Support
This summer, I had the opportunity to intern at Shimizudani High School in Osaka, Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). I was afforded this opportunity through the Kansai Gaidai Internship Program (KGIP), a program setup through Kansai Gaidai University where I had previously studied. The KGIP allows for Kansai Gaidai international students to work in various industries around Japan, an opportunity most spring at as it also gives them a chance to experience a deeper dive into Japanese culture.
As an ALT, my main role was to assist the English Department with their day-to-day duties. This includes proctoring oral exams, providing pronunciation corrections for certain unusual words, and to have casual conversation with the students outside of class. The idea behind the casual conversation was to help students with the natural flow of their English speaking. A lot of the students at Shimizudani spend time in Australia as part of a school program, so the administration wanted their English to be more natural so that they could converse with locals.
Outside of the English classrooms, my co-interns and I spent time in other classrooms and participating in class field trips. The faculty at Shimizudani thought we would find it interesting to experience the life of a Japanese high school student, and to see firsthand the differences in our school cultures. The class field trips we mainly participate in were part of the schools' home economics course, where the second-year students visit local preschools to interact with the kids. The intention behind this was to prepare them for family living, as Japanese culture places high importance of family.
During my time at Shimizudani, I also was happy to get to know the students so well. Our last field trip was through Uji in Kyoto, which was the birthplace of Matcha, and to Fushimi Inari, the head shrine for the Kami (God) Inari. Us interns accompanied the students on the trip to provide more opportunities for them to speak English, and in reverse, so that we could experience first-hand casual Japanese with locals who were willing to let us spectate.
This internship really helped me learn how to communicate within the workplace, with the added difficulty of the language barrier. Through my work as a teacher, I was able to learn how to operate in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment where I could learn to adapt. After college, I would like to become part of the JET program, a program for foreign English speakers to help teach Japanese locals conversational English from an authentic perspective. This internship was a taste of the JET program, and I’m forever grateful I had the opportunity to immerse myself in such a rich culture in the process.