I have been teaching Japanese for over 18 years now, and I have been teaching online for the past 10 years or so. My youngest student is currently 10 years old and the oldest ones are in their 50s. I enjoy seeing my students improve their Japanese and experience a sense of achievement.
I don’t work well with people who don’t study during the week before and after my lessons, but those who study constantly improve their Japanese significantly with me. I have been creating podcast episodes and Patreon to help my students so they can study with quality materials. I am also trying to simplify what they have to do every day so they don’t have to think about what to do to improve their Japanese with their already busy lives.
Many of my students have dreams when they start their journey to learn Japanese. The bigger their dreams are the more consistently they study Japanese. Every week we talk at least once. With some, we talk three times a week, if not more. They share issues, complicated situations, or what they have achieved in their lives with me. I can feel they are happy, sad, a little depressed, or excited, etc. every week. Some say I am their counselor. haha.
What’s interesting to me with this job, and this is really the main reason why I ended up doing this for this long (although I never really planned it) is that I see how each student grows as a person, what they achieve, and their life choices. I sometimes greatly affect their life decisions, so I feel pretty responsible for what I tell them when being asked.
After all, teaching Japanese is my only time interacting with other humans. My other jobs don’t really require that. So I probably should keep this job so I can stay “functional” as a human being.
Shadowing Sentence: How to boost your brain.
逆に長時間座ったままの状態が続くと、作業記憶テストのスコアと実行機能が
低下することも分かりました。
Vocabularies
- 逆に：conversely
- 長時間：for a long time, long hours
- 〜したまま：to stay ~
- 作業記憶テスト：working memory test
- 実行機能：executive function
- 低下する：to decline