One of my favorite walking routes takes me near the neighborhood elementary school. Last week, as I passed a young girl, I heard her question (in Japanese), “An English person?” I turned and explained that while I spoke English, I was American. Turns out that I was the first foreign person she’d had a chance to [...]
Posts from ‘September, 2009’
A 1.5 Million Yen Secret (by Steven Herder)
If you read Stories from the Front Lines of EFL, and thought, “I’d really like to be part of this project, but I’m not sure anyone would be interested in my story” then this post is for you.
Answering just a few important questions can give you the confidence to share your thoughts and ideas about [...]
What I’ve Learned from my PLN
(Note: If this is the first post you’ve read in this series, and you’re mystified by the PLN acronym, start with What’s a PLN, anyway?)
This has been a resources kind of week for me–free books and free conferences!
What is a PLN, anyway?
A good friend (and a great teacher) e-mailed me after my last post. “Great links,” she said. “But what’s a PLN?”
A good reminder about why I try to avoid acronyms and jargon in my writing.
PLN is an acronym for Personal Learning Network. The acronym is relatively new, but the idea is not. Teachers have always had [...]
What I’ve Learned From My PLN (September 1, 2009)
This week was about motivation–both mine and my students’. It started with an #edchat conversation on Twitter about the value of homework. Alfie Kohn (a man decidedly against homework!) shared an article from the journal Theory and Research in Education about self-determination theory as regards motivation. While the article was interesting enough, what really got me excited was discovering that ALL of [...]

