroom management issues. I think they're afraid they'll lose control of the classroom if they do anything other than grammar worksheets and choral reading. That being said, they're wasting a great deal of school district money...they could do what I'm doing with the textbook CDs and CD players that they have in every classroom for free.
Okay, enough. Thanks for listening, folks, and thanks for the many good suggestions. If I continue to complain about this issue, I'm just feeding on my own negative energy, and I have to stop somewhere. Thanks for your help.

[hivans]

I wonder if it would be worthwhile joining your local JALT, I found a web link for Chiba at http://www.eltcalendar.com/events/details/1511/. You might get some ideas from meetings, or meet other people in the same situation. Perhaps if you could get one of your Japanese collegues to come as well, you could get some ideas to work on together.

Can I ask how are you studying Japanese? I had similar problems with self-study in that I learned a lot about reading but found I was rather timid about conversations. I found a textbook called Genki very useful. I bought their CDs as well, and learned all　the dialogues by heart - and gradually found I was able to adapt them in conversational circumstances and slowly gained confidence at speaking as a result. Apparantly this learning by heart of conversations was pioneered by the CIA as a way of training their spies - but maybe it could work for ALTs too! Bit of a digression, but maybe if you could improve your Japanese speaking ability then you it would be easier to build a relationship with your students. Perhaps some of them are reluctant to communicate with you if they are worried about their own English abilty, and you have not have not shown that you can be approached in Japanese. Well, good luck, anyway, I hope you have a great second year.

[Willy_In_Japan]

Jess,.....

It sounds like you have a bunch of real winners at that school. Teachers and students included.

Obviously, they don't respect you enough to make time for your activities, and the kids are rude and dispresctful.

I think you just got a bad school, and I wouldnt take any of it personal. Get a different school, and I am sure you will be happier.

It sounds like you are doing everything reasonable. I probably would have lost my patience with them and told them off in English or broken Japanese.

[Willy_In_Japan]

One other thing. I think your concern over your job security is a valid one. You are being stonewalled on the JTE side, and then you come off looking lazy. I would definitely call Interac and inform them that all your contributions are being nixed, and tell them about the situation. They would like to know about problem schools I am sure.

One suggestion I would make is to do Like I did, and get some binders for each year. When you are doing some grammar, make a worksheet or activity for that grammar point. Even if it is just an idea for a class, write it down, and print it out, then make a note of the page and year.

I have three books of activities, and when we are on a particular page of any of the 3 years, I can turn to my 3 books and instantly have an activity, or warm up word search or crossword to photo copy that coresponds to the text book. (In my case New Horizon)

Spend your time making these books for next year.........and while you are at it, make a copy for the JTE. You will look productive,.......prove that you have scads of activities that the JTE refuses to use, and also, be preparting yourself for a decent school next year.

[cornishmuppet]

There are some really interesting points on this thread.

I`ve just started as an ALT in Nagano prefecture and so far have no complaints. The other teachers are lovely and most of the time the students are extremely polite and nice to me. I`ve done a few of those listen and repeat classes or where I just stand in the corner, but I always make an attempt to check the students, make funny faces at them, bring a smile, and it seems to be working.

For my two cents worth, Jess, first I`d tell you to go to your BoE and try to get hired independently. I`m not sure how successful you would be but it seems like you`re doing a good job and at least you`d earn a wad more money without handing half of it over to Interac.

Secondly, I agree completely with Aclarke about not forcing English on the students. When I go to lunch I have some who completely ignore me, others who only speak in Japanese, and others who sit there with their books trying to work out questions. A lot of the time I end up saying totally random things to them in order to cause amusement. Friday`s topic was `are there many skunks on Mt Fuji?` which although they didn`t have a clue what I was talking about I had a group around me laughing and others asking their homeroom teacher just what a skunk was. It only came about because they shout random words at me and one of them I thought sounded like `skunk`. Its all a bit silly but its funny, and that`s what kids want, not an extra lesson during lunch hour.

In the classroom the teachers have to cover a syllabus, and while I don`t particularly like the fact that often no one says a word of English, at the end of the day they don`t have a speaking exam, and if someone tried to teach me Swedish or something while I was at school, without there being any form of exam, I would have been a bit laboured by it unless I actually cared about it. At school for me, playing sports was fun, learning French and German was not, and I can imagine that for the majority of kids its the same here regarding English.

It does sound like your JTEs suck, and I would hope for a better school. I think this is probably luck of the draw, and I hope yours is better next time. It does sound, also, that you are doing an excellent job, so just keep doing it and sooner or later I think it will get better. And look at it this way, you could be working in an eikawa. I`ve just escaped one and honestly feel like I`ve just got out of prison. Even when I`m standing there reading out of the textbook in a forced American accent (I`m British) just because the teacher wants it to sound like it does in the book, I just think that at least I`m not getting watched all day long and scrutinised over the possibility of a student quitting.

Keep your head up, hey.

[Sweetsee]

Nice post Muppet.

Hope things are going better for you Jesszilla, must be nearly over now.
Use the experience to help you more enjoy the next position.


Enjoy yourself,
s