February 13, 2008 – 2:50 am
It’s that time of the year again! Everyone is talking about plans for the special day and all I hear is chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate!
Not that I have anything against chocolate or Valentine’s day, on the contrary, I love both of them! But for the whole last week, every time I walked past the [...]
February 6, 2008 – 4:48 am
I’ve noticed that every year around the end of Jan and beginning of Feb, the local supermaket I frequent will have a special corner for dried soybeans and sushi rolls. The big Chinese characters on the promotion tag mention some sort of festival, but it took me a while to finally decipher what they meant [...]
February 2, 2008 – 1:14 am
“So, anything exciting?” I asked my 4pm student as I walked her into the classroom in Kyobashi school.
“Well, I finally decided the departure date for New Zealand!” she beamed.
It’s not every day that students tell you exciting news like this, and she apparently wanted to share this with me, so we kept the conversation [...]
January 31, 2008 – 4:50 am
I was getting the lesson plan and picture cards ready for my 7pm class when the door bell rang once and in came the cheerful lady.
“Hey, how is everything going?” I gestured her in and moved to the fridge to get her usual glass of orange juice.
“Pretty good! I had a very rewarding afternoon!” She [...]
January 30, 2008 – 4:19 am
When my regular weekday student showed up on a Saturday afternoon at Kyobashi school, I hardly recognized him. Apart from the thick black overcoat, his whole outfit changed from total business to absolute casual! We’d only seen him in his formal business attire since he usually came here right after work, so it was nice [...]
January 15, 2008 – 5:10 am
Isn’t it great that in this job we get to meet so many different people and have so many opportunities to make new friends? This is my fifth year teaching at Smith’s School of English Kyobashi, and teaching here is not just a job any more, it has become a very important part of my [...]
January 11, 2008 – 11:32 pm
I hadn’t seen my 1pm student at Kyobashi school for ages as she took a leave for a few months and it is always nice to see students coming back, she was apparently also very happy to be back here at Smith’s School of English and I was glad to see she was in a [...]
December 18, 2007 – 6:02 am
For most of my students this evening, it was the last lesson of the year and everyone was excited about the coming holiday. So I decided to have a little chat about holiday plans with my 8pm students before moving on to the loop. Since I am not doing anything special myself, I was glad [...]
October 23, 2007 – 3:46 am
It is really quite scary how fast time passes! Here I am in Japan, for 5 years now, and, approaching 30!!! Yes, I just spent my 29th birthday last Tuesday at Kyobashi. Well, I didn’t get a full-on birthday party, which isn’t my style anyway, I was congratulated by my closest colleague and handed a [...]
October 8, 2007 – 10:02 pm
I had a high level student the other evening. Since this student had been with us for nearly 10 years, he had gone through most of the curriculum more than once, but as he told us a while ago, English is one of his hobbies and he is just happy to be able to chat.
ET:
I [...]
I had a class with two orange level students this evening. One of them is a very cheerful mid-aged guy and has practically done everything from basic to intermediate more than once, the other only signed up recently, but had been taking classes with students lower than her. When I saw the combination, I thought [...]
August 1, 2007 – 12:43 am
I had a lesson with three regular pink and orange level students today. We went through the loop smoothly as they had been used to our style of coaching and were quite comfortable with each other’s company.
As I heard two of them talking about movies in the lobby before the [...]
I just finished a lesson with a green level student. I always enjoy the classes with him because he has a really nice personality and is always ready to communicate.
I prepared a news event (Hotdog Eating Contest) as an item and Restaurant 2 for routine. But we ended up only having enough time for [...]
I had a class with a red level student the other day. She turned up a few minutes late and apparently was not in a good mood. I enjoy lessons with this student because she likes to ask a lot of questions and is always very cheerful. But this is not one of those days [...]
One of my students walked in the classroom last week and gave me a flower! When I asked why, she said there was no particular reason; she was just walking by a florist and thought she’d buy a flower for her teacher that day! After class, everyone was asking me about the nicely-wrapped flower on [...]
This 2pm student is a Pink student. Most of the time, I like working with pink students because they have a lot of potentials, and it is nice to see their happy faces when you teach them something new. But this one is a bit of an exception. He is shy, gets nervous very easily, [...]
When I saw my schedule today, I felt a bit anxious about first lesson of the evening. This particular student is known to make a lot of very specific request about the material and type of lesson she wants to study. It took me nearly 20 minutes to come up with the lesson plan for [...]
I had a class with three green level and red level students yesterday, all of whom have been with us for at least 2 years and know each other quite well. I did not need to worry about creating a nice atmosphere because the moment I welcomed them into my classroom, a natural chitchat conversation [...]
Smith’s School of English Lessons
I had a pink level student today. I prepared a basic Item and a basic Routine as well. During pre-lesson preparations, I noticed that this was her first time the student comes in for lessons and her trial lesson teacher used part one of the Morning Routine. The trial lesson teacher [...]