So I just had a talk with the Japanese English teacher at my Junior High School. She just turned down every single activity idea I had for the new year because she said she doesn't want the students walking around the class or its too difficult. I am using the same grammar as in the New Crown Lesson.

I then show her many books and websites with popular activities for New Crown and she says NO! She tells me she just wants and interesting lesson using the grammar that everyone can play and doesn't have the students leaving their desks.

I am at a complete loss of what to do now. I need to come up with 3 activities for lesson 1 of new crown 2 and 3. Using "was made in (country)" for new crown 3 and "I played, did you play, and I went to" from new crown 2.

I have complained to my dispatch company and the board of education before and they did nothing.

Please help

It's her class, so there really isn't anything you can do. You could try getting together a study group for outside of class though.

jacf29 Wrote:I am at a complete loss of what to do now. I need to come up with 3 activities for lesson 1 of new crown 2 and 3. Using "was made in (country)" for new crown 3 and "I played, did you play, and I went to" from new crown 2.


Please help

If it's her class, why do YOU *need* to come up with the activities. This should be done by whoever makes the class in the first place, especially if the teacher isn't allowing anything else to be done.

You are the 外国語指導助手. It's not your class.

I know its not my class. I don't really care about that point.

But she is forcing me to come up with the activities. I NEED to come up with the activities..

Oh, it seemed like you were asking for suggestions on how to get what you wanted. You'll probably want to include more information, because the initial post is hard to follow. I have no idea what you're referring to when you say new crown lessons. I have no idea what level you are. An explanation to why you need to come up with the lessons would help as well, because that in itself makes little sense.

jacf29 Wrote:I have complained to my dispatch company and the board of education before and they did nothing.

Good way to get fired

Isn't there already a million ESL websites you can check?

So I don't know what kinds of crazy lessons you are making that scares the JTE but if she isn't accepting your lesson plans then just be polite and say something like "hey, you asked me to make a lesson, I did, and you didn't like it, so you tell me what I need to do." Then if she can't give you any ideas or doesn't explicity tell you what to do you are in the clear and you shouldn't have to worry about it after that. You are the assitant and if the JTE ask you to make a lesson, and you do, and then the JTE doesn't like it. FINE. Just don't do it and get the JTE to tell you what to do.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

jacf29 Wrote:I have complained to my dispatch company and the board of education before and they did nothing.

Good way to get fired

Haha, exactly what I thought.

Going over someone's head in an American workplace can be a big faux pas in many situations, and that's true even moreso in Japan.

Luckily, I think schools in Japan have gotten used to assistant English teachers doing strange things like this.

Edit: Unless things get really out of hand, this situation is pretty much limited to you and the teacher. At most the head of the English department or vice principle, but even that seems weird considering it's not a serious situation at all. The dispatch company and the BOE have nothing to do with it, and don't give a damn, though they may humor you by talking about it for a few minutes. It doesn't look good for you to contact them over something like this.

I understand your frustration. I had a stint at a small international school in Osaka and was told to create my own lesson plans and games. I spent a tremendous amount of time and energy doing so. They were all rejected by the owner of the school just before the new term was to start. Luckily I have my own visa and was able to just quit.

It does sound like the teacher is being pretty bitchy by the way.

I've found in many cases actual teaching competence seems to be in proportion to bitchiness.

Also, there's a million things you can do that don't involve walking around the class, such as listening comprehension activities, group quizzes etc.
If your activities are too difficult, it's understandable they get rejected because your student's will tune out, get confused or lose interest very quickly.

For me it's a bell curve.

Lack of bitchiness = rowdy class, no work gets done.

Too much bitchiness = everyone is scared to death, there is no productivity.

There is a great middle point, a little closer to the 'lack' than 'too much' slightly, that seems to get me working and engaged.

my comment comes from observations of having now worked with maybe 40 different teachers all up. The 4 or 5 teaches who most seem to 'get' how to teach have also all been somewhat bitchy. You need to earn these peoples' respect by demonstrating your competence.
There is a chance that your coworker is just an arse-hole though. That's a completely different story. I haven't actually met even one teacher who fits this description though.

Welcome to JET. There's no standard on how the teachers should use the ALTs, and very few of them (in my experience) actually know how to do it well. They're told at conferences that they need to involve the ALTs but they know the most important thing is to prepare the students for the entrance exams, which isn't really assisted that much by the ALT. So you get into situations like this where they tell you to make activities but then veto everything you make.

One thing you have to eventually realize on JET is that for the most part, you're not going to have much of an impact on their English ability. You can get involved with them in other ways, but in the class, you pretty much just have to follow the teacher's lead, no matter how sucky it may seem to you.

http://www.eslprintables.com has good stuff, it usually needs to be edited to suit students abilities tho.

You want to find out exactly what the teacher wants. sounds like things like wordsearches would go down well. or a boardgame... You're best off doing something simple that you can do well.

Teaching esl is not easy to do well with little training so I imagine there are quite a few not that great ALTs and consequently cautious JTEs. Every JTE I've worked with has been happy to let me take on the work after they trust I can do it properly.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Welcome to JET.

OP is not a JET.

OK then, welcome to being an ALT.