Classes should be finishing up or finished, and there are only a couple of months of classes left before the end of the school year (a couple of weeks for graduating students). I’d like to introduce a few things for ALTs to be thinking about over the next few months:

• Do you want to make any changes next year?
  If so, now is the time to start thinking about it. Try to take advantage of the holidays to talk to your teachers, either at the bonenkai or in school once the students are off. You have almost finished a year, so you should have a good idea of how you would like to run things next year. It is particularly important to start new classes off on the right foot, so figuring out in advance things like class rules, how homework is going to work, and how your lessons will flow, will allow you to start with a bang in April.
• Start planning any goodbye activities for your graduating students now
  Some ALTs have a special last class, some don’t. Either way it is nice to give your graduating stuents a letter of congratulations, or to take a group photo with each class, or to do something like this year-end activity.
• Use the spring vacation wisely
  Make plans for the spring vacation, particularly if you are not going to be going away. If you have a couple of weeks in school with little to do in terms of classes, come up with some projects. Making a vocabulary curriculum based on the words in your textbook, making flashcards, recording passages from your textbook to give to students, etc. Do something meaningful and share it with other ALTs and JTEs!

I will be here in the office, trying to write a speech for the Mid-year Conference and updating our online presence.

Have a great Christmas and winter break, and I will see you in January at the MYC.

Teachers on the other hand, are expected to come in, which begs the question: are teachers more expendable than students?

Either way, a day at school with no students is a good chance to catch up on paperwork or preparation, or to hang out with other teachers, who are also often at a loss as to what to do. Try walking around saying hi, offering to help out, or even organise a volleyball game in the gym (happened at a JHS I worked at).