Summer Brizzzy… at the BOE

The days of having no work in the Summer as a Tokushima City ALT are all over. When I first arrived in Tokushima in 2003, I was somewhat spoiled by a lose policy which allowed ALTs to have their Summer breaks primarily free. This free time was once a great opportunity to see many parts of Tokushima and other parts of Japan, however, due to a tightening budget and a shift to include weekly classes at the Elementary schools, this Summer has been unusually busy. As of 1 of 8 ALTs working directly for the Tokushima City Board of Education (BOE), we created the first ever Tokushima City Elementary School English curriculum with the help of various consultants back in the Spring. With this new curriculum, which serves more as a guideline to what should be taught at each grade level, a structure for teaching is now in place. Although this curriculum has been in place for many months now, this Summer serves as an opportunity to introduce the curriculum formally to elementary school teachers around the city. Because there has been no formal English curriculum at the elementary school level, we’ve been conducting workshops on topics from: understanding the new curriculum; learning how to lesson plan with the ALT; to basic adult English conversation classes.