A Day in the Life

Ben Shearon

Chief ALT Advisor, Miyagi Board of Education

April 2005

Q. First of all, can you give us a brief description of your main area of employment and how you got into this field?
At present most of my energies go into my position as Chief ALT Advisor at the Miyagi Board of Education. This rather grand sounding title represents a job that could better be described as “educational advisor”, and encompasses a wide variety of duties and responsibilities. I mainly organise training for English teachers, both native speakers of English and Japanese, and assist with the management of the JET programme in Miyagi.

I originally came to Japan on the JET programme, and was assigned to Sendai, a city I had never heard of in northern Japan. After three years as an ALT in municipal schools, I was accepted onto the Hello World Plan, which is an initiative where Sendai City hires experienced ex-JETs to complement their JET programme ALTs.

In April 2004 I was offered the opportunity to move to the prefectural Board of Education, and have now been working there for about ten months.

Q. What kind of people do you work with?
As part of my job I am lucky enough to work with a variety of people. First of all there are the other staff at the board of education, most of them senior high school teachers doing their time in the board of education in order to be promoted to school management. There is one other non-Japanese employee in my section, responsible for dealing with administrative and counselling support for ALTs, and then of course I also deal with the 150 prefectural ALTs and hundreds of JTEs working in public schools in Miyagi.

Q. What would you say are the main requirements to succeed in this field?
Strong organisational skills, teaching experience, at least intermediate Japanese language skills, an interest in education, and above all flexibility. I am never sure what I will be asked to do next!

Q. Do you see yourself staying in this field or perhaps making a move in the future?
I will certainly be staying in the EFL field in Japan. I can see myself staying in my present position for at least one more year, maybe more. After that I would like to move back into a teaching role, perhaps in a tertiary institution or a high school. It all depends on what opportunities present themselves. I feel I have learned so much from my current job, but have limited chances to try out new ideas and techniques in the classroom.

Q. Describe a typical working day.
I normally get up fairly late and end up rushing out of the house. Get to work by around 8.20am, having either walked there or braved the crowded subway system.

I normally spend at least half an hour, sometimes much longer, answering e-mails in the morning. I try to get back to people as quickly as possible, but often have to wait for a decision to be made by the higher ups in the BOE before I can reply, something that teachers don't always appreciate.

For the rest of the morning I will probably be working on preparing a seminar or event, doing research and writing training materials. The burden of paperwork is not as bad as it is for my Japanese colleagues, but it is still important to keep notes and be organised.

Lunch will be a sandwich or a quick bite at a nearby restaurant, then in the afternoon I will probably head out to visit a school. Lesson observations and study meetings happen around 30 times a year, and involve visiting a school, watching a team-taught class, and then meeting with teachers afterwards to discuss the class and how to improve it.

Often I will have to go back to the office to finish up or prepare for the next event, and will end up heading home by six or seven. The latest I have had to stay in the office so far was 2am, but most of the time it is possible to get out at a sensible time. I end up taking work home two or three times a week, as I prefer to work in a more comfortable environment and don't get paid overtime either way!

The object of this interview series is to capture a typical day in the life of people working in various English teaching-related fields. This includes teachers of students at all levels, school owners, publishers and so on. It is hoped that this will give interesting and useful insight into the various aspects of ELT for those who may be thinking of getting into teaching or making a career move within the field.

If you think others would be interested in your job situation, please .

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