PD Day 1: WOW!

The first day of this three day seminar was fabulous. There is always something magical about putting a group of teachers who are passionate about their job into a conference room and having an inspirational speaker come and create that magic. There were 74 teachers of English in our seminar room and I would say that the ratio was perhaps 1/3 native English-speaking teachers and 2/3 Japanese teachers of English. Some of the teachers were solo English teachers while others were involved in team-teaching. I thought this conference was going to consist mainly of teachers in Kanagawa or the Kanto area, but actually there were teachers from all over Japan! My table had 2 teachers from Saitama and 2 teachers from Nagoya. Four of us were native English teachers and one of the Nagoya teachers was a Japanese teacher of English. The presenter was a Japanese principal from a school in Osaka. Now, looking at him, you would NOT think that he was a principal. If I asked you to imagine what a Japanese principal would look like, you would most likely assume that it's a middle-aged man in a suit, right? This principal had so much energy and gave his presentation in a Michael Jackson Thriller T-shirt using his iphone to manage his Keynote display screens. It is a huge plus when a presenter talks with you and involves the audience rather than just reading from each screen. He kept all of us communicating with each other and introduced one activity after another. He shared his heartwarming personal experiences as a debate coach when he started a debate club with a group of interested students. There were also some serious and interesting points brought up about the future of English education, well, actually education in general and the video clips he shared with us made all of us contemplate the direction that education is moving towards. I'll go into a little more detail later because I need to get to bed early tonight. We have an early start tomorrow and our venue will be at a school. We were told to dress casually so hopefully I understood that memo correctly. Anyways, it's been a positive and inspiring day so I'm feeling motivated and excited for the rest of this seminar.

xox