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My teaching life is changing quite a bit this month. I have now taken on two additional English classes on Thursdays. The age groups are 8-10 and 40-50, respectively. Teaching such diverse age groups keeps me on my toes with respect to presentation and technique. I have found that younger children respond far better when I use varying tones of voice, over-emphasizing almost every point I make. Dynamic and visual presentation is essential for teaching Japanese children. In this respect, they don't differ from American children very much.

The 40-50 English class is supposed to finish by 9pm, but if everyone participates heavily it may finish as late as 10. My 40-50 year olds (ha!) speak conversational English, so it is my job to smooth out their grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. Although I loosely follow a textbook, my primary goal is get my students to hold interesting English conversations with each other. We talk about Japan, Japanese food, America, American food... Actually, politics and economics are pet topics as well. I sometimes learn as much about Japanese culture as my students learn English.

I also started a 2 hour/week speech class today for my MK students in the Keiyo Christian school where I teach. Although I will have to be flexible and open minded because I am dealing with students of all ages - between 8 and 16 years of age (!!!) - I hope that it will one day resemble Nate Wilson's rhetoric class which I attended at New Saint Andrews College (Moscow, ID) a few years ago. My goal is 1) to provide a positive opportunity for the younger kids to speak to an audience, and 2) to provide further practice and accountability for my English-speaking high school students in persuasive speaking/writing. The speech class will be fully integrated with the HS students' other studies, providing a place for them to read their essays and research papers from their other classes. I'm really excited about speech class - please pray that it will be a positive experience for all the students.

I'm sorry for the lack of photos recently, but most of my photos got deleted by accident, which is really lame, because my Prefecture had a 30-year-snow recently (like, a foot), and Chiba looked really beautiful covered with snow.