I don’t know what it is about the schools in Nagasaki prefecture, they not only have some of the best kids in the country but the teachers are always super motivated. Well actually, if you think about what day it is today, the anniversary of the dropping of the world’s 2nd nuclear bomb on Nagasaki city, I guess that might explain a certain passion for international understanding education.

Today’s school is really small, 10 teachers, but they’ve decided to start English and International Understanding seriously from this year. Unlike many schools it’s not just one or two teachers, but they all seemed quite into it.

Today was the basic “from the beginning” session ( the fourth time I’ve done it this week!), to prepare them for tomorrow’s actual practice teaching sessions, which should be fun. We spent a lot of time on the curriculum side of things. They have one they’ve made themselves, but it is very much in the “things we think we should be teaching” camp, and it was good to go through the themes and actually see if they are useful or not for the kids. Hopefully they’ll adopt the Genki English curriculum as there is so much more to it than simply gathering together a few topics and games!

By the end of the workshop they were all totally energised and “quite moved” they said. And as usual they said “We should have invited you to talk to all the teachers in the city!”. How can I get that across before I travel to a place?

Then a quick shower and the head teacher hosted a big BBQ party for everyone in his massive, massive house ( what is it about Nagasaki and big, posh houses as well?). That was great though, and a couple of the local ALTs came along which was cool. Actually the school were really wanting to invite them but were a bit hesitant saying “well, but maybe they won’t want to come? Or they’ll be too busy?” to which my reply was “Invite them, they’ll love it!”. If you’ve just arrived as an ALT, the first week is amazing, you’re put up in a big hotel in Tokyo, have orientations, get to meet the mayor etc. then in the 2nd week, that’s when the loneliness can set in. So if you have a new ALT in your town, don’t be shy about asking them to events, they probably aren’t too busy, they’ll most probably love it!