I haven’t been teaching for as long as many of you have been teaching, but I have been lucky to have the opportunity to meet many wonderful teachers, authors and editors and learn about their ideas on how to use the materials and activities that can be done in class.

In the past, I worked for AEON in Izumo teaching both children and adults. I have to confess that a lot of what I did during those early years was not as successful as it could have been, due to my own inexperience and lack of exposure to other ideas. I did try my best to meet my students’ needs, but after three years was a bit burned out. Then I moved to Tokyo and began working for Macmillan, where I stayed for five years. One of the best things for me about this time period was all of the wonderful educators I was able to learn from. It gave me motivation and made me want to start teaching again.

After leaving Macmillan, I met APRICOT. Meeting APRICOT led to one of the bigger changes in my teaching of children. I have always been flexible in how I use textbooks, but APRICOT materials really opened up this flexibility for me, and helped me to realize how much more creative classes could be. APRICOT has also given me the courage to challenge my students in ways that I might not have done otherwise.

Currently, I teach English at my own slowly growing school, work with APRICOT, and teach a couple of university classes. I am constantly evaluating what I do in my classes to try and make them better. I also try to attend as many teaching seminars and events as possible so that I can meet other teachers and exchange ideas. I love to share ideas and nothing pleases me more than to hear that something I did was useful and helped someone else.

If you have questions about anything you find on this blog please send me an email and I would be happy to answer your questions and maybe address it in another blog post.
My email is sam(at)apricot-plaza(dot)co(dot)jp.