How to make ALT desk warming an opportunity

Photo, Amanda

So often on social media, we see complaints about the Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) employment situation. Often, newbie ALTs claim they have a lot of desk time and are underutilized. The acronym ESID - Every Situation is Different - is used to describe the inconsistency of ALT work in general. The workload is inconsistent, too. ALTs assigned to elementary schools may be run ragged while those in junior high have light schedules.

When I was a JET Program ALT, I wasn't assigned much to do beyond team teaching lessons with Japanese English teachers. Frequent events and exams knocked out my lessons. Each week, I rotated to three schools for four days and a day at the board of education office.

There wasn’t a lot on my official schedule, but I was never bored. Like me, a few former ALTs had rich experiences during their year or two stint with the JET Program and dispatch companies. There’s so much to do!

Learn about your city or town

If you are in a board of education office, there are resources close at hand. You will find 文化財部 bunkazaibu, cultural sections, are part of or adjacent to 教育委員会, kyouikuiinkai, or boards of education. When I had time, I browsed the brochures and websites of the cultural section. Occasionally, the staff at the cultural section asked me to do edits on English language texts. It was a great insight into the local culture.

Every place has a story

While browsing cultural section info, I tripped over local folk tales. When I first found these stories, I wasn’t a fluent reader of Japanese, so I relied on some glossing and kanji lookup tools. A tool that I learned about early on was Jim Breen’s dictionary server which has text glossing, great for Japanese language learners. A powerful tool is DeepL, an AI machine translation tool. It’s not foolproof, but it’s good. Show your texts to colleagues, and you might be surprised how little needs edited.

Eventually, I translated folk tales for a local board of education and introduced the texts to students and teachers at junior high schools. The collection became a cross-curricular and cultural resource that some schools adopted for recitation contest texts.

Along the way, I improved my Japanese literacy and developed an affection for the town I live in. Stories became a conversation opener with residents.

Offer what you’ve got

When I showed interest in local events to my supervisor, she sent me on field trips with a camera. We used the photos for promotional material and newsletters for the schools to build interest in local culture. The early photos were not interesting but I got good at taking advantage of light, perspective, and capturing the action.

I’m also a career TESOL teacher, having taught in English language education programs back home. Tell administrators and educators what you bring to the job, and you can find opportunities. Once my schools got to know me, I was invited to coach English teachers and even taught in an English elementary school program, a precursor to 外国語活動 gaikokugo katsudo which has been part of elementary education since 2011.

A non-Japanese colleague was an amateur athlete back home. He simply approached a club leader and soon became an integral part of that club. His Japanese language skills are growing by leaps, and he has a deeper connection with the club members. Everybody wins.

Build connections

A fellow ALT working for a dispatch company, a martial arts student, found his niche coaching kendo at elementary schools. He brought his insight gleaned from years of training in kenjutsu, the art of the sword, to the students’ competition kendo practice. He brought radio experience from university and rallied the school’s English club to produce a weekly school-wide English language broadcast.

When I was in high school and university, I was involved in school newspapers. The English club in the school I teach at was originally an “eikaiwa”, additional communication practice. However, many of the members didn’t thrive. I appealed to the reticent members to produce a newspaper. In our third year of publishing an English language quarterly that chronicles the school’s events, we are now presenting interviews of teachers and topics the students want to write about.

Up your teaching game

You might be in Japan for a year or a lifetime, but either way, you get out what you put in. There are many free resources for dispatch and JET Program ALTs and other English language educators.

Any way you slice it, there's a lot to do!