Year after year thousands of native English speakers pack their stuff, say goodbye to their families and friends, promise to write, cry at the gate and climb on a plane - destination Japan. Japan is an attractive employment opportunity both for recent grads looking to "kill" a year after graduation as well as qualifed ESL progessionals.
ALT the 2nd Heaviest Traveled Road to Teaching in Japan
Thousands of teachers work abroad and start their teaching careers in Japan as ALTs which stands for Assistant Language Teacher. ALTs assist native Japanese English speakers and are usually native English teachers who are employed in junior high schools in Japan.
Salaries and More
Just like JETs (The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme) and typical “eikaiwa” positions, to find work abroad as an ALT, you need to be a native English speaker and need to be an university graduate. Most ALTs aren't hired by schools but instead find employment through BOEs or Boards Of Education. These hiring agencies function in a role similar to a temporary hiring agency. Hiring agencies will take a cut from the teacher’s salary in return for placing the instructor.Salaries will be in the 230,000 yen to 250,000 yen range with fixed work hours and curriculums.
Most ALTs are sent to junior high schools. An instructor is generally rotated between 2 or 3 schools. Hours are the quite the opposite of "eikaiwas" or English conversation schools, which have quite a few evening classes and generally start in the early afternoon and run until 8 or 9 at night. In general, ALTs work between 8:00 and 5:00 p.m. with weekends and Japanese national holidays off.
One of the biggest things about being an ALT is that just like ALTs placed in the JET Program, every situation really is quite different. ALT experiences are all different. Some have pretty easy work and spend time surfing the net during the day while others complain of being saddled with more work than they can handle. There are basically 3 roads into finding work in Japan for recent graduates. The most traveled one is regular “eikaiwa” or English conversation. Another one is the Jet Program which is tough to get into and the 2nd most traveled one is that of an ALT.
