New year holiday report

I went to Fukushima last December with my family.

I drove my car to Fukushima.We stayed for five days in my parent's home.

Iwaki city was warmer than Matsumoto city.It was very comfortable.

During the day we went shopping,saw my cousins or friends.

Also we went to the sea. Especially for me, the sea is very important place. 

At night we had dinner that my mother made. 

We enjoyed talking and had a lot of drinks. 

In the daytime, I bought jeans and sweets. 

We had a relaxing and comfortable time. 

I was able to skip mother's work for 5 days. 

Probrems?  No, I didn't have any Probrems. 

But I was surprised that my same age friend birthed her fourth baby!

Saturday morning? Must be Banana Kids

A year ago we (Luna, as Cambridge ESOL Centre JP004) were extremely grateful that our examiner Tomomi fulfilled our commitment to a school in Tochigi, and went there to conduct the speaking tests for their YLE exams. She was worried about the venue’s location – closer to Fukushima Daiichi than every sensible person on the planet wanted to be.

This year things are lot less dramatic (the school hasn’t moved, TEPCO still has not got a clue what it is doing/the government is in denial/collusion – but neither are things glowing in the dark etc).

Maybe I am just being melodramatic? Life was going on normal as ever when I tried to find the school on Saturday morning, and the scariest thing the children were going to have to do was take a speaking test with the unknown large foreigner (me) in a room all by themselves. As a couple of my English friends in Tokyo last year advertised their Facebook statuses – Keep calm & Carry on.

I really enjoy examining YLE candidates (does that sound sadistic? I hope not – I teach kids, and I enjoy seeing kids be all that they can). The materials are all about giving the children the opportunities to show what they can do – no man-traps to catch them out or “Ha! Ha! Couldn’t use the present continuous properly” assessment nastiness.

·         Best gentle voice

·         as much eye contact as possible

·          hands still (unless moving cards or pointing at a picture)

·         Smile

·         Pay attention to the child – stuck or thinking?

·         Wait for an answer – or move on gently

·         Know your stuff

In my opinion, a YLE speaking examiner taking care of the above seven points will see a happy candidate ready for a high five leave the speaking test. Being able to do that x30 in a morning will put a spring in any teacher’s step.

September 11th - a positive story

September 11^th was an important date for our examiners recently trained/professionally developed in Yamagata, Niigata and Fukushima. They got to get their teeth into some candidates – not literally of course. At least, not that I’ve heard!

Our examiners also had another hat to wear, as the nature of their examining was a co-operative deal with other school owners/venues running Young Learners….which is exactly the way I saw this working when the idea was conceived in a cross country drive with Steve Holland to Sendai nearly two years ago. I do like it when ducks get lined up – doesn’t happen too often, and the Tohoku disaster did put a rather large wrench in the works (Tomomi is still our hero for her examining in April).

Steve’s school (Windmill English Center) in Aizuwakamatsu became a venue for the first time back in June, offering KET & PET to Fukushima. Disco Paul was my co-pilot for that rocket drive, where we were able to help Steve “cross the t’s and dot the i’s”, besides interview the speaking candidates. Steve showed us the field next to his house where he could not stand up during the earthquake March 11^th. We know it is not easy to get everything right first time as a venue – but it is very important that things are done by the book. We even translated the book (it is the fifth Gospel, ‘according to Yuki’). It was our privilege to get WEC on the map.

Alan Morrison’s school (Sunshine English) in Ojiya, Niigata, also became a YLE venue for the first time. Mark & I drove down the river, quite literally from Luna to his school two hours downstream, a couple of years ago when they had KET & PET. We might be repeating that journey in November now, by the way – great! Another town, incidentally, with considerable earthquake issues of its own.

Both of Ryan Hagglund’s schools (MY English) in Yamagata (Yamagata city and Sakata) were very first time venues, so particular congratulations to Ryan and his staff. I am hoping to visit their venue soon – not least because I have very fond memories of a motorbike trip through beautiful Yamagata year gone by!

Thank you Stephen, Alan, Ryan for getting organised & working together to make this unique session successful. Not quite a profit turner for any of you yet, but obviously an immediate pay off for the students at your schools and an indictment of the professional approach you take to teaching English. I sincerely hope your first YLE sessions are the thin end of the wedge. Let’s plan your 2012 session now, and get Mike, Anna, Ben, Mario examining too!

We are proud of you!

ESOL venues inspected - Tokyo & Tohoku fit for purpose

Image by ijiwaru jimbo via FlickrOn Friday night, after ten and a half hours classroom time and a snatched conversation with my wife, I caught a few hours sleep on the sofa before catching the early bus down to Tokyo. I was standing in for one of our examiners who was unable to change his own schedule this morning. These things happen. I got a really stiff neck sleeping awkwardly on the bus :(  Should have taken the train.

My English friend Tim arrived at King's Road just as I got there, and we found school owner Trevor looking a bit more serious than usual, but professional as ever. It was soon obvious why - an inspector from Cambridge ESOL had turned up to monitor the venue's performance today. These are unannounced spot checks to make sure all the rules &  procedures are being followed. We welcome this quality control, as it is very important that the Cambridge ESOL brand is kept unblemished. It is important for our candidates as well as venues to realise that there are very high standards that have to be maintained. I sometimes think the inspectors could be a little more sensitive to the exams supervisors on what is already a very stressful day, though. Bit of a bull in a china shop.

Anyway, everything was very much under control. Tim and I conducted speaking tests for candidates at PET and then KET levels,as we had done together back in November (although then I'd lost my voice & was unable to interlocute!). He is very warm with the candidates which I think is important, as it helps them relax - something I need to remember.

An equally early start to Sunday, as I had to pick up Disco Paul to drive up to Aizuwakamatsu in Fukushima prefecture (about 100km west of Fukushima city). We made good time and could have a well-earned breakfast in Denny's before finding Stephen Holland's lovely little school up the hill. He already had the kettle on when we arrived, and he gave us a guided tour of Cambridge ESOL's newest venue in Japan; Windmill English Centre is the first to offer Cambridge ESOL examinations in the whole Tohoku region. Coming so soon after the uncertainty wrought on the region by events March 11th & subsequently by TEPCO, I think this is a marvelous example of commitment. Stephen's description of how strong the earthquake had been made Paul & I shudder - and we were still 2 hours+ drive away from the coast. So, hats off to all the school owners who have stuck it out,  the often under-appreciated, unheralded 'local' foreigners a who are going about business as usual without any fanfare. Paul & I felt the very least we could do was be there on time and show Stephen's students that they could expect the very same standard of assessment here as anywhere else in the world - London, Buenos Aires or Athens.
Image via Wikipedia
Annoyingly, Paul knew that Olivia Newton John was No.1 in Perth (WA, Australia) in December 1981. Don't ask how he knows - he just does! We were listening to a radio station from Perth on my iPhone as we drove back, trying to predict what the Top 30 would be. Disco Pants is rarely wrong! Good company for the 737km round trip today - 1,200 for the weekend.

Last word for all the candidates who took KET & PET this weekend - wish you the best with your results, which will be available online soon. Please remember to check your log in details.

Getting me through

I feel very guilty about talking up any stress or worries I am personally feeling over the last week.

We have had aftershocks and wobbles, but on the greater scale of things we have had precious little to cry about. It has been weird, living a country experiencing unprecedented trauma. As if the double-whammy would not have been hard enough to tackle, the relief effort has been castrated not just by the scale of the devastation, but by the terrifying prospects of just what could (still) go wrong at the nuclear plant(s) on the Fukushima coast.

I have been awed by the calm, rational reaction of our students and parents. I have not been so impressed with the sensational, irrational and outright inflammatory descriptions of events unfolding in Japan in some quarters of the media. I have stopped watching CNN. Some of the BBC's correspondents have also angered me. However, the scientific experts the BBC featured, especially mid-week, were extremely reassuring in their analysis and presentation of the facts. How has the Japanese media functioned? Pass. (Slowly? Spoonfed? Soporific?)

A week down the road since our own building wriggled, I was not looking forward to teaching my little tiddlers class. Don't get me wrong - lovely kids, and really warm mums. No, we would be in the same room, same kind of windy day...

The children jumped up the stairs to class and were giggling about their new word ("ji-shin" - earthquake) as they remembered where they were. They are five. They gabbled away in Japanese, not anxiously, just having a giggle. They talked about me holding their hands and how they had hidden under the table last time. I did not want to have any other reminders; my classroom has spooked me all week - rattly windows, doors banging,  pole outside swaying in the wind (is it the wind?). So, at a good volume we watched and sang along to a nice DVD, the Three Billy Goats from OUP. I had just about settled myself when my phone bleeped an earthquake warning. I leapt out of my skin. A quick check told me it was a M4.8 off the coast towards Hokkaido. But the timing was awful. I looked again at the happy faces engrossed in the DVD and thanked the stars they were all totally unharmed. The school is standing. My family are OK. We have food, we have warmth, we even have toilet paper. The sheer relief of a whole week and not being dead, I could not stop having a quick cry. Good job the DVD was on : )

(Because we were singing and dancing, we did not feel the two tremors during our lesson - so my planned worked doubly. We did spook mums downstairs though, with all the banging. Sorry about that)

Thank you girls. As long as I teach you though, I am going to be looking at you with an extra glint. You are too young to know, or care. You are going to be a weekly reminder, Friday afternoon, that I am very lucky indeed.

If you go out in the sun today...

 Making puzzles in the warm sunshine today, almost as good as being out in the fresh air. Except, we shouldn't really go outside today just in case we get a nuclear dose from Fukushima, still on the brink of multiple crises. It is very hard to give children 100% of your attention when you are trying to keep an eye on notices from your government and travel advisories, IAEA, radiation monitoring sites, BBC breaking news, phone calls from local friends keeping tabs on other sources of information...where is my grab bag?

Naomi was stoic on Tuesday, thank you. I was a nervous wreck, very concerned about things on the east coast.

"Five Little Monkeys, jumping on the bed"? I think so! We made our beds, coloured them and then stuck monkeys on our fingers. With the song from Super Simple Phonics we were jumping on our beds, bumping heads, waggling our fingers "no more monkeys, jumping on the bed!"

Excellent fun :)