Leaving the JET Program, Part 1: I Love My Day Job, But I’m Leaving

At the end of July I’m finishing my Day Job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program, and the transition has given me a lot to think about.  This is the first in a multi-part series about working on JET, what it’s brought me, how I feel about it, and where I’m headed in the future.

Also, the cover photo shows an actual boys elementary school from my town of Namerikawa, Toyama, from the early- to mid-20th century.

I really like teaching English in Japan.  A lot.

I work as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) in Toyama, Japan as part of the JET Program, a Japanese government program that recruits teachers from overseas to teach in elementary, junior high, and high schools.  I live in a small town, and work at 3-5 elementary schools per semester, often a different school every day.

ALTs on the JET Program work alongside Japanese teachers in the classroom, rather than teaching alone.  While this can often lead to dull, repetitive work that JET researcher David McConnell and others call Human Tape-Recorder syndrome, I take a more active role in lesson planning, presenting activities, and doing actual teaching.

When I teach, I feel like my classes are my own.  When they go well, I feel the pride of accomplishment, and when they go badly, I take steps to fix them so they go better the next time.

Elementary school English (the way I teach it, at least!) is full of games and activities, rather than lecturing.  A little bit of explanation (30 seconds or less, usually handled by the Japanese teacher) goes a LONG way for the simple sentences we teach to kids, so the rest of the class is all games.

In any classroom, I feel most comfortable when the mood is lighthearted, and I find students of any age feel most comfortable in fun situations too.  The students have their favorite games that we play often, though I try to mix things up with new games to keep them on their toes and learning.  I also make ridiculous jokes in class—earlier today, when I held up the “beautiful” vocabulary card and a student mistakenly said “delicious,” I then pretended to eat the card, which made everyone laugh.

I did acting in high school and a little bit in college, so I like bringing these skills into the classroom too.  I do gesture quizzes where students have to guess the word or phrase I’m gesturing, and make these actions as exaggerated as possible.  I’ll pretend to be the video game-playing kid who freaks out when his mom makes him clean his room, the bored student who rushes out the door when it’s time to go home, and the sleepy father who wants to go back to bed when it’s time to walk the dog.

I like planning lessons because for me, it’s like a puzzle: how can I present the material in the simplest possible way little by little so students can master it by the end of the unit?  I also feel incredibly engaged in the classroom as I juggle different elements to create the best possible class.  In almost every class I’m in the zone­­—a psychological state known as Flow.

In short, when I teach, I feel good.

In between classes I get to play with kids, say hello to everyone, and give little kids high fives in the hallways.  The vast majority of them have never seen a foreigner before, and I like knowing that I’m making a good impression.  I also like bringing some cheer to their daily lives, because Japanese elementary schools can be pretty serious, and goofy jokes help lighten the mood.

I also make waaaaaaay more than I need to pay my bills: for the past two years I’ve saved at least a thousand dollars every month, and usually more, in part because my job subsidizes my rent.  I have twenty paid days off a year, plus sick days, and come in an hour late on Thursdays because I take a bus.

I have a job I really like with a setup that works for me.  But I decided to leave.

Why Are You Leaving?

JET Programme contracts are year-by-year, and they finish in July or early August.  Every year, in January, JETs decide whether to renew their contract for another year, or to finish in in the summer.  It’s not a job that you’re supposed to quit suddenly.

I’ve been in Japan since August 2018—almost three years.  While I had a chance to visit the States in 2019, I couldn’t visit in 2020 because of COVID, despite my best attempts to make the trip work.  I miss my family, and my friends, and it hurt that I couldn’t be there for Christmases, my youngest brother’s wedding, and daily life moments that I miss a lot (though many of those were cancelled due to COVID anyway…).

Another big reason is because, as I now feel comfortable sharing, I’ve had a lot of trouble with one of my Japanese co-teachers these past two years.  I like my coworkers a lot, and they’re all great people—except for one of them, who I unfortunately work with a majority of the time.  Dealing with her was a BIG cause of stress, and led to me to talk to my (incredibly professional and understanding) manager about the problem when I felt like I was three steps away from a nervous breakdown.

Reasons I don’t like working with this co-teacher: she pretends to be more knowledgeable than she really is, she tells lies to escape blame and hide her mistakes, she pays special attention to lessons where she’ll be observed but neglects her regular lessons, she doesn’t read the textbook carefully, she’s messy and loses lesson materials, she’s embarrassed me in front of the class many times, she’s declined to help me in class when I’m clearly in need, she’s brought poorly planned ideas into the classroom and then put pressure on me to suddenly make them work, she’s kept me in long planning meetings that clearly could have been shorter, she’s fake nice to me and everyone else, she sucks up to authority figures, she bosses around other coworkers, she uses my ideas and tries to take credit for them, she’s attempted to gaslight me many times, and she goes out of her way to hide these things from everyone around her. (*whew*)

Dealing with this coworker has showed me a lot of things about myself and what kind of people I want to be around.  I’d much rather organize my life so I don’t have to deal with these kinds of people.

But That’s Not the Real Reason…

A bigger reason, though, is that there’s almost no room for advancement on the JET Programme—you can be an ALT for five years, and that’s about it.  If a city or school REALLY liked you they might find a way to hire and pay you after your final JET contract finished, but these stories are few and far between.

But even if there was room for advancement on JET, I don’t think I’d want to stay.  And that’s what I’ll be writing about next week….