Early Career English Teacher

I’ve read a book “Early Career English Teacher In Action” chapter 1 introduction. The book mentioned many interesting facts. Firstly I would like to talk about that 10 percent of new teachers leave after the first year. I am not quite sure what English education is like in the US but 10 percent is not the small rate. I can feel teaching is not easy with this number. In japan, teachers have to work harder as well and the rate of teachers who quit the job within three years is approximately 5 percent. Of course they need to give a lecture, do a lot of paper works and moreover, they have to be in charge of club activities. New teachers will be mostly assigned to be a coach in a sport club. Even though they have never done that before and it is kind of demanding because basically club activities are held after school and Saturday and Sunday as well so they hardly get a rest. I think this is one of the reasons why they stop working as a teacher. The author says that early English teachers got extraordinary pressure and I really agree with that.

Secondly the teacher evaluation system. Teachers tend to be evaluated by students’ test scores. I understand it because it’s easy to assess how good they are but it may lead the education into wrong way. Of course test scores are important but you can’t decide if the teacher is good or bad with only test scores.

The author mentioned also what the healthy school is like and unhealthy school is. I was surprised by that she says that many new teachers begin their career in unhealthy school though. The working condition is really important especially for new teachers. They need help but if the atmosphere in the work is bad, they couldn’t ask for it.

This book’s concept is to tell the narratives to others. This is great. To share information is important to help teachers. If you are a new teacher, you can expect what would happen next and could think of the way of dealing with the problem. The trend is always changing and I thank ,to catch up with that, stories from the past would be helpful a lot too.

I have read the book “Nothing but the truth” which is about the story in school. The book has a lot of conversation between the people. It seemed so realistic. I guess everything in the book could happen in the real world. The story itself was interesting and enjoyable. It has a good rhythm and was easy to read. However at the same time, this story involves many problems in school. I think most of people could feel something by reading this book. I mean, almost all the people may have had a teacher they dislike when they were in school and students tend to complain it. It is the same as the story in this book.

I had some teacher who treated me badly although it was from my perspective but they might have tried to be fair to all students and just I couldn’t realize it. In this book, the biggest thing that caused everything was misunderstanding. Thorough the whole story, the teacher seemed right. Usually there is a rule students have to follow in school in order to get educated and I think the teacher Narwin did the right thing in this book. I can understand what she wanted to do. However, Philip couldn’t realize it even though other students say the teacher is great. In addition, he has kind of a problem even in his home between him and his parents and he seemed that he didn’t have any close friends so I guess he didn’t have a chance to talk everything and the place to take a rest. I was astonished in the last part of this book. He really needed somebody that he can talk everything.

It seems to me that the story ended up not happily but it made me think lots of things about the education and school. Teachers don’t exist only for teaching their subject but teaching everything for living life. Even if I were the teacher in this book, I wouldn’t have any idea to deal with this problem. It seems really tough but it could happen to me in this real world. I guess she needed to communicate with Philip more but I have no idea if it would work. Anyway, we need to think about students more carefully and to be helpful to them especially if you are involved to secondary education.

Hi, my name is Hiroki Funatsu. I’m an exchange student and from Japan. Since I’m an exchange student, I will stay here for just one year. This is my second semester in Western Michigan University and sadly will be the last semester as well. This is the first time to come to the US for me. Everything is really different from Japan and is interesting. I was surprised at many things in the states. In Japan we can drink alcohol in public but here it’s prohibited although it depends on states. Especially in Kalamazoo, the coldness is beyond my expectation. I have never experienced such a freezing winter. It’s beautiful though. I like travel so if you have some place to recommend, please tell me. My major is English education and I’m studying French too. I’d like to be an English teacher at middle school in Japan. Also I’m really interested in the educational system in the states because it seems really different from the one in Japan.

My hobby is reading books, sports like soccer, basketball, watching movies, dramas and travel, playing a guitar. I used to play basketball for almost 3 years and soccer for almost 9 years. I like playing any sports. I’ve played a guitar for 3 or 4 years. I’m not that good at playing but I like playing it and singing. If you have something in common, let’s talk about it.

I have two siblings and I’m in the middle. Elder sister and younger brother.  I rarely see them because I was living by myself before coming to the states but when I go to my parents home, we go out together a lot.