Internship - 初日

Friday was my first day at Make Way. I had the pleasure of supporting Sina's classes. I was very happy to see how supportive he was towards his students, and was impressed by the level of English they understood. Sina's positive attitude and dynamic teaching approach inspired confidence in his students to respond and converse in English. Encouraging and praising students is very important for their success.

Yuu's lesson was very interesting as he voiced his opinions intelligently. We spoke about education and exchanged opinions on its purpose and the pros and cons of the English and Japanese school　systems. Also, it was very pleasing to see Chisa and Yuriko's lesson, as they were excited and lively in their participation. I was impressed by their fluency.

I think that confidence is the most important thing when speaking a second language. It doesn't matter if it is not 100% perfect - it is always best to try. It is better to try and get it a little bit wrong, than to not say anything at all!

I look forward to this week and am excited to meet more people and learn more things.

よろしくお願いしま～す！

Maya

ルール・マナーについて

※みんな大好き！メイクウエイのGerry先生からのメッセージ、読んでね！

Hi there !

How are you ? Did you enjoy your Golden Week ?

I am Gerry and today I wanted to talk about the book I read after I started teaching at Make Way : "The essential 55" by Ron Clark. This book is about a list of rules a famous teacher in the US has been using to help discipline and motivate his students while he was teaching in very difficult environment such as schools in the scary district of Harlem. This book is apparently quite famous but I must confess I had never heard about it before I started reading it...

At first, I thought this is a book about basic behaviour rules that children should be taught. Then I realized that most of the rules were so obvious and logical to me that I started wondering why someone needed to write a book about such simple and standard rules about behaviour, politeness and being considerate with the people around you. But I continued reading as I really liked all the anecdotes that Ron Clark is adding to illustrate the usefulness of each rules. That's when I realised that maybe those rules were not obvious for everyone and that sometimes someone needed to teach them to kids or at least remind them.
I kind of felt sad to learn that actually so many kids didn't know a thing about such basic and fundamental rules of respect and politeness. And I also realised how lucky I was to have received myself such a complete education by my parents and family members. Most of the rules in the book have indeed accompanied me ever since I was a kid, but I also remember that while I was teaching in China so many kids were lacking those fundamentals and I do believe it would be very useful for them to read this book !

On the other hand, when I arrived in Japan I was very positively surprised to see how well-behaved Japanese children are ! It is truely a pleasure to work with them !
Though most of the rules in the book are obvious for properly educated people it is still important to insist on them with younger generations so that good behaviour and respect keep being the main standard in our too often violent world !

My favorite rule is rule 51 "Live so that you will never have regrets !". I have personally tried to live by this rule myself for quite a few years now ever since my mum, who is one of the wisest person I know, taught me this rule. It is a challenging rule to follow but it also helps you to take up challenges in your life and it brings you pride which is important to feel as ease in your daily life !

Finally if you have some time and you haven't read yet this book I recommend it you might have different opinions sometimes but that's normal as everyone is unique and has its own vision of the world but I am pretty sure that you will find at least one rule that is really corresponding to you.

Have fun !

Gerry