This is the 10th year for me at Project Genius and the 10th year teaching at one of our client schools. I decided that this year we should hand out a formal syllabus for the first time to our students. 

Project Genius has two teachers at this school and we teach there two days a week. We teach the first-year junior high school students on one day and the second-year junior high school students on the other. We teach the same lesson to five different homerooms each day. Each homeroom is split between me and another Project Genius teacher, so we have a little less than 20 students in each lesson.

When I have taught at the tertiary level, either as a Teaching Assistant while at graduate school in the US or as an instructor at a college in Japan, I prepared or followed a syllabus and formally evaluated my students.  However, this was not the case in my earlier experience teaching at the primary and secondary level in Japan.  When I was on JET in the late 90s, I just attended lessons to support the JTE.  When I taught at elementary schools in Tokyo in the early 2000s, I was the T1, with the students' homeroom teacher there to support me. That was also the age of Yutari Kyoiku, and the goal of the classes was to give kids a good experience with English. That meant when I planned lessons, I was free to follow my own interests and the interests of the students. I was not supposed to worry about grades or evaluations at all.

When I started at my current school 10 years ago the Project Genius team at the school – we were both new that year – didn’t know until the day before they were due that we had to turn in grades. I had assumed until then it would be like my previous experiences at primary and secondary schools in Japan.  (This is one reason, by the way, I started the school info sheets. I ask everyone in our company to update periodically.) Since then, our team at the school has built-up a curriculum, including exams, presentations, and graded conversations. And, since we don’t use textbooks, we have students keep a notebook, in which they are asked to include all the worksheets we pass out over the year, to help them visualize and remember what they are learning. 

Since we teach at a private junior/senior high school which aims to get kids into top universities in Japan., exams, grades, and other formal evaluations are an essential part of the school culture. I just need to tell my students an activity will be graded and, given the opportunity to prepare on their own, students will practice and work hard in any individual class. Even so, I still feel that many students don’t see beyond a “one point English” view of our lessons and aren’t always thinking that our lessons build upon each other.

I decided that handing out a formal syllabus would be one way to address this. Recently I have been watching my fair share of US teacher TikToks to know that it isn’t just in beginning EFL classes in Japan where adolescents are told several times what to do by teachers and then promptly forget. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself or my students in terms of expectations, but giving students a formal, written document seems to be a good, time-tested approach to reinforce what we are telling them in class. I am also hopeful that teachers and parents are also able to gain more insight into what we are doing in the classroom, which not only shows the outside world what we are doing but also hopefully gives them the opportunity to encourage our students to participate more in our classes, as well.

Here is what we came up with for the first years and the second years.

So far this term I have been encouraged that providing and reminding students with more explicit expectations provides students with some safety, security, and courage when we ask them to take a jump into the English-speaking pond.

Header image -- Curriculum by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

A while back, while randomly watching YouTube one night, I was recommended a video entitled Big Bird in Japan. Intrigued, I watched it.

This PBS-NHK co-production ended up being quite interesting. It was produced in the late 1980s at the height of US-Japan tensions; not coincidentally, about the time the JET programme began. Big Bird and Barkley somehow join a tour of Japan and immediately get lost in Shinjuku. A friendly stranger of mysterious origins helps them to rejoin their tour in Kyoto while introducing them to Japanese life and culture. In addition to the time capsule aspect of watching something from the late 1980s, I was reminded of my own first day in Japan in 1995.

I was on my way to my study abroad university dorm room outside of Kyoto with my brand new, never-before-used passport and one full year of Japanese language studies at university under my belt. I got on the wrong train line in Osaka at first, but somehow, I made it to my station. I took a bus when I got there, but only way I knew I was at my stop was when the bus driver called "Gaijin-san!" in a friendly voice -- though I felt a bit self-conscious when everyone on the bus looked at me at the same time.

Unsurprisingly, I went in the opposite direction from the dorm I was staying at for the next month. At a loss of what to do, I just walked into one of those local electronics shops that are in neighborhoods around Japan and thrust the paper I had explaining where I was supposed to go towards them. Luckily, the family that owned that shop was just as friendly as the person Big Bird met. They calmed me down and bought me McDonalds for lunch, my first real meal in Japan, which I happily ate while chatting away. So I ended up feeling a strong affinity towards Big Bird and Barkley, watching them become lost and then found while wandering around Shinjuku and the rest of Japan.

When I showed it to my junior high school students, however, I found the visuals interesting enough—Big Bird and Barkley driving through Japan in a car is easy enough to understand while I noticed some students trying to figure out what Shinkansen station Big Bird and Barkley were at— for them to follow along while the language being at a level that can be understood by my mid-to-high level students.

My students English isn't at a level to have the sociological discussions about the video on Japan-US relations in the 1980s or representations of culture that you could have with older, more advanced students. However, I did want them to actively engage with the video. With my colleagues at my junior high school, we decided to make a listening, fill-in-the-blank worksheet based on the pre-school performance of the Japanese folk tale "The Bamboo Princess" that Big Bird and Barkley somehow stumble into watching. It starts at around the 39 minute mark and, spoiler alert, this story is related to the origins of our heroes' magical friend.

I will share two different worksheets here. First is the one we did in class, where we added a few vocabulary words at the beginning and a few review questions at the end. Looking at it again, I decided another way to do it would be to have students only listen for nouns. I hope you can either use these or that they give you some ideas to make materials better suited for your students.

Incorporating cultural materials such as this video is an effective way to help our students with their English. Though often we want to introduce things from our own country that does provide another layer of complexity to their language learning, as they need to learn not only the language but the cultural context, as well. It is always easier to understand something in a foreign language if you know the material well in your own language, so I believe using materials such as Japanese folk tales is one way to help students' confidence in learning languages.

As we are going into the new school term, for any teachers in elementary school an activity I loved doing with the students when I taught at elementary school was business card exchange.

It’s a good way for the students to introduce themselves to each other and to by pass the awkwardness of a new class and new classmates.

For this activity the students need a piece of paper, some colored markers, and scissors. On the teacher’s part you just need to prepare a list of professions and a sample dialogue. Normally I start by teaching the students about different professions. To make it fun I would add in really obscure professions. This can range from normal jobs like doctor, teacher etc to more out there jobs like famous actor, president, astronaut, athlete etc. Be sure to give the Japanese name of these jobs so that the students can easily understand.

First, I would have the students practice the pronunciation of the jobs and to check understanding of what kind of job it is.

Second, give the students time to make their own business card. Their card should have their name, what their job is, and any other information that the student wants to add. Students can also decorate their cards anyway they want.

Third, to get the students to practice the name of the jobs and speaking, I make sure that the students make 3-4 different business cards each with a different job.

Fourth, beforehand I would have a sample self introduction dialogue that would allow the students to say their name, their job, how long they’ve worked at their job, age, and birthday.

Fifth, students would walk around the classroom and using the sample self introduction and their own business cards, speaking and exchanging cards with their classmates.

We are looking for a teacher who can join our team at one of our client schools in Saitama. The client is a private co-ed junior/senior high school in Saitama city, accessible from stations on the Keihin Tohoku and Musashino lines. Our client is looking for someone who can solo teach as well as be a confident T1 and a supportive T2 in a team-taught classroom. We are looking for someone who can work Mondays to Fridays as well as some half days on Saturdays.

The compensation package for this position includes a monthly pre-tax salary of ¥280,000 a month, regardless of the number of lessons taught per month and which is not reduced during summer, winter, and spring vacations, fully compensated transportation expenses, shakai hoken and pension package. and a Japanese school year based renewable contract.

Our ideal candidate: currently lives within a reasonable door-to-door commuting distance from the school campus; has a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution; a TESOL certificate from an accredited program or college is advantageous but not required; has at least one year experience teaching at a public or private secondary school in Japan; can both teach by themselves in a Japanese school classroom as well as work well with JTE co-teachers; can write lesson plans, create materials, and teach lessons with minimal supervision and instruction following guidelines provided while being flexible to any requests by other teachers and staff at our client-school; is willing and able to integrate technology into their lessons; is willing and able to teach/lead PE classes in English; can motivate students through their in-class teaching and interactions with students outside of class; wants to take the initiative in terms of lesson planning and classroom management but is also willing to share ideas and keep a positive attitude with the staff and teachers, Japanese and non-Japanese, at our client school as well as with our off-site office and executive team; possesses native English-level proficiency; can legally work in Japan.

If you would like to be considered for this opportunity, email your resume and cover letter to [email protected]. Due to the number of resumes we receive we are unable to contact all applicants, but we do keep resumes on file and if you do not hear from us for this position, we may contact you in the future if a more suitable position becomes available. We also regularly post open positions on gaijinpot.com. Feel free to email us your resume if you are not interested in this position but would like us to consider you for other positions, as well.

We are currently looking for a teacher to join our team at one of our client schools in Hachioji, near Takao station. This co-ed school consists of both a junior and senior high school, but the successful candidate will only be teaching junior high school students. The school has a strong academic focus, with graduates regularly accepted into top-tier universities in Japan.

This is a part time position (Tuesdays and Thursdays) from 8:20 am to 4:20 pm starting from April of this year. Teachers at this client school are not required to come to school on days when there are no classes. Buses to the school leave from Takao Station in Hachioji on the JR Chuo Line and Hashimoto Station on the JR and Keio lines in Sagamihara.

The compensation package for this position includes a monthly salary of ¥112,000 a month, regardless of the number of lessons taught per month and which is not reduced during summer, winter, and spring vacations, fully compensated transportation expenses, and a Japanese school year based renewable contract.

Our ideal candidate currently lives within a reasonable door-to-door commuting distance to the school campus, has a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution, at least one year experience teaching at a public or private secondary school in Japan, is comfortable with being personally responsible for teaching and evaluating students in classes of up to 20 students, can share and collaborate while planning and designing lessons, is happy not using a textbook, can take the initiative when needed but is also able to work as a team player, can keep a positive attitude while working closely with the staff and teachers, Japanese and non-Japanese, at our client school as well as with our off-site office and executive team, and possesses native English-level proficiency. A TESOL certificate from an accredited program or college is advantageous but is not required for this position.

If you would like to be considered for this opportunity, email your resume and cover letter to [email protected]. Due to the number of resumes we receive we are unable to contact all applicants, but we do keep resumes on file and if you do not hear from us for this position, we may contact you in the future if a more suitable position becomes available. Feel free to email us your resume if you are not interested in this position but would like us to consider you for other positions, as well.

I wanted to thank everyone at Project Genius for their hard work this year at their schools, especially considering the many difficulties the world has faced these past few years. I hope our team can enjoy their holidays, whether it is here in Japan or abroad.

For the last several years at the junior high school where I teach we do a crafts activity in the last class junior high school first grade class of the year. I am from California, so I never experienced a "White Christmas" until I came to Japan. The few instructions needed to explain how to make a snowflake using just a pair of scissors and a piece of paper (cut, triangle, fold) is well within our student's English ability. I am also pretty bad at crafts myself, so once students understand what to do they inevitably create much more elaborate snowflakes than I could even imagine.

And while the two instructors from Project Genius at my school are from the west coast of the US, our school's JET instructor from Australia. She described what having Christmas in Australia was like while also having our students listen to an Australian version of Jingle Bells.

I also learned some new words through this lesson, such as ute and swaggie.

We are also entering our recruiting season. If you are interested in working for us please check Craigslist or Gaijinpot for our latest openings or send us your resume directly via this form.

Please have a safe and enjoyable holiday season!

As we get closer and closer to summer vacation a trend that I’ve noticed is the general decline in motivation in the students as well as in teachers. I’m sure we can all relate to the anticipation of the end of school and the two-month break, away from all responsibilities. But, before we can completely shut our brains off and binge whatever is the latest trending content on Netflix, we need to sludge through this last month.

One of the biggest hurdles for me (and possibly) other native teachers is dealing with the lack of motivation amongst the students. I’m sure we can all remember back when we were students and our general attitude towards school during the last month before a long break. So, how can we ensure that their motivation doesn’t decrease? A technique that works best for me is managing my own energy and motivation.

As teachers we see our students on a daily basis. Our day-to-day energy, vibes and emotional state can be easily picked up by them. If we ourselves are not motivated we can’t expect the students to behave otherwise. That’s why for me, especially during the last month before a long break, I make all my lessons centered around review games or activities that get the students up and moving. If I’m excited by the lesson I’m putting out there, my students can pick up on my energy. This in return can create a positive feedback loop where teachers and students are working together, bouncing off of each others energy and keeping each other motivated.

A site that I frequent quite often to get templates for in class review games and such is ‘taysteachingtools’. There we can find Mario themed games, Pokemon themed ones, and loads more. My high school students respond really positively to the Mario themed review games. Mix that with friendly group competition and some black thunder chocolate snacks I can keep my student’s motivation levels up right their final exam.

What are some of your techniques during this period?

I was told to be ready to have a self introduction lesson when I first came to Japan. It was 1998, I couldn’t just look up online for some photos to insert into a powerpoint and show that in class. I couldn't google anything that summer of 1998, let alone to get ideas for self introduction lessons. I did, though, go around my hometown and took some snapshots to bring. With the developed photos in my bag I got on the plane with plans to do my best in class. The self introduction lesson I remember most clearly now was the one that failed. I went into the class at this small junior high school in the mountains, one where a few months later would be surrounded by 3 meters of snow. As I started talking I could sense the kids had no idea what I was saying, and maybe not much interest, as well.  Finally, when the class was over, I thought the JTE would give some advice at best or be upset at worst, but all he said was, let's do it again in our next class.

I recently observed a veteran teacher who we just hired and he did this lesson quite well, though I wonder how I would have done with the ability to create a powerpoint and show it to the class. So, yes, even though it is possible to successfully do this kind of self-intro lesson I have known some teachers who think self-introduction lessons are, successful or not, not important and a waste of time. I disagree, however. A mentor of mine once mentioned that the teachers most remembered were those who shared some bit of themselves with their students. So I always think it is good that students know a little bit about me.

But how can I guess what they want to know? Although I know I can do a much better job with a self intro lesson today today than I did in 1998, just like what I found interesting in my hometown probably was not interesting to my students in rural Japan at the time, what I find interesting today might not interest my junior high school students today. I realized the way to ensure students find out something they are actually interested in, and also make this a much more interactive activity, was to have the students ask questions about what they want to know about me rather than me telling them what I think is interesting about me to them.

To me, this has several benefits. First, since it is more interactive it keeps the students in the class more involved. Even if they are only listening, they are much more interested to see how I answer their classmates' questions rather than just talking to them. Second, it lets kids ask questions they are interested in. 

Third, and maybe the most important point, is it allows me to talk to the students at their English level.  One of the disadvantages of asking EFL students to ask questions is they are not going to be able to ask all the questions they may have but if they can’t understand me in English from the start it will be difficult to build a trusting relationship in English. By keeping the first class in English and asking and answering questions at their level lets them make a direct connection with me right away with information they are interested in learning in English 

This lesson also acts as a quick level check for the class as a whole and for individual students.  Depending on the size of the class, I try to get every student  to ask a question, which allows me to quickly learn if they are shy or outgoing, if they are strong at English or weak, etc. If it is a one off substitution that isn’t a major concern, but if I am their new teacher for the year, it lets me learn a lot about the class in a short amount of time.

Although I mainly now do this lesson with junior or senior high school students, I have done it at university classes and even small group adult business English lessons. Below are a few examples of some questions and what I do with the questions.

This is from a high school class where I was the substitute for the day. I made it into a quiz and gave students two choices per question.

This was at a class for university students planning on going abroad, so this activity also doubled as a way to prepare students for small talk when they would meet new people. After I answer the questions I put students into pairs and/or small groups. Each group has a small game board and some dice. They roll the dice and when they land on a number they have to answer the question that corresponds to that number.

This is from the first class of this year with the second year students I teach at my junior high school. I do sometimes tell students, especially older students, that they can't ask Yes/No questions but not this day.

It’s been a rough few years with Covid and online classes. Now that things are finally going back to normal how is everyone adjusting?

My school held online classes for the last month during the last school term. While I still had to commute to school to do the classes, compared to in person teaching it was definitely more relaxed. 

During my three years in Japan, this was my first time doing online lessons at any of my schools. So for me at least, it was extra stressful. Not only going into the process of doing online lessons but also coming out from this process. 

Before coming to Project Genius I worked at an ALT dispatch company. At that time, I was used more as a secondary assistant. In other words, my role was less impactful. Therefore when Covid first hit and a lot of schools went to online lessons, I was spared from that. 

That’s why this was my first time doing online lessons. The process going into it was stressful. Setting up teams, changing lesson plans so that students can participate online, and rescheduling the students final speaking test before their exam. It took a week to really get into the flow. It was also during this time that I found the merits of online classes. But, as fast as online classes came, it also went away.

Coming into this new school year, and doing the first in person lesson again after close to two month I was nervous again. But, a highlight of my school is that the teachers are given one week before the official start of classes to not only prepare but also to interact with the students and other teachers. It may seem like a small thing, but it definitely made the transition into the new year and new classes much easier. 

I know with Covid, a lot of schools most likely held online lessons. So I’m curious as to how everyone is adjusting to this switch back to in person classes.

English teachers in Japan often tell themselves that one reason students don’t progress is that they are afraid to make mistakes. But are we as teachers just as willing to make mistakes ourselves?

I taught English at public elementary schools in Tokyo in the early 2000s. Teaching English at elementary schools was still experimental at the time and so I was responsible for creating all the lessons I was teaching. I had excitedly prepared all the materials for this interactive lesson that I thought would just mesmerize the students. From the moment the bell rang, however, there was just no response to anything I did that day. I was really down and depressed after that class. I asked the homeroom teacher who I co-taught the class with at that school why the students were so unresponsive and he just said the culture festival was coming up so students were really tired preparing for that. Thinking back, the lesson probably wasn't as great as I thought it was but from then on I have kept an eye on what students are doing outside class while thinking about either the yearly curriculum or an individual lesson.

When I think of language learning mistakes I have made, though, I always come back to one I made when I was living in Niigata as a JET program participant. As you may know, Niigata is snow country. But I grew up on the coast in California, which is defenantly not snow country, and I had only actually seen snow just a few months before coming to Japan. So during my first winter I was glued to the TV trying to figure out weather forcasts. One day I saw on the TV the term 大雪, which means heavy snow. I knew 雪, or snow, was pronounced yuki. I thought the 大 (big) would be pronounced like 大学 (university or daigaku). I was in a meeting a few days later at the local board of education and I said it will be daiyuki. Everyone looked puzzled until they started laughing after trying to understand what I was trying to say. My JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) who was in the meeting explained that it was pronounced ooyuki not daiyuki.

I am sure students are afraid of such an experience. I can’t say I was in good spirits myself immediately after making that mistake, nor am I everytime I make mistakes in my daily life.  When making a mistake in the classroom, though, I try to keep in mind that even the smallest error is, in addition to giving the students a chance to correct their teacher while also being able to teach their fellow students something, an opporunity to show them making mistakes is not something to be embarrassed by but rather an opportunity to learn something new. If we as teachers are willing to show our students that it is okay to make mistakes hopefully they will see the value in taking risks and making mistakes as they progress on their English learning journey.