What will you experience during this Teaching Assistantship?

1. Global exposure

One of the best things about this TA is the global exposure you get, which I totally did not expect at all. University of Fukui is a teaching university, similar to NIE. During our program here, we were merged with other teachers that came from all around the world. We met teachers from Findlay (America), Bhutan, Myanmar, Philippines and India. We got to know not only about Japan's education system but also other education systems around the world. We got to know more about it through the Rouble Table talks and also through just mingling with the teachers.

2. Visits to Primary, Secondary, Special Education and Kindergarten school.

Because we were with many different teachers that taught different levels and subjects, we had the opportunity to visit all the different schools. We were not in just one school but throughout the weeks, we got to visit different schools. Thus, I felt that we got more exposure to the education system in Japan. We also visited public schools as well as the affiliated school (Fuzoku) which is really different from the public schools.

The downside to it is that there are days where you feel that "Why am I observing sec classes when I am a pri sch teacher?" I felt that way because I was observing more sec classes than pri classes which I did not feel it was beneficial to me. But hey, it just gives you more experience to see different teachers teaching and how students learn in each lesson. 

4. Tons of observation.

If you want to teach from the very beginning of the TA, probably this is not the best choice for you. Because everything in the schools are taught in Japanese, you will be doing very little teaching or even assistantship.  It will mostly be doing observations and tons of reflection. They did ask us to share about Singapore and maybe taught a lesson or two. But it is mostly observation. Moreover, you will be observing science, math, social studies, PE and all other subjects. Subjects where is not your area of expertise. For example, I am an English teacher and I was observing a Maths class. In the maths class they were doing algebra and I am very very bad at it. The teacher said I could assist the students during their group discussions. But I felt that if I did go into the groups to assist them, I would be telling them wrong answers and definitely not be able to teach them. So I just sat and observed because I did not want to disturb them. So, there you go. TONS OF OBSERVATIONS. 

5. University Classes.

You might think that TA means that you'll be in the schools for the entire duration. However, University of Fukui made it such that we also attended the university classes/talks. For example, out of 5 working days, we were at least in the university for 1 day. We attended Thursday conferences which are made up of undergraduates, graduates and master program students. 

However, the downside to it is that everything is in Japanese and it will be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to understand technical and academic terms in Japanese. For me, understanding academic terms is already difficult in English as it takes me a while to process what it means to me and how I can apply it. So imagine it being in a total foreign language. Yes, there will be ONE professor that can help you translate but it does not happen all the time. So, if you need to have (a high level) of Japanese proficiency to fully internalise the discussions.

6. You will be tired, but I'm sure it will be rewarding

Imagine going through a day in school and interacting with the students and teaching them can be tiring already. However, this TA is like another level up where you have to listen to Japanese, process it in your brain, translate it into English and change it to Japanese in your reply. After the day, I usually feel really drained because of all the mental work that is going through. 

But it will be rewarding! Slowly, you'll pick up Japanese and although it may be frustrating, you gotta hang in there. I came here with zero Japanese. So I had to make the extra effort to pick up the language within the short 2 weeks, because YOU NEED JAPANESE TO SURVIVE HERE.