The JET Program’s motto is “Every Situation is Different”, or ESID for short. Basically, no one is ever going to have the same experience, so it’s hard to generalize the whole experience to someone. Some of my friends are T1s (Teacher 1, aka primary teacher, doing lesson planning, despite having “Assistant” in our working title), and some are relegated to just being a human tape player just in the classroom, so this just goes to show the variety in duties within just a small community. Imagine that on a national level!
No one’s experience as a JET, ALT, or let alone life in Japan is going to be the same, but I’ll tell you about my experience so far after settling in for about 2 months now. Here’s what I’m up to, with some background about me mixed in:
My Japanese level is pretty good, as I can communicate with people on an everyday basis no problem. Thus, talking to people is easy for me without anyone needing to translate for me, and staff and students will talk to me on their own. I’m essentially placed in the Hokkaido countryside (the inaka for those who like Japanese terminology), and I have two elementary schools that I teach at, with a total of 13 different classes of students, 3rd to 6th grade, and an average of about 20-30 students per class. I go to the smaller school Monday and Thursday, and the other school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. In a normal week, I work every weekday, with a consistent 4 classes everyday (Usually there’s 5-6 periods a day, 45 minutes each). Most days I’m chilling/deskwarming 1st-2nd and/or 6th period, and until I go home. I’m contracted to “work”, aka be at school, from 8am-4pm. So, a good chunk of deskwarming time at school. Please don’t get me started on when there’s no school and I need to deskwarm at the Board of Education in Town Hall for 8 hours straight.
In and out of the classroom, I’m somewhere of a middle ground between the two cases I described earlier: I’m nowhere near being the main teacher, as I have a main JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) who does and I don’t have to lesson plan, but I do get to have a say in the lesson contents and even have been able to offer new ideas for lessons as a second opinion, brain, and fresh foreigner. I’m also very thankful for this, because I can use up some of my free school time this way too! Alongside that, I also help prepare lesson materials. As the ALT, of course there is a lot of tape recorder-like word repeating, but I think every ALT at the very least has to do that for the native-like pronunciation. During class, if the students are doing individual or group work, I also go around the classroom offering help as well, translating words and helping with grammar.
My current (averaged between the two schools) schedule is as follows:
6:30am – Wake up. I like having time in the morning to not rush before I have to leave, and I found that this is a nice sweet spot while having some relaxed leeway. Maybe because of this, I’m slowly starting to become a morning person. Ew. Anyway, I take the next 10-20 minutes or so to do my morning routine (brushing my teeth, washing my face, getting dressed, etc). Usually this leaves me plenty of time, enough to check my phone, messages, email, and watch some videos.
7am – Recently I start eating breakfast around 7-7:10am. Now, before I moved to Japan I really was not a breakfast person, or a eat-right-after-you-get-up person, because I’m really just not hungry in the morning right after I get up. I’d say on average I start really getting hungry around 2-3 hours after I wake. Yes, I somewhat understand the science behind eating and breakfast, but that was before I had a rigid schedule. Now, before I go to school, to have some fuel to get me going in the morning, and because I know I will definitely be hungry when 10 rolls around, which is still a while away from lunch. I also eat to avoid being hungry, and when I’m hungry, my stomach starts involuntarily making noises, which can be pretty annoying and embarrassing, so that’s a major part of it. I know some ALTs who don’t eat until lunch, but that’s a personal choice, and everyone’s body is different.
7:20-30am – I leave my apartment. I get a ride (thankfully!) to my further school, and walk 20 minutes along with the kiddos to the other school.
~8am – Arrive at school for a day at work. There’s usually some brief morning meeting or general check-in that happens. There are 4 periods before lunch time. I may or may not work all of them, but first period starts around 8:30am, followed by a 5 minute break, secnod period, a 10 or 20 minute recess, then 3rd and 4th period.
12pm-ish – Lunch time! I’ve been eating school lunch, which costs 260 yen per meal (more on kyushoku in another post). Aside from eating, I chill, chat with other teachers, and check my phone. After lunch are periods 5 and 6. I usually teach one or both. 5th typically ends around 2, and 6th ends around 3. In mornings before class, breaks in between classes, and after class, I’m either preparing or going over lesson plans, or doing miscellaneous personal activities (aka deskwarming).
4pm – I’m pretty good about leaving right at 4, and because I’m usually not doing anything too productive by the time 4 rolls around anyway, I’m out the door, and go home. Or maybe stop by a konbini and get a new snack, or be productive and go get groceries. Not making any stops, it usually takes me 20-30 mintes to walk home from school.
Some ALTs stay afterschool to get involved with clubs, and if that was an option I might be interested, but elementary school clubs aren’t that interactive or frequent, so I didn’t have thart option.
Then I’m chilling at home, doing whatever, eating dinner. Recently, I’ve been trying to turn the lights off around 10:30pm to have time to fall asleep (since I don’t fall asleep that easily) and get enough sleep by the next day’s 6:30, since I actually need sleep to function.
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