Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
Life for a Japanese teenager is supposedly harder than for anyone else. The pressure to study hard has driven many people over the edge, as demonstrated a couple of years ago when there were a spate of suicides among junior high school students in Japan. The Japan broadcasting corporation, NHK, has an educational channel filled with children’s programming every evening. Currently they are playing a song by Angela Aki which […]
While I’ve been (and still am) waiting for my websites to move to their new web host, I’ve had some time to catch up on my favorite podcasts. One of those podcasts is from Gaijin-in-Japan.com, and recently in Mike’s 82nd podcast, we got treated to this brilliant prank call to an AEON English school in Japan: Arnold Calls English School There are lots of similar ones on ArnoldCalls.com, and you’ll […]
One of the more recent blogs I’ve subscribed to is that of ESL teacher, Chris Ballard. Born in Hawaii, but now residing in Yanai city in Yamaguchi, Chris runs his own English school out of his own home. Another disgruntled English teacher? NO! What makes this blog so unique is that instead of criticising the ESL industry, or even writing articles on “how to teach English”, Chris shows us exactly […]
Since I’m back to school tomorrow, I’ve been thinking again about my ESL lessons, and remembered an interesting moment from last term. I was getting frustrated with one of my kindergarten classes so right at the start of the lesson I told the children that if they crawl under the tables they will lose all their points. I usually give my kindy kids four points at the start of the […]
One of my students is an elementary school teacher, and she loves talking about her job. Saturday was Dreamwork Day at her school so she was a bit tired by the time she came to class. “Dreamwork Day? Sounds fun!” I said, but then she explained that all the teachers had to clean the school to give the students a dream… erm… yeah, a clean school should encourage children to […]