Category Archives for "Teach in Japan Article Hub"

I remember making the decision to quit my job as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) with Interac like it was yesterday.  The anxiety is still quite fresh in my mind.  I remember thinking “How am I gonna explain my reasoning to people?”  More importantly, I started thinking “If you’re not ALT teaching if you’re not […]

Unless I have something extremely pressing to do, I always help the students clean after lunch. As my students and I were cleaning on this one particular day, I was in the hallway sweeping and I overheard some of my 2nd graders randomly calling out colors in English. My ears quickly zeroed in on this […]

One of the things that made my jaw drop as a first-time teacher in a Japanese public school (in a good way) was seeing teachers and students, nearly every single school day, scrubbing, wiping and cleaning their classrooms…their school…together. Yes, there is a staff member who helps to take care of some of the odds […]

I was making my “Wonder Goo” run the other day, it’s this super store with video games, DVDs, books, and all kinds of other cool stuff. As I was walking through the store, being the nerd boy that I am, I stopped because I saw a cool-looking X-Men First Class, DVD display. I watched some […]

No matter how you stir it, slice it or serve it, more often than not, teaching public school is a full-time job. So your school becomes like a second home of sorts. This is true whether you’re teaching in the U.S. or teaching in Japan. Spending lots of time at your school means that you’ll […]

Anybody ever have “Career Day” in elementary school? If not, Career Day was a chance for guest speakers to come to a school to talk about what they do for a living.  This would give kids an idea of the possibilities, of what they could be, what they could do with their lives.  I always […]

Today we’re going to talk about the kancho game. As much as I wish I could say that Naruto, or some other cool anime, was my first exposure this game (Donnie’s bottom lip quivers) it wasn’t. My first kancho exposure was 100% live in an eikaiwa (English conversation school) hallway. Watch this video and listen […]