I got confirmation this week that Tahara is not replacing Nathan with someone from Georgetown. I'll be the only Sister City ALT left and Vanessa will be the only JET left. There are two possibilities for next year. One, they don't replace Nathan with anyone but leave me alone at the two junior high schools and divide up his elementary schools among the rest of us. Or two, they replace him with yet another private from the nearby big(ger) city.
Option one is cheaper but leaves the schools with one less ALT, which they won't like. Option two lets them keep the same number of ALTs at a lower cost than hiring someone from Georgetown, but it carries some risk too. The dispatch company keeps sending ALTs who are not only not native English speakers but don't speak English well at all, and one guy who made the kids cry. They didn't renew that guy's contract but instead replaced him with a Nigerian who doesn't speak English OR Japanese well, making it all almost impossible to plan lessons with him. So option one might be looking attractive at the moment.
But it would make my job a lot lonelier. I'm already dreading September when I get back and realize that Nathan is gone for good. Even if they replace him , it won't be the same. And all of this makes me think that they won't replace me when I leave either and then the Sister City ALTs will gone forever. It makes sense when you think about it. I've known for awhile that Aichi is phasing out the JET program and since my contract is really just a photocopy of the JET contract then it makes sense that we would be phased out too. I'm a dinosaur, according to Nathan, the last of my kind. And that makes me sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment