Last week I was at the mid-year conference for JET participants. This is an annual 3-day gab-fest where we get a keynote lecture from some eminent person about some aspect of teaching, there are some workshops by guest presenters, and there are other workshops and seminars conducted by JETs.
It’s a good thing, I think, as most JETs have little or no previous teaching experience or qualifications. So it’s a good opportunity to learn some basic theory and get some practical tips to take back to school.
One girl I was talking with made the point that CLAIR (the governing body for the JET Program) should think about perhaps doing, say, a week-long basic teaching skills course when we first arrive in Tokyo. Not a bad idea, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be holding their breath for that one!
I gave a presentation with one of the JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) I work with, Fukudome-Sensei, on making what we referred to as an “Assessment Framework” for the entire term, before the term has started.
When I have time to format our notes, I’ll post a link to where you can get a copy if you’re interested in that kind of thing. It’s basically where testing meets curriculum planning. How to take the textbook and make an outline for what you’re going to test, when, and how in a fairly broad-brushstrokes kind of way.
Please leave a comment if you’d be interested in that. If no one comments, I know that I don’t need to spend any of my time preparing and formatting it. If you let me know you’re interested, I’m more than happy to share it with you! 
I’ve had my attention dragged away from this blog the last couple of weeks because I’ve been working on a site that I hope will be helpful to ALTs. That is, people who work as Assistant Language Teachers.
I’m currently on the JET Program so I’ve put together a site I’m hoping will help to bridge the communication gap between:
1. ALTs in different prefectures
2. ALTs & JTEs (the Japanese Teachers of English to whom we are the assistants)
3. JTEs from different schools and prefectures
And… will provide a place to share resources and worksheets.
If you are an Assistant Language Teacher, you will probably want to take a look. The site is called The TT Forum, where the “TT” stands for Team Teaching.
Cheers,
I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year break.
Even though I’m in Japan I was lucky enough to be invited to a traditional (Australian) Christmas dinner for about 20 people; with the turkey, the roast veggies, the whole nine yards… even brandy pudding, which was set on fire! Andrew Wallace from Kochi (check out his SUPER cool story here) and all of his helpers really put in a sterling effort (they were in the kitchen for a loooooong time!) and it was a dead set ripper!
The pudding was melt in your mouth stuff! Honestly. Puttin good ol’ Grandma to shame!
And, to boot, there were some awesome musoes playing and a wild collection of instruments: taiko of all sizes, djembe, guitars players a plenty (acoustic, electric, jazz, blues, bass), singers a plenty, bells, didgeridoo, sitar, that Chinese instrument with the single string and a bow, a shamisen, and probably a few I’ve forgotten! It was really quite a night.
I hope you did something just as fun.
I thought New Year was going to be quieter, but,… ah… no. Dancing till 3 and then fried chicken and more beer on the way home. If only I coulda gotten a kebab! Man do I miss a decent kebab: lamb, lettuce, onion, tabouli, sour cream, cheese, garlic sauce, BBQ sauce, and a splash of chilli; toasted of course. OH!
Anyway… now I’m back at work, putting together a workshop that I’ll be presenting in a couple of weeks. I expect you’re back at work by now too. Hopefully the break cleared your head and gave you the zoom-zoom-zoom to tackle another year!
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A few people emailed me about the Christmas Pack and offered their thanks and some feedback–which I appreciate greatly! 
I also spoke to a few folks over the break who downloaded it, but either didn’t have time to use it or had already planned their Christmas stuff for this year. That’s okay, if that was the case for you, too, you can always use it next year. I realise that its release was very, very late in the season; like I said, it just kept growing and growing! And testing my skills with technology at every step! Ha!
I’m going to leave the Christmas Pack up for just one more week so if you didn’t get the chance to tell all your colleagues about it in the end-of-year madness, do them the favour now because in a week it’ll be gone. (Yeah, really)
Also, I could do with your opinion. (Not only about the Christmas Pack, feedback for which is most welcome <<click here>> but…)
You see, I’m not really sure in which direction to take the blog and the articles this year, to be entirely honest. There are at least thirty-seven dozen topics I think are worth writing about (!) and I guess I’ll get around to writing about them all at SOME point.
But what I’d really like is for you–as one of my valued readers!–to tell me what kinds of things YOU are most interested in and that YOU would most benefit from.
I don’t profess to know all the answers and, indeed, 100 people might write me back and nominate an area that I don’t have much (or any!) expertise in. And if that’s the case, then I’ll either learn it or find people more knowledgeable than I am and try to convince them to maybe do some “guest articles” or something.
Anyway, what I’ve done is put together a simple survey to find out a little bit about your background, along with what you’re interested in (re: EFL) and what you’d like to learn more about. Or if not learn, what you would get the most benefit from.
It should take about 10-15 minutes, I guess. I don’t know. If you write one-word answers, probably 2 minutes, but that wouldn’t be very helpful to either of us, really, would it? If you get called away, there is a “Save” option and you can come back and reload your answers later. But you shouldn’t need this; I don’t expect it’ll take you too long at all.
Also, I’m afraid I don’t have any “sweets” or “shiny things” to offer you for taking time out of your schedule to do the survey. 
I’m kinda hoping that you’ll see how this directly benefits YOU. I mean, I could just rave on about whatever I like on this blog, but that may or may not be what you’re interested in. And I can only know what my readers are interested in if they let me know!
So, click here to have Your Say
I look forward to your insights.
Best regards and here’s to a terrific 2008!
