Having worked as an ALT for a while, I had this thought recently. Now I understand that many Japanese teachers, especially at the Elementary school level, don't have the proper training to put together an English lesson. But what boggles my mind is that these teachers still have a degree in education and can't put together an effective lesson. Many ALTs fresh off the plane also have no experience, and often no relevant educationon teaching and they flounder for a bit, but eventually find their footing and create lessons which at least get the kids practicing English and enjoying their lesson.

Especially if you consider now that Any teacher under 40 years old almost certainly did english classes themselves at school to roughly the same standards as now, likely even with an ALT in their classroom.

And it just... completely eludes them how to put together a lesson that's enjoyable or understandable. And often they don't improve at all. I understand they don't really have time/money to take extra classes, but... ALTs don't either. And yet they still learn on the job and adapt.

Is there just a lack of adaptability, or a different view of what a 'good' lesson is in general? Would love to hear some viewpoints as to why the professional, degree-having educators seem to get routinely outperformed by people with no training an nonrelevant degrees.

One of my grandkids got a special needs diagnosis (they are slow at processing information and find it difficult to follow instructions, but language skills are almost normal) so we are talking to their elementary school about maybe having them join one of the special needs classes next year.

After talking to the teacher in charge and observing the class they would be joining next year, I am pretty appalled.

At first it sounded reasonable, the children do Japanese and maths in the special needs class and join the regular class for art, music, science experiments, etc.

But we saw a class today (my grandchild joined as a trial), and they just did kanji worksheets individually for twenty minutes then played a karuta game that it seems they play regularly (so have memorised) for twenty minutes. The class is a mix of two different grades, and the teacher just walked around saying 'sugoi' to kids as they completed their worksheets. The older and younger kids were mixed for the karuta game.

There was a 'helper' (an older woman) who just stood next to one of the kids and did nothing, didn't walk around helping proactively, just stood there for the entire class.

We asked after the class if the students had some kind of educational plan based on their grade and abilities, and were told no, they just do things day by day (probably just worksheets).

If they are just doing worksheets all day long, when are they being taught anything?

Does anyone have experiences, good or bad, of special needs education in Japan? I am trying to find out if this is normal or we are just looking at an underperforming school.

Any input appreciated.