Wednesday, September 24, 2014

teaching english beyond the classroom

This past Tuesday marked an important moment in my work as a JET here in Japan. Along with a fellow ALT, I started an 英会話 in my hometown. While most ALTs will find this rather mundane (many JETs host classes of their own), it's exciting for me because to my knowledge, my town has never had one before. Having something I can point at and say "I started that!" is nice, as opposed to taking over responsibility for a project somebody else had a vision for. This is also one of the rare opportunities I get to meet new people and make friends in my community; unlike Tanzania, people aren't too keen about random visitors coming to their home for no particular reason but to see what they're up to. Unfortunately, I've had to restrain myself from sharing that particular part of Tanzanian culture with my town, as I've told many of my Japanese friends.