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Originally Posted by MMM
In general ALT positions are filled by fresh, young college grads. In general they last 1 to 3 years, with the rare teacher making it more than 5. ALT jobs are not intended to be life-long careers. So, yes, the needs of the career teacher will almost always outweigh the needs of the temporary one.
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Yet brand new Japanese teachers are nearly incompetent as they get next to no student teaching during college, unlike American teachers. I have a new teacher
under me because he knows, and the school knows, he has no idea what he's doing.
To me, ALTs should not be filled by fresh young college grads, and they should be moved up into the area of career fields. This is my career, not just my job, and it is incredibly frustrating to be met with this:
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Yes, Japanese schools have systems and bureaucracies that will remain in place long after the gaijin teacher leaves. You are invited to teach in Japan to work within that system. If that doesn't work for you, then you won't last long in Japan.
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I was not "invited." I met certain qualifications and was hired. The teachers that think of me not as a real teacher but of some sort of student teacher, teaching assistant, or worse yet, a human tape recorder really, really offend me.
That isn't what I am, and given that I teach my own classes, in Japanese, explaining English grammar in Japanese with the same methodology as JTEs and have every intention to pursue both a Masters and a Japanese teaching license, plus my own credentials in America, ought to be a clue to them.
Luckily, most teachers I meet do not think this way, and the system does work for me. I would just like to make my role bigger, and in Kyoto at least, this is a fairly simple process.