山田さんは永中に来校

Last week we had a special guest at Eigenji. Mr. Yamada, a friend of mine, and the father of my friend Aki, came to visit our school to give a talk to the students about his experiences with English, and how they can use English later in their lives to widen their world.

Mr. Yamada spent 8 years in Los Angeles working for Sanyo Electric. Currently his work with Sanyo takes him back and forth between Japan and China. He's had a number of great experiences in his life, and he is an extremely intelligent man. It was an honour to have take the time out of his busy schedule to come and speak at our school as a favour to me.

After each lecture, the students had to write a little reflection on what they thought of Mr. Yamada's talk. I was reading through their short comments the following day and it seemed to me that pretty much every single kid got something out of Mr. Yamada's talk. Even those kids who aren't interested in learning English or don't feel they will use it later on in life got something else out of his speech. I was quite happy about that. I can't force a kid to like English, but if I can help open their eyes to the possibilities that exist in this world for them, then I think I'm doing my job as a teacher here.

There was a nice snowfall the day before so I took some pictures of the mountains that day too. And of course, once again, a huge thank you to Mr. Yamada.