Archive for category Teaching English
November 19, 2003 – Easy day
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English on November 19, 2013
Original 2003 Post:
What a great day! Three lessons, voice and an observation! Whee!
2013 Update:
An observation at NOVA was when an experienced teacher got to watch a training teacher’s lesson and offer feedback. Apparently my 6 weeks on the job qualified me to do this. Watching other teachers, even the training teachers, was a great way to get some new ideas for lessons. It also required no planning at all, which made things much more relaxed.
The biggest mistake that training teachers would make is on lesson timing. NOVA lessons were 40 minutes each and had a few different stages including a warm up, language introduction, drills, and then usually an activity to practice the new language. New teachers would rush through everything and be done in 20 minutes, leaving a 20 minutes of “WTF do I do now?”. During one memorable observation, the teacher actually opened the door and asked me for ideas on how to fill the remaining lesson time. I got him to get the students talking for a minute, and then frantically wrote down a list of ideas on a piece of paper.
If you are an English teacher and are getting to observe training teachers, make good comments and offer good advice. That way you will get picked for observations again and get a nice break from lesson planning and teaching!
November 17, 2003 – Kids Training
Posted by Barniferous in Karaoke, Teaching English on November 17, 2013
Original 2003 post:
Kids training in Totsuka (south of Yokohama). The provided map is a joke. We sing the alphabet song many times with the NOVA approved ending “sing sing sing sing sing with me” instead of the preferred “next time won`t you sing with me”. After training we hit the izakaya and are locked away in a private room with a karaoke machine. I successfully ruin music for everyone, and Mississippi Mike manages to sing Sugar Ray with a gangsta twist, followed by some freestyle Snoop Dogg. I sing Barbie Girl, and manage to barely catch the last train.
2013 Update:
NOVA Kids was a reliable money making machine for the company, and the bane of my existence in as an English teacher. Regular adult classes would have 1-4 students who generally were paying good money to learn English. The kids classes were groups of 1-8 kids that were only there because their parents forced them to go.
When I took my training there were 3 groups for kids classes: 3-6 year olds, 6-9 year olds, and 9-12 year olds. NOVA later added a class for kids under 3, which I firmly refused to be trained on.
All of the kids classes had a set curriculum, which made lesson planning relatively easy. Classroom management was the tough part. There is a large difference in maturity and abilities between a 3 year old and a 6 year old. 12 year old girls are not interested in singing the alphabet song, while 9 year old boys just want to push each other.
I did learn 2 valuable things in the kids training. The first was the Japanese words for pee and poop. When a young kid tells you that they need to go in the middle of the class, you get them to a bathroom. The second valuable thing was that what you say isn’t as important as how you say it. The instructor told us that the classroom was an English only environment. Teachers were not allowed to use Japanese at all. I asked how could we tell a kid to stop doing something if they don’t understand English. The instructor stood over me (while I was sitting on the floor), crossed his arms, put on an angry face and said “NO!” sharply and loudly. It is something that any kid (or adult) would understand, regardless of language.
Training was interesting, and even a little useful, but the best part of the day was still karaoke.
November 15, 2003 – Stupid Day
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Life in Japan, Teaching English on November 15, 2013
Original 2003 Post
I was woken up by yet ANOTHER earthquake at 3:00am last night. However I quickly returned to sleep. Stupid earthquakes. Also stupid are Japanese bank machines as they usually don`t like to give money after banking hours. Not very convenient. Third in the stupid category are NOVA teachers who don`t look closely at the file, and do the lesson you had planned to do immediately before you can. This gave me two minutes to find a new lesson for 4 students. Stupid day!
2013 Update
NOVA has 8 different skill levels for students. In 2003, they were still using the old textbook with 40 lessons each in all but the lowest level. Choosing a lesson for one student is reasonably easy – pick something they haven’t done before, or failing that, pick something they haven’t done recently. Choosing a lesson for multiple students makes this process more difficult. When you choose a lesson, it is important to write down the lesson they have chosen in the student’s file. That way if a student has multiple lessons in a day, they will not get the same lesson more than once. It is considered bad teaching etiquette to choose the same lesson another teacher has already reserved for the student. Also, it will cause new teachers to have a minor panic attack as they need to find something else to teach in a short period of time.
I am still surprised that some bank machines are not open 24 hours a day, and even more surprised that they close on holidays. It is a bank MACHINE. It doesn’t need time off. This is especially difficult in a very cash friendly country.
November 12, 2003 – I didn’t travel half way around the world to watch Beverly Hills 90210
Posted by Barniferous in Hello House, Kawasaki Nova, Life in Japan, Teaching English on November 12, 2013
(rewrite of original post)
There was an earthquake today when I was teaching. My student was a teenage girl who was much more scared than I was. Since I was now a seasoned veteran of Japan (after 6 weeks) I tried to calm her down and just keep teaching through the shaking. I still really hate earthquakes, even small ones.
Speaking of things I hate, I really hate Beverly Hills 90210, which has somehow because the late night TV choice at Hello House. Since my only entertainment options in my room are old video games on the laptop or reading, I managed to sit through a few episodes. I didn’t travel half way around the world to watch crappy Beverly Hills 90210.
November 9, 2003 – Tongue Twisters
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English on November 9, 2013
Original post
Language exchange in Yokohama today. I am meeting with an English grammar teacher who wants to improve her spoken English. I got to practice some Japanese, show off pics of Winnipeg, and exchanged tongue twisters. While she is practicing “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood” and “She sells seashells by the seashore”, I will be trying out “namamugi namagome namatamago” and “tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kuu kyaku da”. I got pretty good at saying “namatamago” but everything else was very challenging.
2013 Update
She sells seashells by the seashore was one of my favourite teaching tools. In Japanese there is a sound for “she” but not “sea”. Walking through this slowly was good pronunciation practice. For more advanced students, I would use this to practice emphasizing certain words in a sentence. For example, I would ask “What does she sell by the seashore” and the student would respond “She sells seashells by the seashore.” with the emphasis on seashells. It was a bit cruel, but also a lot of fun.
November 8, 2003 – Lazy teacher
Posted by Barniferous in Keikyu-Kawasaki NOVA, Teaching English on November 8, 2013
Original Post
Man I love Saturdays at Keikyu! I had a no show for my last lesson, so I sat in the teacher`s room and read a book and sent email with my phone.
2013 Update
As someone who takes a lot of pride in their work, reading my original post really made me cringe. NOVA was one of the few English schools that paid you even if students didn’t show up for lessons. If you were scheduled for 5 lessons, you got paid for 5 lessons even if nobody was there. In turn, the expectation is that when you have a free lesson that you find something productive to do in the office, and not just sit around reading and texting.
Kawasaki NOVA was always insanely busy, so nobody had ever needed to explain what I should do if I had an empty lesson. A few weeks after this original post, I was in the same situation and a senior teacher explained the priorities. The job list for free lessons included:
- Preparation of kids class materials – there was always some colouring, stapling or glueing that needed to be done for kids classes.
- Lesson preparation – ensuring that you were prepared for your upcoming lessons and reviewing or improving your current lessons
- Maintenance of student files – removing old students, replacing folders that were falling apart
- Tidying the office – teachers are generally very messy and there were always files, books and other things lying around the office
- Assisting the staff
From that time forward, whenever I saw a new teacher sitting around doing nothing I was able to get them working.
November 1, 2003 – Keikyu Kawasaki Nova
Posted by Barniferous in Keikyu-Kawasaki NOVA, Teaching English on November 1, 2013
Keikyu Kawasaki station
Original Post
I got to work at Keikyu Kawasaki today. It is a satellite branch of Kawasaki NOVA. It was very calm and relaxed, and I was done early. I get to work here every Friday and Saturday in November, and hopefully longer!
2013 Update
In 2003 NOVA was working on a massive expansion. Some of their advertising material included the slogan “learn English near the station”, so they decided to have an English school closer to a train station than any of their major competitors.
JR Kawasaki station is a major train station on the Nanbu, Keihin Tohoku and Tokaido lines. It servies 185,000 passengers per day. The station is connected to a large, sprawling underground shopping centre. Having a large English school near Kawasaki station makes a lot of sense. Kawasaki NOVA usually had a roster of 22+ teachers and featured many classrooms, a voice room and two fully stocked kids classrooms.
Keikyu Kawasaki station is a smaller station on the private Keikyu line. It serves about 58,500 passengers per day. It is not connected to the underground shopping area and is only 500 meters away from Kawasaki station. Since one of the competitors opened an English school close to Keikyu Kawasaki station, NOVA decided to open a small branch slightly closer to the station. Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA usually had 3 teachers (rotated in from Kawasaki NOVA), and had one shared voice / kids classroom.
Kawasaki NOVA had extra capacity and facilities, so there was no good busines reason to have another branch 500 meters away. NOVA’s “I’m closer to the station than you are” expansion policy in a country with extremely expensive real estate was likely one of the main contibuting factors to their eventual bankruptcy. That and gross mismanagement from the CEO, but that’s another story.
As a teacher, I thoroughly enjoyed shifts at Keikyu Kawasaki NOVA, which provided a break from the fast pace and chaos of Kawasaki NOVA.
October 18, 2003 – The blind leading the blind
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English on October 18, 2013
(complete rewrite from the original post)
Work was insane today. Overall there were 4 schedule changes. Since I am still pretty new, it takes me a long time to plan my lessons. A schedule change may involve a new student added into a lesson. That new student might have recently done the lesson you were planning to teach, which will involve finding a new lesson that works for everyone. It is also possible to have your entire lesson switched with another teacher to avoid the same student having two lessons in a row with the same teacher. Again, this will involve coming up with something new on short notice.
Due to continuous changes, I ended up with a business class student for a short time. The business class involved a set curriculum which I knew nothing about. Fortunately one of the senior teachers saw the problem and got this fixed before I failed spectacularly. My other big challenge was being scheduled with a low level student who was nearly completely blind. Nova was supposed to be heavily focused on speaking and listening, but there was still a big textbook component to the lessons. Some of the more experienced teachers had been given special instruction on how to work with blind students, but I am still a novice teacher about 3 weeks into the job. I ended up getting switched to the Voice room 5 minutes before the class started.
Kawasaki Nova is too busy!
October 3, 2003 – Enter the Penpal
Posted by Barniferous in Kawasaki Nova, Teaching English, The Penpal on October 3, 2013
Original post
Today was my first day of work. I have just finished 3 days of on the job training which was pretty scary. The first day went fairly well overall. I only had 5 lessons. I was able to reuse two lessons from before so my planning time was nicely reduced. It still takes me too long to plan a lesson. I also talked to my long time Japanese penpal on the phone tonight. Thankfully her English is much much better than my Japanese or it would have been a very difficult conversation.
2013 Notes
Nova on the job training (OJT) is a terrifying experience. On the first day you learn how to choose and create a lesson. You observe an experienced teacher actually giving the lesson. Day 2 and 3 involve actually teaching lessons and getting feedback from observing teachers. Due to the high turnover, training time is kept short to maximize the amount of time teachers can be making money for the school. I believe that lesson quality could have been better with some more instruction, but Nova was a business, and that business wanted to make money.
The conversation with the Penpal was interesting – it was the first time I had ever heard her voice. The conversation was fairly short, and mainly served to set up a meeting two days later in Kamakura. Take a guess what my next post will be about…
Drinking in Japan 
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