Life's a song

Yesterday my school had a chorus contest. All the classes at school, totaling 11, competed against each other singing various songs. It was a great diversion from the normal mundane day. Listening to students sing for 8 hours passes much faster than reading Yahoo News and Wikipedia for 6 hours.

Contest

Today was not a special day. I only taught one class, two of them were cancelled, and basically surfed the internet reading up on two smart phones, the new Apple iphone 4 or the HTC desire. Next week the iphone 4 will be coming to Japan, and I am in need of a new phone since my current one decided to stop doing all the things that phones do best.

Thinking about this though, I question my job. I am here for another year. I get paid well. I live in a foreign country. My job isn't hard, in my opinion. I am very glad I have signed on for another year, because I still haven't experienced everything I want to yet. Plus my life outside of school is pretty damn amazing!

But back to work. I question, am I a good ALT? Do my co-workers think I am lazy? After all, I just surf the internet, study Japanese, or read a book for a better half of my day and get paid for it. I don't participate in the "cleaning time," or get involved with club activities. Granted I have never been assigned anything to clean, and never really "invited" to go to a club activity. Could I be more pro-active in my school? The more I think about it, the more the answer is YES! I could be!

The thing about being an ALT is. You arrive in a foreign country and then are shown a desk in a staffroom at some school. You are disorientated from JET lag, culture difference and a new language. Nobody really tells you what to do. You just sit there. You REALLY wish you could be doing something, but you just keep sitting there because you really don't know where everyone else is anyway. For one month, there are really no students in the school.

You design your self intro lesson. Then you find yourself just struggling to find out what the plan is for the next class because you don't know when you can talk to your team teaching partner. You really want to be involved. This goes on for about four months. Adrift in an unfamiliar place, not sure where your going or what you should be doing.

Then after four months, the situation doesn't change. But you get use to it. You get use to reading Yahoo News until you have a headache. Staring at a Japanese text book day dreaming about the weekend. Basically, you get used to being lazy and doing nothing.

Then sometime in April or May you start getting more work. Japan seems to make a little more sense, and the teachers try to talk to you about something once and a while. But it has almost been a year and still you haven't joined students in their clubs or tried to force your way into cleaning duties. Why should you? When the clock hits 4PM it is time to go home and do some more pointless crap, like check your email and facebook because your work blocks it.

Somehow this seems like an utter waste to me! What could I be doing at work to make my job more fulfilling and to make my co-workers appreciate me, or ALT's in general? I always tell myself, I am gonna go to the Kendo club today and watch it for an hour or so. But sitting in my desk for 2 hours doing nothing waiting for club time to roll around, makes me just want to escape from school faster than Houdini.

Only 1 more year! Is that really enough? I hear horror stories of foreign English teachers in the private sector, if I ever choose to relocated within Japan. I know JET does give the best benefits as far as 20 paid holidays a year, subsidized national health insurance, and helps cut threw a lot of the Japanese bureaucratic tape.

If I go back to the U.S. will I enjoy it? I know there are things I will REALLY miss about Japan. Can I get a job that pays as well without having to work crazy amounts of hours? Good thing I have about 7 more months until I really have to start thinking about it. Unfortunately, time flies fast.