ALTs are a diverse lot, not all coming from majority English-speaking countries and many cultures. When it comes to teaching about culture, you can draw on knowledge of your own, cultures you’ve encountered through travel, or stretch your own understanding of the English-speaking world. Engaging and Informing A simple and time-efficient…
Hey ALTTO Community! How's that humidity treating ya?! The first term of the school year may be ending soon, but that doesn't mean we can't take some time to reflect and plan ahead for how we will do things after the summer. This next Commandment is brought to us by Elizabeth…
I hope you're all settling in to the new school year. It is the perfect time to try something new in your classroom! This Commandment comes to us from Alex, an ALT at a high school in Kyoto. He and his co-ALTs and JTEs have been doing some fantastic things to…
Bio: My name is Daniel Pearce, and I am currently working as a teacher-researcher at Kyoto Notre Dame University. I was an ALT in several high schools of the Shonai region of Yamagata Prefecture between 2008 and 2013. During my time in Yamagata, I committed myself to studying Japanese and kanji…
The Tao originated in China in the 6th century BCE and has since become familiar to both eastern and western audiences. According to Tao philosophy, Yin and Yang are the two governing forces that are opposite yet interdependent, in constant flux but ultimately give balance to the universe. If we view…
School-based Teacher Education Model in Professional Graduate School For the past 13 years, the M.Ed program at the Graduate School of Professional Development of Teachers at the University of Fukui has been working on cultivating an organizational learning community of teachers. Our aims are clear: to enhance the professional development of…
Englipedia had been the go-to place for ALTs. A storehouse of seemingly limitless activities for every page of every textbook used in Japanese public schools. ALTs would simply click on the page number of the book they use, download the activity, make some photocopies, and head to class. And all was…
My first encounter with ALT Training Online and Nathaniel Reed happened in early 2017. I had just finished my Masters of Art in Teaching with an emphasis on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, or MAT TESOL to save time because the name is so long. As a newly minted…
Bio: Rishma Hansil - Language Instructor and UX Designer Rishma has been living and working in Tokyo since 2017 as an Assistant Language Teacher and Tokyo Prefectural Advisor to the JET community. She holds an M.A in Future Media from Birmingham City University. She is the author of “Animal Adventure” an…
Bio: David Logan Hayter is a teacher and freelance writer based out of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He first gained experience in education by working as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Japan from 2014-2019. Although he primarily taught junior high school, he has taught all the grades from kindergarten through ninth…