How I teach the high school program
I often quote Pablo Picasso: I am always doing that which I cannot do in order to learn how to do it.
I think this quote expresses the NELP program very well. I always tell my students that the best way to learn how to do something is just to do it. It saves a lot of talking.
As well, I tell my students "You can't learn something without making mistakes. You do it. You do it wrong. I adjust. You do it again. You do it better." It's like my other favorite NELP quote (this time from Samuel Beckett): "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
I was telling my students just today that it's a FAILING of education that we teachers always try to tell students exactly what to do and how to do it and what to give us so that we'll be happy. Bosses and supervisors and managers almost NEVER tell their workers exactly what they want. They often simply say "Do it." And then if it's not what they want, they say "Do it again."
It's my belief that if we ONLY teach our students how to follow directions, we're only preparing them to be FOLLOWERS. If we want these young women to go out into the world and be LEADERS, we must teach them to think, to do things they don't know how to do, to do things they've never done before, to do things that are OUTSIDE of their "comfort zone."
Naturally, this makes some of my students extremely unhappy because they never know: "Am I doing it right? Is this good enough? Is this what Mark is looking for?" I'm very sorry to make my students suffer, but I believe this experience is very good for them because this is what their employers will expect of them.
Naturally, none of my girls believe they will someday be "The Boss". But being a manager or supervisor or boss ... being a LEADER ... is something that people very rarely choose for themselves. It's often something that, initially, someone asks them to become.
My high school students are creative, hardworking and brilliantly intelligent. I have NO DOUBT that they really will be the leaders of tomorrow. I just hope I can prepare them just a little and help them just a little even so that someday they will be GREAT leaders.
Date: 21:53｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
The High School Program
This term, in the high school first grade class, we're discussing business. More specific, we're discussing leadership and organization.
The students had three winter vacation assignments.
1. The students had to write an agenda for a business meeting.
2. The students had to find three jokes.
3. The students had to answer this question: What is a successful business meeting?
In our first lesson, we had a discussion. The topic was: What is a successful manager? We talked about the qualities of a good boss.
In our first writing lesson, we talked about how to write an agenda for a meeting.
Today, we talked about how to host a meeting. Specifically we talked about how to open a meeting, how to introduce ourselves confidently to a group, how to introduce ourselves professionally to an individual, and how to show confidence. I also talked to the students a bit more about writing an agenda.
Next Tuesday, we're going to talk about refrigerators, and next Thursday we'll talk about the importance of humor as a business and management tool.
Date: 21:42｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Lacing up our shoes in k1
This week, the high school students had an essay in our writing class. The assignment was about procedural language, and the students were supposed to write a procedure for lacing up their shoes. HOWEVER, they weren't supposed to do it in the way they usually do. They were supposed to find a NEW way to lace their shoes.
Some of the students did diagrams, which was all right, but I would have preferred them to use language and give instructions. A couple students gave instructions for how they USUALLY lace their shoes.
However, this was a learning experience. Their next assignment is to find an appliance in their home that takes at least five steps to operate and write a procedure for operation.
One of the things I explained to the students is that in almost every job I've ever had, I've written a procedure manual on how to work the equipment (often because I was the only one at the time who actually knew HOW to operate the equipment, being the company guinea pig and all). So, I showed them the "Operations Manual" I made for Seishin, with instructions on everything from putting grades into the computer, to using the copy machine, to filling out necessary forms.
Being able to write a procedure is a very useful skill. Saves a lot of time in explaining things to people. Just hand them the book and tell them to follow the steps!
Date: 07:58｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Visit by professor
This week my high school first grade NELP class was visited by an instructor from Chugoku Junior College.
Once again, he did a very interesting lesson about English music! He'll be visiting again next Friday with another lesson!
Date: 21:01｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Pictures from High School First Grade
Here are some pictures of my high school first grade students preparing for tomorrow's big debate!
Date: 18:40｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
photos from 2009-2010 (part 6)
Photos from the Seishin Girls' High School Speech Contest. There were eight recitations, including one by one of my junior high school third graders. There were also eight original speeches, including three by members of my high school first grade class, and one by one of the high school 8th period NELP students.
Date: 21:26｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
photos from 2009-2010 (part 3)
Here are pictures from the high school NELP classes
Date: 20:58｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
In the High School Program
Two weeks ago, the high school first graders talked about giving news interviews.
Last week, a visiting instructor from Chugoku Junior College began an excellent lesson on how to make a resume. The visiting instructor will return this week to continue the lesson.
After that, we'll have only one lesson left, and most of that lesson will be spent on quizzes to prepare the students for their final exams.
Two weeks ago, the high school second graders talked about sarcasm and irony in humor.
Last week, they talked about parody.
This week, we will talk about practical jokes, pranks and physical humor.
Next week, we will perform one kind of humor that we studied this term.
So far, the high school first grade students have taken their announcement quiz, the completion quiz, the comprehension quiz, and the conversation quiz.
The high school second grade students have taken their announcement quiz, the completion quiz, the comprehension quiz, the conversation quiz, the dictation quiz and the practical listening quiz.
The practical listening quiz was the most fun, because in Quiz 5 of practical listening, the students must follow a series of verbal instructions to navigate through a town (using Google Earth) to a specific location.
Other than a few wrong turns, things went mostly well.
Date: 10:24｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Update on the High School Program
Starting from the beginning of Third Term, the High School NELP program has undergone a complete transformation. Up to now, we've been using the book Totally True from Oxford. This is a good book, and there's a lot I like about it, but it has two main problems: first, the level is two easy for my students; and second, it's more of a reading-based textbook, and I'd like a more listening-based curriculum.
My original plan was to replace the Totally True curriculum with a video-based curriculum that would mirror some of the things I've done with the junior high school. However, there were several problems with this idea.
My first concern was that not everyone might be able to view the video files. I tried it on both a Mac and a PC, but it's not necessarily a guarantee that everyone's system will be compatible. Likewise, not everyone may have consistent access to a computer to view the video files. My second, and more important concern however was the purpose of the video-based curriculum.
My philosophy of education is that education should prepare young people for their future. Education should be practical, and applicable. Likewise, the program should further and challenge the learners' English language ability.
I feel that the junior high NELP program fulfills these two points in that there is a noticeable progression to the curriculum, the curriculum is challenging, and the curriculum is designed to develop in students skills and concepts that I believe will be of value to them later on in life.
However, I felt concerns that perhaps the high school's video-based curriculum did not fulfill these criteria. I began to ask myself a number of important questions. What is the goal of this curriculum? Does this curriculum prepare students for life? Will this curriculum be of benefit to the students later on? I had doubts.
Luckily, as I was pondering these things, several members of the NELP committee came to me with an idea for a project they wanted me to attempt. The project would take two terms, beginning in junior high school third grade third term and ending in high school first grade first term.
This meant that part of the curriculum I was planning would have to be replaced. However, ultimately this project inspired me to shelve my current concept for a high school curriculum and begin work on a new curriculum, a curriculum that would satisfy my educational philosophy.
So, instead of a video based curriculum, I have now developed a project-based curriculum. Half of the curriculum will focus on test preparation. I have developed a series of quizzes: one hundred and fifty quizzes to be precise. These quizzes are designed to develop the students' language skills and prepare them for the pre-1st and 1st grade Eiken STEP tests, the TOEIC test, the TOEFL test, and finally the Center Test and university entrance exams. In addition, it will develop skills beyond those, skills which I strongly believe will have real-world applications for the students.
The other half of the curriculum will be career oriented. In addition to being an English teacher since 1992, I've also worked for in a university library, a law office, a safety engineering office and for a phone company. This has given me a unique perspective on careers and on what skills could be useful to students in their careers.
Our first project, starting in junior high third grade and finishing in high school first grade, will be a debate. We've done debates in the past, but this will be a huge step forward. I'll be teaching the students the rules and procedures for parliamentary debate. We'll also be studying logic, argument, fallacies and more. This project could help students prepare for careers in law and government, but could also help in other careers, as sometimes within corporations there are debates on various issues and proposals. In addition, students considering careers in science and medicine could develop important skills related to research that could help them later.
Future projects will include presentation, public speaking, persuasive speech, making proposals, demonstrating products, familiarity with office machines, humor, broadcast journalism, business etiquette, interview skills and more. I'm further considering introducing the students to video editing, audio editing and image editing.
In this way, I hope to achieve my goal of making a curriculum that prepares the students for their future.
Date: 22:30｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
New Developments in the High School Program
The Seishin High School English Program is going to go through a major remodeling next April. Both the SELP program and the NELP program are going to be completely turned around, updated and improved.
First, in the SELP program, we're going to change books. Our current textbook, Totally True, is a good book and we've liked it, but we feel that this book is not really meeting our needs and goals. First,the book is too easy. It's well below the level that our high school students are studying in their regular English classes. Secondly, it's a reading-based program, and that really isn't going to fit our new agenda for Oral Communication. Starting in September, we're going to aggressively pursue listening in our classes. We'll start by introducing activities from the new listening-based textbook we'll adopt in April. This textbook is one of the most advanced listening text-books I've found, but is still within the ability of our students.
One of our major goals is to improve university entrance exam scores, and so we chose a textbook that will help our students towards that goal. In addition, our students will be given listening activities related to the Eiken STEP Test, the TOEIC test, and most importantly the CENTER test. I want our students to be prepared for a wide variety of tests and situations, and this listening-based curriculum will go a long way towards that goal.
We will STILL have speaking, but listening will play a much stronger role, and I expect at least half of every class will be devoted to listening. Grammar and reading will now be the domain of the regular English teachers, and our English Conversation teachers will focus just on listening and speaking, bringing us back to our original role within the English department curriculum.
The NELP students, on the other hand, are way beyond the activities in the new listening textbook. As such, we're going to have a new curriculum in the high school that will build much more firmly on what the students have learned in our junior high NELP program.
The new High School NELP program will be an audio-video based program. As we did with the junior high reading-based program, wherein we learned a variety of styles and purposes in English language communication by studying poetry, fiction, non-fiction and current events and issues, in the High School program, the students will learn a variety of styles and purposes in English language communication by studying many different kinds of audio and video programs.
In the new High School NELP curriculum students will study commercials and public service announcements, music videos and songs, news reports, short documentary videos, short films, and lectures on important issues.
For commercials and public service announcements, students will naturally study persuasive language, but they will also talk about how audio and images are used in communication of ideas.
Music videos and songs will allow students to look at a very different kind of English than they normally study. We'll also be looking at some of the visuals in the music videos and talking about the contrast between what they see and what they hear.
Through news reports, we'll ask students to scan what they see and hear to find information.
Short documentary films will expose students to educational language.
Through short films, we'll be able to explore different kinds of language, different means of communication. We'll also talk about a variety of issues.
Through lectures on current issues, students will be exposed to very, very high-level academic language, and will be expected to develop and express views and opinions on those issues.
So what will we cover?
In music, we'll cover an award-winning music video by music group REM, a song by comedian Allen Sherman, an amusing song about a broken guitar, a song by country music star Taylor Swift (who at age 20 has already won 22 awards), a lecture by award winning broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (who wonan Academy Award, nine Tony awards and one Tony Lifetime Achievement Award - more than any other composer, seven Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize) as he lectures a students on how to perform one of his songs, and Arlo Guthrie's epic song/story "Alice's Restaurant (an meandering 18 minute story that didn't win any awards, but is amusing nonetheless), a funny political song by The Pheromones, and a parody of the troubles of heiress Paris Hilton.
In news we'll cover an exploding whale, a parody of Mac simplicity, a man who makes money selling real videos of real criminals committing crimes, a fake abduction, food tampering, and an anchor woman who refused to report a story that she felt wasn't 'newsworthy'.
In commercials, we'll look at sports fanatics, the importance of learning good listening comprehension, a beer commercial, a funny commercial about pets, an inspiring coca-cola commercial, a car commercial about the importance of intelligence, a rum ad about friendship, a funny commercial for an online TV station, a funny commercial comparing Macs and PCs, a public service announcement about the importance of strong character, a sweet public service announcement about the importance of making time for one's family, a funny commercial about not buying the wrong gift, a recruiting ad for the US Marines, a funny levi's commercial, and a very funny ad about motivating people in the office.
In non-fiction, we'll cover a documentary about education and changing technology, a documentary about making hot dogs, a presentation about the cause of the current financial meltdown, an illustration of humankind's place in the universe, and much more.
In short films, we'll cover a wide variety of award winning short films including a manager who uses a laundry mistake to inspire his team, a space-pilot having a little trouble with his coffee machine, hysteria and paranoia on a quiet American street (mirroring not only McCarthyism but the current climate of fear), a misunderstood boy, a government agent who can never seem to catch a slippery criminal, two futuristic police officers on a call that is not as routine as it seems, a woman with a haunted - but confused - kitchen, a man on a ship who can't remember who he is but who seems to know that the ship is in danger, a young man and a young woman who begin a complicated romance by communicating office window to office window using signs, a psychiatrist who discovers that his time is up, a mysterious DJ with the power to undo bad events, a maniacal bomb manufacturer who lives in fear, and finally an old woman who lives in terror that death will find her.
In lectures, we'll study TED talks. TED is an international lecture series about Technology, Entertainment and Design, and includes some very amazing lectures. Our lectures will include a man who stayed silent by choice for seventeen years, a man who demonstrates the power of the mind, a man who explains the importance of spaghetti sauce, a short and funny talk by former vice-president Al Gore about climate change, an amazing presentation about how schools sometimes kill creativity, a presentation about happiness and brain chemistry, an amazing speech about parasites that infect ants and ideas that infect people, and finally an inspiring speech about wisdom and thinking in the modern world.
In addition, we'll also, when time allows, discuss famous works of art, both in the junior high and high school.
Students will study the audio and visual programs at home and will then discuss them in class. In addition there will be activities for them to complete for each program, including pre-listening/pre-viewing activities, listening/viewing activities, and post-listening/post-viewing activities.
In our other lessons, we'll do activities in preparation for the the center test and STEP tests.
And that, in a large nutshell, is the plan for the new high school curriculum that will start in April
Date: 12:35｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Lessons with Visiting Professors
Four times this term, professors visited my high school first grade NELP class. This was a really wonderful opportunity for my class, and I wish sincerely I had taken some pictures, or better yet, video. The only reason I didn't take photos or video was that I didn't want to disturb the professors.
I'm not sure if it's okay to say who they were or where they usually teach, so I'll keep their identities confidential, however, the lessons were really outstanding.
The first professor gave two very interesting lectures about culture. Although the lessons were in Japanese, and I therefore sometimes had trouble following what was being discussed, the students told me that they were very happy with the lessons and that the lessons were very informative and interesting. I think this was also a good opportunity to introduce the students to the kinds of lessons they might expect in a university English class.
The second professor was also outstanding and I was really wowed by the lessons. This professor introduced the students to music. We've used music in my classes before, but this professor really captured the students' interest and I know the students enjoyed the lessons a lot. The professor also introduced the students to The Muppet Show, a TV show from America by the creators of Sesame Street, but for a much older audience. This was entertaining for me as well.
The highlight, and the one point I sooooo wish I had caught on tape, was seeing my high school first graders singing 'Hey, Paula' with the visiting professor. It was really great.
I think inviting university professors to give lessons to the high school NELP students is WONDERFUL idea, and I'm very much looking forward to next term's lessons.
Date: 13:57｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
High School NELP Program
Our high school NELP program is going well. I currently have 4 students in my English Conversation class. We study the same oral communication textbook that the SELP students use: Totally True from Oxford. However, we study it at a much faster pace. It also helps that we have a multi-media classroom because it becomes much easier to show how the textbook relates to things in real life.
For example, Lesson 1 was about a man named Scott Ginsberg.
So we looked at Mr. Ginsberg's webpage:
and we watched a news report about Mr. Ginsberg (available on his webpage):
This helps keep our lessons current and relevant, and really helps students see that we're studying things in the real world, and not merely reading textbook examples.
In Addition, our class will be visited periodically by university professors who will give one-day lectures/seminars/lessons etc. from time to time. I'm sure the students will be looking forward to that as well.
In my 8th Period Independent Studies Class, the students are preparing for the STEP test and the TOEIC test. We have a lot of study books in the classroom, and the students, as the course name suggests, mostly study by themselves.
My job is mostly to make materials available and help them learn the best ways to prepare for and take a standardized test.
Date: 10:47｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
High School Program
This year we are beginning our high school NELP program. We currently have 4 regular High School First Grade NELP students, and 8 mixed-grade NELP students.
Simply put, students who graduate from Seishin Junior High School's NELP program, or who graduate from Seishin Junior High School and have passed the Eiken Second Grade STEP test, are eligible to join the High School NELP Oral Communication Class. Any student, both graduates of Seishin Junior High School as well as graduates of other junior high schools, who has passed the Eiken Second Grade STEP test is eligible to join our 8th Period NELP class.
The 8th Period NELP class is after school on Friday, from 16:15 to 17:00. There are three different courses and three different teachers. Our current Princeton in Asia intern, Claire, will teach Creative Communication. This course will include conversation, skits and role-plays. It is designed more for students who are interested in the humanities and conversational English. Shelly will teach Research Topics. This course is designed more for our science students, and is geared more for presentations, research papers and formal English. I will teach Independent Studies. This is for students interested in studying for English proficiency tests such as Eiken, TOEIC, TOEFL and others, as well as students who want more time to study their regular English work.
These courses will include a mix of first, second and third grade students. Each term, students may change the course they are studying. I hope that this will be a successful program. I'm currently teaching my three former junior high school third grade NELP students in my independent studies course, but I'm not sure if they will stay in my course next term. This will be my fourth year teaching two of these students, and my third year teaching the other student, and I'm afraid they may be a little tired of me, as evidenced by the student who, upon hearing that I would be her teacher again, made a heart-breaking display of disappointment. Perhaps she was hoping for a teacher with more hair?
Date: 08:16｜Permalink｜Author：nelp