KobeConference

It’s one of those days where I feel like I have a real job because I dressed all professionally. I took new pantyhose (I like never wear hose) out of their box, put them on under my skirt, and they lasted like a whole 48 minutes without getting a run..!

I just finished my assignment for Kobe conference. And it’s actually pretty damn good, all things considered. All things being, total apathy toward KobeConference assignments (since last year we spent approximately twelve minutes discussing the reports of eight people), a pile of other stuff to do (situation normal), and the directions for the assignment being (and now I’m quoting, because this shit is hilarious) “every participant is requested to prepare one lesson plan that was effective in having students experience a lot of language activities.” The next page details how to format your report (lesson plan? report? essay?) in terms of font, margins, number of words per line and lines per page (no shit). It also provides the title of your.. one page: "”How to Make Team-Teaching Class More Effective in Having Students Experience A Lot of Language Activities.”

I feel like.. if I wanted to poke fun at my mid-year conference’s effectiveness, I could not have done any better. Bless its little heart.

Kobe Conference, actually, is much more about meeting all the Hyogo JETs, having dinner in Kobe, happy hour with said Hyogo JETs, and being strategically placed near movie theatres on Friday when Harry Potter hits the ground in Japan (armed, of course, with our old graduation robes and homemade AWESOMENESS wands! …Just me?).

Apparently it is also about proximity to the Kobe-Sanda shopping outlets for the weekend.

I mean.. I should be exasperated that I’m going to a conference when I should be teaching elementary school (because I’ll do a lot more good in elementary than I will in Kobe, maybe), but I like playing business sometimes.

I disregarded the instructions for the assignment and made it a modified chart-form like I always see lesson plans laid out, and much like I lay them out for myself every other day when I create them for elementary school anyway. Maybe my radical methods will stand out. My lesson plan isn’t half bad either. I think “a lot of language activities” means all four areas (speaking, listening, reading, writing), so I just pulled/modded a day’s lessons we did with the first year class a few months ago that seemed to cover most of them.

Come on language teachers. Let’s not do more. Let’s do less, and do it better. Kids don’t need to learn a thousand more words. They need to learn how to actually use the thousand they are already expected to know.