Mid Year Conference

Every year in the winter, all of the Kochi prefecture JETs are required to attend the Mid Year Conference. For the past several years it was held in January, but this year it was in December. The MYC lasted three days. All of the senior ALTs were dreading the conference. Elizabeth in particular seemed to think it would be horribly painful and useless. In the end, I didn't think it was so bad.

The first day of the conference was casual and was led by the Prefectural Advisors. In the morning we discussed things that were going well and things that were going badly, and reasons for and against recontracting. We also played Kochi Pictionary, which was pretty hilarious. The things we had to draw included "diarrhea at the MYC" and "human tape player". There was also a presentation on disaster preparedness. In the afternoon, we got to participate in cultural workshops. I went to a meeting about the Genki musical (a musical the Kochi JETs put on every year, written in the local dialect) and a yukata wearing session. I got to try on a very expensive sort of kimono overcoat thing. It was white and very heavy, almost like a quilt. At the end of the class, the instructor gave her business card to a bunch of us. My predecessor used to go to her house for kimono lessons. I'm hoping maybe to take that up, as well.

On the second day, we all went to workshops. There were four choices: Miki's art lesson, chants, debate, and musicals. Most everyone wanted to take the art lesson workshop, but a lot of people had to be put in other workshops. I got to go to the art workshop, but Elizabeth and Janis were stuck in the workshop about chants. In the art workshop, we learned about using art lessons to get students to communicate in new ways. It didn't really apply to teaching English, but it was enjoyable. The workshop was conducted in Japanese and more or less translated into English by one of the conference workers.

In the afternoon, each workshop group presented what they had worked on. There was a model debate which turned out to be rather humorous, a performance of some chants (one of which is stuck in my head), and two short musicals about a hamster who dies. The musicals were pretty hilarious, actually.

On the third day, we mostly sat and listened to lectures. There was one about special needs education; it focused on making lessons more accessible to students with learning disabilities, ADHD, or autism. I thought the information they presented was good, but it was mostly stuff I'd heard in Speech & Hearing Sciences. In the afternoon there was a discussion session about various problems that we often face. I wish there had been more discussion time, because it was very useful to hear what other ALTs had experienced and what they were doing.

All in all, I thought the conference wasn't too bad. It was sometimes boring and sometimes unproductive, but there were also useful things. And there were some fun times. The building where the conference was held is next to a kindergarten, and the kids on the playground freaked out every time they saw us. They would come over to the fence and start screaming, sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in English. All they could really say in English was "Hallo!", though a few knew the phrase "I love you", which was adorable. The kids also have no filters, so they would scream things like "hagi" (bald) when they saw Jamie. Oh, Japanese children. My main annoyance about the conference was that it was held in the middle of the week. For me, this meant that I had an elementary visit on Friday, but had no access to materials from Tuesday onward. If I'd needed to prepare flashcards or worksheets or something for my lessons, I would've been out of luck. Fortunately, it ended up not being an issue.