ALT / ALTTO / Community / Japanese Private School / Japanese Public Schools / JET / life in Japan / personal experience / professional development

A conversation with Real Gaijin

about the genesis and realities of Assistant Language Teaching with an experienced Japan hand You know the proverb, "Two heads are better than one"? Japan has its rendering, 1/3 better than the English expression: 三人寄れば文殊の知恵 San nin yoreba Monju no chie In other words, when three people come together, they achieve…

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15 August 2025

ALT / ALTTO / Japanese Private School / Japanese Public Schools / JET / junior high scool / professional development

ALT Training Online: Free Courses for ALTs, Designed by ALTs

ALTTO is a free platform offering training courses for Assistant Language Teachers in Japanese school system. It provides practical, context-specific professional development in areas like classroom management, lesson planning, teaching listening/speaking skills, and supporting special needs students.

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25 July 2025

Activities / ALT / teens

The Power of Questions: How ALTs Can Build Rapport, Teach Grammar, and Thrive in Japan

Happy spring! ALTTO hopes you are feeling refreshed and ready for a new school year in Japan. Nathaniel Reed, the founder of ALT Training Online, gives us valuable advice about asking our English learners the right questions. This is sneak peek of his new book, Fluency Through Conversation available on Amazon…

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26 March 2025

ALT / teaching tips / Team Teaching / Team-Teaching / tips for teaching

8th Commandment –  Personalize the Learning Process

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…

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28 June 2022

ALT / High School / PBL / skills / skills development / Team Teaching

Commandment 7 – Promote Learner Autonomy

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…

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14 May 2022

ALT / life in Japan / personal experience / strategies

Becoming Proficient in Japanese: The Importance of Kanji, and a Shortcut to Acquisition for Adult Learners

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…

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22 February 2022

personal experience / professional development / skills development / teacher training / Team-Teaching / technology in the classroom / tips for teaching

Commandment 6 – Make the Language Classes Interesting

I was positively giddy on the first day of my TESOL certificate's Teaching English Grammar class. Although we were all there to learn how to be good language teachers, I was probably the only one who was that thrilled to get into the nitty gritty of English grammar. Most people probably…

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13 January 2022

ALT / professional development

Commandment 5 – Increase the learners’ linguistic self-confidence

I taught at a low-level school. The students were really eager to use English, but they weren't exactly good at it. One day, I came up with the idea of building a term's worth of lessons around the goal of writing and presenting a basic 5-7 sentence paragraph I like to…

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26 November 2021

ALT / skills development / teacher training / teaching tips

Commandment 3 – Present the tasks properly

I used to hate planning lessons. It was my least favorite part of my TESL certification program. My instructors wanted so much detail. Every single moment of the lesson had to be accounted for and justified. Why are you doing this? Why at this point in the lesson? What is this…

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7 September 2021

CLIL / professional development / Team-Teaching

Implementing CLIL into Your Team-Taught Lessons by Nate Olson

Bio: Nate Olson, a former ALT and current researcher at Sophia University, is promoting team-taught CLIL (content and language integrated learning) for his Ph.D. project. He has created a team-taught CLIL training course video series which will be featured on ALTTO Courses. He invites you to participate in a pilot study where he will be…

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21 September 2020