I am an American Los Angles Teacher?

So in my Jr. High third grade (9th grade) class my kids were playing a game. They get in pairs facing each other, one kid facing the blackboard and one kid with his back to the blackboard. We write a word on the board, and the kid who can see the word has to describe that thing, in English, to their partner who tries to guess what the secret word is. It is a really great game and very amusing to watch the kids’ brains working. For example, if the word was lemon they might say, “yellow,” “fruit,” or “sour.” We only give them about 25 seconds, so they have to think fast. They can say whatever they want, as long as it’s in English. After we do 4 rounds we switch who is giving clues and then do 4 more. Then we review the kinds of clues they gave and write them up on the board.

One of the words on that day was Amanda sensei (that’s me!). I was easy to give clues about. “English teacher” “woman” “ALT.” When we were reviewing these clues, the teacher thought to ask if the kids knew what ALT stood for. I think they knew each letter stood for something, but they really had no idea. The first guess was American Los Angles Teacher. Classic. We laughed and asked the kids if I was from Los Angles. They realized no, I was not. And San Antonio does not start with the letter L.

They were right on the T. T is for teacher. That made sense. So we moved on to L. They guessed “listen” and then got closer with “lesson.” I not sure what Japanese clues the teacher was giving them, but the smartest girl in the class actually came up with “language.” So now we had two. I am a language teacher. The A was a bit more difficult. American didn’t make sense because ALTs are from many countries like Australia, Canada, England, South Africa and so on. So it can’t be America. He gave them a clue that they might know the term from soccer. One kid guessed “off sides” (as it sounds like aff sides when pronounced in Japanese). I kind of like the idea of being an offside language teacher. But no. When they still didn’t get it he asked them what it was called when you help someone else score a goal. And this let to the correct guess of “assist.” From there it was just a change of word form to get to “assistant.” Assistant Language Teacher.

I suppose I should not be surprised they didn’t know what ALT stands for. They have had an ALT since the first grade of elementary school, and language and assistant aren’t exactly easy words. But it had simply never dawned on me that they might not know what it means before this happened. It was interesting for all of us.