A Week in the Life

As application season is upon us, and I have some time on my hands, I thought I'd write up a post about what a typical work at week looks like for me. I'll be doing a writeup of my week, as it's a pretty average one and gives a good idea of what I generally do for work. As always, potential applicants should remember that lovable JET mantra - Every Situation is Different! My situation, specifically, is teaching at seven different elementary schools. Here's how it plays out:

Monday

On Monday I went to Persimmon Elementary School (names change to protect the innocent). Persimmon is one of the largest elementary schools in town, with several hundred students. This was my second visit; on average, I visit about twice a month.

Since Persimmon is a larger school, I teach only fifth and sixth year students. English is more commonly taught in this age bracket than to younger students, and beginning next year these students will have a mandatory period of English study - something like 20 hours per semester.

My first period at Persimmon is free, and I spend it in the teacher's room preparing and drinking a really amazing amount of green tea. Second period I teach one of the 5th grade classes. Normally, in my first visit to a class I give a self-introduction and ask the kids to introduce themselves to me in simple English - name, something they like, things like that depending on the level of the class. On my first visit to this school, however, the fifth graders spent the entire time asking questions. Because of this, the class today consists of practicing self-introduction vocabulary and then delivering the self-introductions. It's a large class, so this takes most of the period.

Third period is the second group of fifth years. They ran out of time in their first lesson as well, as we do the same thing as the first group - self introductions. I wad up a piece of paper and pass it to a student, and have them introduce themselves. After they are done, they can toss it to a classmate and then sit down, and in this way it becomes more interesting for them than just going down the rows.

Fourth period is the first group of 6th years. The 6th years are significantly more reserved than the 5th years, and so we had plenty of time to do their introductions last class. Today's lesson, then, is going over the standard Daily Practice that I conduct whenever a class starts. This consists of greetings ("Hello class! Hello Tony!") and a few standard questions - How are you? How's the weather? What day is it? This gets the kids ready for English period, and was inherited from the previous teacher. Since I'm the first ALT at Persimmon, though, this needs to be learned anew. We spend the class going over the question "How are you?" and its various responses, and playing games to reinforce the vocabulary - the hot-potato idea from the fifth years worked well, so I do it again to make the students ask and answer the target vocabulary.

After fourth period is lunch. In Japanese elementary schools, lunch is carted into the classroom and the students serve each other and eat at their desks. I eat the kids' lunch with them, changing classrooms each time. Today is with the fifth years. Another quirk of Japanese school lunch is that it is generally accompanied by music - the Austin Powers theme today, for example.

After lunch is a free period, in which the kids mostly run around screaming. I go outside and play soccer with the students, which is a bit confusing because they manage to have four distinct games going on a single field. This results in quite a few eight year olds getting whacked in the back of the head, but they don't seem phased. The students expect me to be a natural star at any sport, and luckily I have a good ten inches at least on them so I don't usually let them down too badly.

Fifth period is the other group of sixth years, covering the same material as the first group. I have one more free period after this, and then the kids go home. I meet with the teachers and we plan our next lesson, and I go home.

Tuesday

Every Tuesday I go to Starfruit Elementary, one of my two set schools. It is a small-ish school, the smallest of the "big" schools I visit - it has all six grades, but some classes as small as four students. At Starfruit, I teach every grade - which classes I will do in a given day depends on the day. This week, I'm teaching the First, Second, and Third-year students.

My first three periods are free. I write, prepare materials, and drink a lot of green tea. Fourth period I start in on the first-years. This is the only school where I work with kids this young, which is a bit intimidating, but the key to the really young kids is just to have a lot of energy. This is my second time working with them. Our lesson for the day is introducing vegetable vocabulary. I first go through the flashcards, covering them with my hand and then slowly revealing the picture so the kids can guess what the item is - these are farm kids so they actually are familiar with things like cucumbers and kale. As we uncover each card we repeat it several times and then stick it up on the board. Once the cards are all revealed and drilled, we put them on the floor and the kids play karuta. Karuta consists of kids sitting in a circle with cards in the middle. The teacher says a word, and the first kid to slap the right card gets to keep it. This is a great standby game that can be applied to anything, and the kids are always excited to play it. We do this a few times and then the cards go back up on the board. Now I have the kids close their eyes, and then take away a card - the kids have to say which card is missing. This is a good activity because it gets the kids to actively say the words without prompting or repetition. They freak out when the game goes on and eventually more than half the cards are taken away. For the last time I hide the cards around the room and the kids run around trying to find them (hiding things from people that are two feet tall is really easy). The class is over and I have lunch - today is with the 4th years.

Fifth period I have the second years. The same rules apply as with the first years, for the most part - lots of energy. I meet with them more frequently than with the first years, so we continue an animal lesson from last week by introducing some new animals that live on a farm (again, most of these kids live on or near farms, so its pretty applicable to them). We play karuta with the cards, and then go over the sounds animals make - some of them are quite different from in Japanese (Pigs in Japan say buuu, buuu). Then we introduce the song Old MacDonald - a song the kids know in Japanese. We sing the first verse in English and the class is over. We'll continue next week with adding animals.

The last period of the day is third years. We've been doing family vocabulary, and last week the kids drew pictures of their families. We finish the pictures today and introduce them to the class - "This is my father, Hiroshi. This is my brother, Kenta," etc.. At the end we have some time left, so we talk about various animals we have at home - kids are always surprised to hear I have five dogs back in America. After class I plan out the next week's lesson with the relevant teachers, and head home.

Wednesday

Wednesday I head to Cantaloupe Elementary. Cantaloupe is my other regular school, and I go there every Wednesday. It's a larger school, like Persimmon, and like Persimmon I only teach fifth and sixth years here. First and second periods I have fifth years, and we finish up a month-long unit on actions - learning words like Run and Climb and grammar like I Like To and Do You Like To? The culmination of this lesson is a game in which kids get a sheet full of actions and have to walk around and ask each other if they like doing those actions - the goal is to find a yes for every action. Since Cantaloupe is a larger school, games that involve students interacting with each other work better than ones that are between teacher and student, as those activities tend to leave the rest of the class idle for a long time (you do not want to deal with bored ten year olds). This activity, and the preparation for it, takes the whole class period.

Third period is the first of the sixth grade classes. At Cantaloupe, the sixth year teachers give more guidance in class content, as compared with some other teachers at other schools. Today we continue a lesson from last week in which the students cut out cards for the alphabet and played karuta with them. The twist this week is that instead of just using letters, we use whole words, so the kids have to really practice listening to pronounciation. This lasts the whole period. Fourth period is free, and fifth is the other sixth year class.

Thursday

Today I drove out to Watercress Elementary. This is one of my smallest schools, lying in a small community about ten minutes out of Monbetsu proper. With only six students, lessons at Watercress have to take a different form, but I really enjoy going there. Its also one of the schools that I don't go to for an entire day - instead of showing up at 8:00, I go to the Board of Education until 10:00 and then drive out.

Watercress' students are divided into two classes - a class of three third years and one second year, and a class of three fifth years. The school was once larger, and included middle school students, but the population shrinkage in rural Japan has hit this community and it is now at its smallest size ever. Outside the school are the remains of the Watercress train station, which saw it's last train in 1985. Despite all this however, the school is well-funded and housed in a building just five years old. The students are also much closer than in the larger schools, seeming more like a family than like schoolmates. I visit Watercress around twice a month.

The teachers at Watercress plan the lessons beforehand, so I just have to follow my script. With the second and third years, we practice some set English phrases - look! Wake up! Good morning! I'm hungry! They show great enthusiasm for this. The fifth years are working on shopping activities, and today they take turns running a "shop" in the classroom and serving the other students. They learn vocabulary for various foods, and things like "One ____, please" and counting vocabulary for money. Last time I visited, we spent the fifth period after lunch picking beans from the school garden. They were delicious. Today I play "badminton" with the kids, in a variation that involves four players and no net. They are delighted with my attempts to use the racket like a sword (which does not work very well).

Friday

Tomorrow I am not scheduled to go to a school. The schools all hammer out their schedules at the beginning of the academic year, in April, and there are days when I don't have one to go to. On these days, I work at the Board of Education office, and generally make supplies and materials for future classes.

This has been really long, but hopefully informative for anyone interested in what an average day on JET is like. Again, this is just my experience - some people spend all their time at one school, some visit all levels of school, and some take different roles in the classroom.