A Day In The Life Of An ALT

7AM This is the time that I normally wake up to get ready to go to school. It takes about 30 minutes to do everything in the morning. Though it gets harder and harder to get out of bed for the morning to start as it gets colder.

7:30 AM Ride my bike to work. If I’m going to Kozuya this entails a short ride down the main highway route 4. There is a big shoulder and sometimes other bikers so its pretty safe. When I teach at Chokai it’s a 30 minute ride through the mountains so I can enjoy the scenery. Also, I will often stop and buy some fruit or vegetables.

8AM Arrive at school. I usually get to school a few minutes before the morning meeting. If this is the first day I’m at the school for the week its when I find out my schedule for the day. There is a short teachers meeting every morning. Before the meeting though we all use our name stamps to sign in. This is the time where I get ready for the day if I haven’t gotten everything done the day before. Things like making worksheets and the like.

There is home room and other things until around 8:45. This is when the first class of the day begins. Most schools have 6 periods in a day each of 50 minutes though all schools have a short schedule of 45 minute classes that they use sometimes. There are frequent changes to the class schedule because of assemblies and what not. When I say frequent I mean it to they change for anything especially elementary.

12:35-13:05 is lunch. I eat the school lunch like all the students and all the other teachers. Its usually pretty good. There is rice or bread, milk, vegetables, soap, and some kind of meat at every meal. It’s usually very filling and is very cheap, only a few dollars a day. After lunch there are 2 more class periods. Then the students clean the school and have another short homeroom. After all that there are club activates. These can go till very late after school some times 21:00 if there is a competition coming up. I hang out for a little of the club activities. Clubs are different at each school of example Kozuya has Volleyball, baseball, tennis and track and field. While Chokai only has table tennis. My normal time to leave school is a little after 16:00. Then its home for dinner.

During the day I can teach between 0 and 6 classes depending on where I am. If I’m at a middle school the normal amount is 2 but I can do up to 4 if the school has a special education class. At elementary I’m much busier since I go only once ever other week they have me teach as many classes as they can so usually 4 or 5. Also, I have more responsibility to plan the lower level lessons. 5th and 6th grade have a text book that they use but its teachers manual is only in Japanese so its very difficult and many ALTs hate it. For 1st-4th grade I can be the lead teacher and plan and execute the lessons virtually on my own. For an example week I will teach 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade. I have to plan the lesson for all but 6th grade. 1st and 2nd are about numbers and time. First grade gets numbers 1-10 and second grade gets what time is it and o’clock. For 4th grade I will be teaching a different lesson. It will be over these vocabulary words: standup, sit down, raise your hand, clap your hands, turn, jump, run, walk, swim, read, sleep, left, and right. I will also do a review over my name is and I like/don’t like. My main job in the elementary is to make English fun and teach vocabulary not grammar. I know that after reading this many of you are saying good since my grammar is bad and we all know I shouldn’t be teaching penmanship or spelling. The big challenges in the day are correcting the students and sometimes teacher’s grammar without hurting feelings. Also, I have to make warm ups and games for the middle school students which can get hard to come up with. Games need to teach a grammar point or review vocabulary, but do at least a little fun. Games that I like doing are Battle Ship, Shiritori (a Japanese game where one person says a word and the next person says a word that starts with the last letter of the previous words), and any game with lots of running in the elementary schools.