Reflections on the past school year

Well my first ALT at a High School has finally drawn to a close. The worst part of my experience was the long commute(about 90-100 minutes) and very few other things were bad and since my name is on this blog I do not want to be specific about it :).

But overall I enjoyed my experience at the HS and it was the easiest public school job I have had. The class sizes were broken up into A and B so I had no more than 20 students per class. I taught about 8 lessons a week over 4 days and would teach the same lesson cycle for 2-3 weeks. Over the year I taught 12 classes.

I have always had good experiences in the past with team teaching because I was flexible but this experience it became a different level. I was left to plan the lessons as I saw best but I would mostly base it on the textbook(something that the teachers and I discussed). If the lesson included a lesson theme about giving directions then I would develop games or activities to expand what the textbook had and try to make it interesting, useful, or fun. Doing all 3 at the same time was a challenge but I had plenty of prep time to make materials and research games and I hope I was successful.

I tried a variety of activities so that different personalities could enjoy. Some students like games, and others like conversation, etc. I tried to keep it balanced and the best compliment for my lessons was the school put them on the test. This also helped teaching since the material was on the test and not in the textbook. My class became that much more important.

I would recommend anyone working at an Eikaiwa to get into teaching at a public school right away. The hours and job content are more satisfying. Of course there are drawbacks but I think I will leave that to another post. I hope to work at the same high school from May if all can be worked out. My schedule is quite hectic.