Today I was invited by the Seigakuin University to do 2 lectures to teachers and students near Tokyo.

Usually after being abroad I get really depressed with the state of teacher training in Japan. This morning some of it was as boring as anything with very dodgy English being taught, but generally things were pretty good. One class was really good, going through lots of bad activities (where I was getting worried) but then saying why they are bad and introducing good ones. I actually picked up quite a lot of ideas there and I’ll write them up for you this week. It was also nice that when the lecturer got stuck on how to teach something he actually asked me for help, which is nice to be appreciated.

Then it was the key note speech. Dr Kajita’s picture looked like it was going to be really boring. He’s one of the architects of Japan’s educational policy and I was just waiting for some xenophobic nationalist rant about why Japan is superior to everyone else on Earth. But then he starts out by saying “We’re all together sailing in the same ship. Some people think this ship is called Japan. Some people think it’s called Korea or China or Russia. But it’s not. The ship’s called “Earth” and we’re all in it together.”. Wow. He then continued on saying his priorities are a) maths and science b) English (so we can communicate with other countries in Asia) then 3) learn Japanese history and culture. He was talking about development projects in South America, how to resolve political disputes and of course child development and education, in a very surprising and knowledgeable way. He’s probably the first Japanese government advisor I’ve heard who really knows his stuff. Wow. Can we have this guy as Prime Minister please?

I was on next! Usually I spend half my workshop saying just the things that Dr Kajita had just said, which was great as it freed me up to do more problem solving and confidence training for the teachers. Very often teachers in Tokyo can be “just in it for the money” (they must be really bad at maths if they believe that though!) but today’s teachers were excellent. We did some activities ( Genki Warm Up + Come on, Come on) but mostly it was Q&A about the problems they were having and how to solve them. I said “lecture” earlier but it ends up being a mass rock concert with everyone leaving the room thinking “Wow, I really can do anything”. Even the second class, it was their 5th of the day, were still super genki at 5:30 and were totally into what I was doing. What a great way to conquer jet lag!

Then we walked outside straight into a festival. Nice.

So it was a good day and as I mentioned earlier, check back later in the week as I’ll write up some of the nice ideas I got this morning.