I was scrolling on Facebook and saw an acquaintance’s post about her daughter’s Senior High School graduation. I immediately recognized her daughter—she was a second-grade student at the elementary school where I first taught as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) in Japan. How time flies—it’s hard to believe that was already eleven years ago! The photos transported me back to the day I first stepped into a Japanese school as a foreign teacher.

I wore a suit on the very first day of work at this school, as required by our company. I remember there was a ceremony held in the school gymnasium on that day—I guess it was an opening ceremony. I was very impressed by how clean and shiny the gymnasium floor was, and by how simple the stage decoration was. There was almost none, actually—just the school logo, the Japanese flag, and a podium. It was a very organized ceremony; the students were seated on the floor, lined up by grades. It was also so quiet that you could literally hear your footsteps if you walked. I remember being shown to the teachers’ room. There were tables lined up on both sides with laptops, books, and files on them—I assumed those were the teachers’ tables. In the front were three to four tables for the three school heads—the principal, the vice-principal, and the curriculum coordinator. Later on, I realized that this is almost a uniform setup for a teachers’ room in Japan. That very first day, when the teachers saw me—a foreign teacher—they immediately summoned the School English Coordinator to speak with me. I remember that I somehow caused a little bit of panic among them because they were not expecting me to report on that day. Basically, there were no classes for me to teach because there was a school ceremony. I was instructed to go home and come back on a different day, and if I wanted to observe the ceremony, I could—that’s when they showed me to my desk in the teachers’ room.

I went home unexpectedly very early on my first day of work. I thought and smiled, realizing how easy it was to work in Japan.

It was indeed easy, but also, it was not.

I was assigned three elementary schools in a small city—School A on Mondays, School B on Tuesday mornings and back to School A in the afternoon; School B again on Wednesdays; and School C on Thursdays and Fridays. I didn’t have a car yet. I didn’t have a driver’s license. Well, of course, I couldn’t drive yet. My bicycle was my means of transportation at that time. School A was the closest to my apartment—I could walk there in about seven minutes. School B was about a five-minute bicycle ride away, and the farthest, School C, was a twenty-minute bicycle ride. On rainy days, I would walk to the nearby schools and take the bus to the farthest school, although I still had to walk about fifteen minutes from the bus stop to the school. That was not very hard. I actually had fun. I was in my exploration stage and loved every bit of my bicycle ride to work. When I finished early, I sometimes rode on unknown roads to see what was around. Those were some of the most enjoyable moments of my life—exploring and discovering. There was even a time when I got lost in a rice field. But luckily, I got home safely.

I had to work with many Japanese teachers with very different teaching approaches and varying attitudes. This was more challenging than teaching itself.

In one school, the teacher was a bit bookish. She was very reserved, very soft-spoken, kind, and nice. In another school, the teacher was creative, very innovative, and more focused on playing active and fun games with the students. She could also get really mad when challenged by some rough students.

In one school, I met the most critical, very demanding teacher. In that school, discipline was very strict. There were a few “terror” teachers, as we used to call them. 

The music teacher was the most terrifying. I never saw her smile, and she had this scary stare. During the morning teachers’ meeting, she always had something long to say. She also led the school cleaning time. When the bell rang, all the students ran from the playground back to the school building, straight to their assigned cleaning areas within minutes. This teacher would get mad and call your attention if you were slow. She would hear even the faintest noise and announce it from the broadcasting room. Not only were students assigned an area to clean, but teachers were as well, working alongside the students. Everyone in the group sat in the hallway, lined up outside the cleaning area/room. The leader checked the attendance, and when it was time to start cleaning, everyone said “Souji gambarimashou!” (Let’s do our best in cleaning), like an army of cleaners. At the end, they had a short feedback session, then altogether said “Otsukaresama deshita.” It was rigid.

No wonder that in that school, the music subject was the least popular, while in my two other schools, music was the most favored. It is all because of the teacher. The teacher is a really big factor in how students view the subject.

This was also the school that called my company during my first week of work. The English Coordinator—Mr. Stone—expressed disappointment that my English was very fast and hard to understand. This was because I spoke as I normally did in my classes in the Philippines. I wasn’t informed that we were supposed to speak in very short, few words of English and slowly so that they could catch up. During the first few days, Mr. Stone always compared me with the previous ALT’s style of teaching. It seemed that his long experience working with the previous ALT made it hard for him to adjust to me—a newbie, and a female. He always mentioned the male ALT to both me and the students. I always made sure to be very prepared when I went to this school, especially for his class. He was very strict and sometimes harsh to his students. There were many times when he collared some boys merely for moving a finger. I am exaggerating, of course, but that’s how strict he was. When a student misbehaved, he would yell, grab that student to the back of the room, and scold him during class. It was hard to keep the attention of the rest of the students on our lesson when he did that. He wanted his students to raise all their hands during a challenge—everyone, even if they did not know the answer or were shy; if not, he would get mad and lecture again.

One time, when I was assigned to eat lunch with his class, he displayed another terrifying attitude. He got mad about something improperly done with the utensils and yelled, asking who did it. Not one student admitted doing it, and it felt as if I was being secretly singled out—perhaps because I was the joiner. Or maybe I just felt that way because, in another class, I actually made a mistake by spilling some milk on the food tray. I returned the tray as is, and it caused a fuss: “Who did this? As a first-timer, I didn’t know that everything should be returned very clean—not even a grain of rice should be left in your bowl. The milk pack should also be folded in a certain uniform way.

The most unforgettable—and the last—time Mr. Stone challenged (and embarrassed) me was during an alphabet lesson. I had the students form groups and race to arrange the alphabet cards in order from A to Z while listening to the alphabet chants. He got mad and yelled, “Kikinagara naraberu no wa dekinai yarou! (You can’t have them do both—arranging the cards and listening to chants at the same time! They can’t do that!!) But just as he said that, the students who were busy with the task finished it and yelled, “Dekita! “ (We did it!) I just ignored what he said and, as I glanced at him, I knew he realized he couldn’t underestimate the students’ capabilities and should just trust my own approach to teaching.

He asked me to make an English bulletin board, and that was the moment when he changed his attitude toward me. I made an interactive and very colorful English board, which I update every week when I visit their school. That English bulletin board paved the way for me to speak in front of all ALTs during our training. In the Philippines, our classrooms are beautifully decorated with subject corners, birthdays, weather updates, sayings—name them all. So, I’m used to it.

It was easy to make them in Japan because everything was provided. We have a supply room where we can get all kinds of craft paper, stationery, a computer connected to the internet, a printer, and everything. One time, I brought materials with me, and to my surprise, the nice teacher I worked with in one school told me not to—and that I was not supposed to—spend my own money to buy school materials. Everything I need for the school, the school will provide. I was astonished. Because where I’m from, it was the norm – teachers use their own pocket for this matter.

Looking back, I realized that I was lucky to be assigned to that strict school. It helped me learn fast and refine my approach as an ALT in Japan. I studied the provided lesson plans. I learned to incorporate games and fun activities for the students. I learned to adjust to each teacher’s teaching style. I learned that each school is different, just as in many other countries. We cannot label a country as having very strict school discipline just because one school did. The atmospheres in my other schools were relaxed and easy. It all depends on the teachers in each school. It just happened that in that strict school, as I call it, there were several strict teachers at once.

Overall, my first year of teaching was full of learning and wonderful experiences. It helped me shape a new me in a foreign land—a new me that would fit into this new society to which I now belong. It is also true that in hardships, we truly learn. In difficulties, we mostly remember