Three (Percent) is a Magic Number
If you had asked me a year ago would I be getting my TEFL, I’d have probably –in all honesty- have said no.
At least, no, not yet.
It wasn’t a part of my immediate “bigger plan”, largely because I was adjusting to Japan as an entire Big Picture idea. TEFL sounded nice, but it wasn’t an immediate goal. Then, after two terms, it became something I craved because I really, really love what I’m doing.
Today, I sit proudly at 97%: by the end of the week, I’ll be at 100%.
By next week, I’ll be officially certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language. I’ll have 120 hours of learning and workshopping ideas under my belt: hundreds, definitely thousands of practical hours, and now a formal series of lesson to push me. I’ll definitely be ordering my certificate: I want to hang it in the apartment for the hard days when I find that teaching is hard to do. I want to celebrate my success and the chance I took to make myself better.
What next? Where will I push? Maybe I’ll hit up a university, continue learning as a Distance Learner, maybe go to the local uni –Fukudai– and get mentored from the profs, maybe find seminars and even give a talk one day before I move ahead from being an ALT to my next place.
I don’t know.
But what I do know is that I’m on the path to really pushing myself, to really setting myself up right for Museum Education, and to making JET not a moment, but a life-changing event.
