Whose Birthday is it Today?

As an English teacher in Japan, starting lessons with a series of small talk questions is an essential part of the daily routine. Traditionally, teachers kick off their classes by asking:- What day is...

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What's Your Best Book of 2022?

 I read mostly professional books this year and just when I thought I was done with books for the year, Time.com published a list of 100 Must-read Books of 2022 with the tag-line “Gripping novels,...

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The Future of Schools and Schooling

I think we’re going to get to a point where a general curriculum/ syllabus would no longer serve the needs of individual learners no matter how great we are at planning differentiated lessons. I foresee...

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How Did You Learn to Read?

So, as a refresher, I’m currently taking an online TESOL course powered by Arizona State University and I’m now on the Teaching Second Language Reading, Writing and Grammar module and it’s awesome! One...

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入学式(にゅうがくしき)― Entrance Ceremony

 The journey of a thousand miles begins with an Entrance Ceremony. Today, as is the tradition all over Japan, we welcomed 139 first year students to middle school. Here’s an account of how it went...

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It’s Graduation Day!

We had our graduation ceremony today and so many befitting adjectives come to mind: solemn, precision and uniformity, orderly and beautiful, traditional, and, I wouldn’t be wrong if I added spiritual...

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What’s Love Got To Do With It? 🤑

  If you’re a foreign language teacher of teenage students and you’re having trouble getting them to speak and use the language, then you need to bring love into the...

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From Active Teaching to Active Observation

 When I transited from being an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) to a 4Skills Support teacher in 2020, I moved from active teaching to actively supporting the Japanese teachers...

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Schooling in a Pandemic: How it went down in Japan this school year.

 Phew! The school year is over and what a year it has been! It began roughly but ended quite smoothly with 100% of the content covered, at least in the education system where I work. Here’s how we...

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MaskAdaisical

School’s out for summer! Phew. It was a tough one but I’m so glad we made it to the end of the term, the crazy challenges notwithstanding.  COVID-19 changed the dynamics of teaching and...

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