Geek out: Teaching

It’s been a while since I geeked out at you about teaching.

The end of the semester is drawing near. There are eleven more days to go, seven of which will be teaching days for me. On the 19th I become free of the second semester lesson plans I created, for at least two semesters.

As most of you know, I am the Elementary School English Program Advisor for a city in Japan. There are 15 schools under me including  9 support staff members (8 who are Japanese) who are the English Teacher presence for those 15 schools. Prior to me, the schools and support staff were all left to their own devices to teach, or not teach, English as they saw fit. My section of the board of education is figuring out how to transition to a uniform teaching style and lesson plans with the primary focus being communication/cognative thinking skills and how we will deal with next year’s nation-wide start of English for 5th and 6th grades and the accompanying textbooks. It looks like we will keep our support staff next year, increase homeroom teacher participation within English lessons, and use a 5th and 6th grade curriculum that is 35 hours per year. 16 of those hours will be my lesson plans taught by support staff and homeroom teachers together and the rest being textbook and text book teaching aid based and I will come to most schools one a semester and teach.
( Teacher: Friend or Foe )

Geek out: Teaching

It’s been a while since I geeked out at you about teaching.

The end of the semester is drawing near. There are eleven more days to go, seven of which will be teaching days for me. On the 19th I become free of the second semester lesson plans I created, for at least two semesters.

As most of you know, I am the Elementary School English Program Advisor for a city in Japan. There are 15 schools under me including  9 support staff members (8 who are Japanese) who are the English Teacher presence for those 15 schools. Prior to me, the schools and support staff were all left to their own devices to teach, or not teach, English as they saw fit. My section of the board of education is figuring out how to transition to a uniform teaching style and lesson plans with the primary focus being communication/cognative thinking skills and how we will deal with next year’s nation-wide start of English for 5th and 6th grades and the accompanying textbooks. It looks like we will keep our support staff next year, increase homeroom teacher participation within English lessons, and use a 5th and 6th grade curriculum that is 35 hours per year. 16 of those hours will be my lesson plans taught by support staff and homeroom teachers together and the rest being textbook and text book teaching aid based and I will come to most schools one a semester and teach.
( Teacher: Friend or Foe )