A Day in the Life of a JET

1/28/10

I very recently realized that I am yet to write a blog post detailing a typical day in my life as an Assistant Language Teacher on the JET program.

7:30- Not being much of a morning person, I generally get up at about this time to make it to my nearby middle school by 8:05.

8:05- The students must arrive by 8:00, and have a short home room in the morning. Around 8:10 on most mornings all of the teachers assemble in the teacher’s room for a short meeting - the head teacher for the day will make any announcements, along with whichever other teachers would like to make one to everyone. The heads of school will generally speak next, followed by smaller group announcements among the teachers for each grade.

8:40- First period begins. Classes in Japanese Junior High Schools are generally 45 or 50 minutes long (depending on if it is a special schedule or not). The first four periods last from 8:40-9:30, 9:40-10:30, 10:40-11:30, and 11:40-12:30. There are also 1-2 periods of classes after lunch. I teach 4 classes a day- as I’ve previously described, I will generally teach based on a lesson plan agreed upon by myself and that grade’s English teacher, with whom I team teach. “Team Teaching,” has a very broad interpretation across different schools in Japan. Some JETs feel that they are under-utilized and serve simply as human CD players- reading passages out of the book for the students to follow along and repeat or dictating sentences for the students to write down. Thankfully, my teachers see this a bit differently- though I spend upwards of 10-15 minutes per class doing this sort of thing (and it is very important), the rest of the time usually involves me explaining and then running an activity or two that I have come up with based on their current place in the curriculum. These activities can be anything from word games to bingo, working through any kind of worksheet I’ve come up with, or the ever popular “Tsunami” game. Some example questions from today’s game with the 3rd (9th in the US) graders: How do you say “I like walking in the park” in Japanese? To I something want eat (unscramble the sentence). Name two former Prime Ministers of Japan. How do you say “韓国” (kankoku) in English (it’s Korea). Name two professional sumo wrestlers. What are you going to do after entrance examinations next week?

12:30-1:30- Lunch Time- Students eat lunch in their classrooms, and most teachers eat in the teacher’s room. Trays, silverware/chopsticks, and plates are brought in along with containers of hot food from the food preparation building (couldn’t think of a better name for it in English- kitchen didn’t really seem to fit) by students wearing face masks and hair nets- the food is doled out on the trays and handed around. The food isn’t bad, but that’s coming from an adult- . I haven’t heard the students complain too terribly much about it outside of the classroom. The meal usually involves rice or noodles, soup, and some kind of meat (it seems to be fish about 85% of the time). Much like most American schools, they get milk with their lunch every day. When they are finished, everything is neatly stacked and taken back to the building next to the school.

1:30-2:20- 5th period- another class period

2:30-3:20- 6th period- they have 6th period 4 days a week- usually used for an extended home room or a make-up class. I do not generally teach during this period.

After 6th period- Cleaning Time! Something that Japanese schools have that I never saw in America is cleaning time. Students go to their assigned places all over the school to sweep and wipe down the floors, clean classrooms, and sweep/rake outside. JETs at my school have usually been on outside cleaning duty, so that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing.

3:40-3:50- One last short home room, then school’s out.

4:00- I get off of work.

After school-
Students will generally have club practice from 4:00-6:00 or 6:30- this can be any of the sports clubs (baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, volleyball, ping pong, or that great Japanese creation- “soft tennis”), or art, band, etc.

Contractually, a JET is basically finished from this point in the day, and one of the main things that some of us struggle with is how to fill our time. Though many of us are content with playing video games and napping in the afternoon, I’ve found that there are quite a few of us who aren’t content with simply laying around. This is something I’ve really figured out since the winter break:

A few days a week I will go to club practice- usually in either tennis or basketball. Apart from the basic running of errands, I’ve begun filling in my time with a variety of (hopefully) constructive activities- studying for the LSAT/GRE at my local coffee shop, taking lessons and learning a new (as yet undisclosed) skill, studying Japanese, studying my lines for the upcoming Tokushima JET musical (the Lion King- Tokushima version), cooking dinner for friends several evenings a week, and gradually becoming better about corresponding with friends with whom for one reason or another I lost touch in the Fall.

Other JETs do things such as taking Japanese lessons in Tokushima city, learning a Japanese marshal art or skill such as Kempo or Tea Ceremony, or various other things in their communities. Though I we do live in rural Japan, my friend Rich, who recently visited, put it best after seeing my area: it’s true that there are rice fields and agriculture, but Japan simply isn’t big enough to have “rural” areas the way that the United States and Australia do, so he called it more of a rural and urban fusion. Part of the reason for this is Japan’s small size & large population- 130 million people in the land mass of the US state of Montana- and part of it is due to the fact that over 73 percent of Japan is mountainous and so habitable areas are relatively few compared to most places.

Every Thursday evening for two hours I will have my Adult English Conversation Class. This class is made up primarily of housewives over 40, with the exception of two girls my age. After having them quiz each other on what they did that week (and then presenting to the class), I will usually present a topic of conversation (things as broad as the differences between Japanese & American cultures, or as narrow as a list of English idioms) and spend the rest of the time speaking about that.

Evenings are usually spent cooking for friends, reading, or having people over for a movie night. I will also frequently watch the latest episode of the Daily Show, or even Jersey Shore if I’m thinking of indulging a guilty pleasure for mindless television.

For the ALT, weekends hold any number of possibilities. Tokushima is only two hours out of Kobe and Osaka, and so I have now spent quite a few weekends there. On 3-4 day weekends, groups of us have also made it to Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Being in a rural/urban area places me very close to a wide variety of outdoor activities, and so it is definitely easy to take advantage of this and spend a weekend at the beach, one hiking in the mountains, or relaxing by a river in between 1,000 ft. peaks. The Tokushima JETs primarily spend the weekends during the first couple months of the year in rehearsal for an annual musical to be put on in March, the justification behind this being that it gets one out of their house and together with other people during the frigid winter.

That about sums it up for a day in the life of a JET in Tokushima prefecture. Please let me know if you have any questions or anything helpful to add, thanks!!