July 14, 2008
First of all, I made it safely to the training facility and been enjoying the training program so far! I’ve met tons of interesting fellow trainees and I think we got quite a good crowd over here. There are 171 of us in total and 12 of us are going to Tanzania.
After arriving here and taking number of orientations, I’m now starting to grasp a much better picture of what’s this training’s all about.
So, here’s what the language classes are like.
The training center offers wide variety of language courses such as English, Swahili, French, Arabic, Thai, Lao, Spanish (in Nagano) etc. If you’re taking English, you’ll be assigned to two different classes depending on your language proficiency; home class (H) in the morning where you learn general English language and technical class (T) in the afternoon where you learn to improve your technical skills (teaching in my case) in English.
If you’re assigned to take a language that is not English, you will only have H classes of your assigned language all day.
Prior to the training, I was assigned to take the English classes, but upon taking a placement test and going through an interview with my T class teacher, I was able to switch into Swahili class in the morning! So, my schedule is looking something like this at this: take 3 hours of Swahili in the morning and 2 hours of teacher’s training in the afternoon for 6 days a week.
I’m pretty happy with their decision to have me switch into the Swahili class because I’m absolutely going to need it to be able to get by in Tanzanian daily lives. My teacher is from Tanzania, been teaching at this training center for more than 10 years and speaks really good Japanese and English. The class is lots of fun!
As for my T class, I’m currently preparing for a 20 minute long mini lessons on Wednesday. I’m going to do the characteristics of living things just to make it simple and fundamental. I’ll be doing more complicated topics later on though. A good news is that I’ve found out that the Tanzanian syllabus (Our library has the text books and syllabi from most of the host countries JOCVs are going to!) spends quite a good amount on parasites probably because parasitic infections are more prevalent there. Since I did parasitology in my undergrad, I’m planning on making a practice lesson out of it sometime during this training.
Anyways that’s about it for now.
Tutaonana tena! (We’ll see each other again!)
PS
My flight date out of Japan has been scheduled to be Sept. 22!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Training
July 8, 2007
It is a well-known fact, at least for someone going into JOCV, that the program was modeled after Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) program in the United States. Two years of volunteer service in the third world countries in your specialized occupations, that pretty much sums up the two programs.
After doing a bit of research however, I came to realize that there are some differences as well.
What drew my attention the most was the way two programs conduct their trainings.
JOCV does most of its training at two training facilities located in Nagano and Fukushima, Japan. After the two months of training and arriving in your country, you’ll finish it up by going through three weeks of on-the-job training and continuous lessons of local languages (Swahili in my case). On the other hand, PCV has training facilities in each country the volunteers would work in and the entire two to three months of training is conducted there.
I’d like to find someone who’s gone through two trainings and see what they felt if I could, but it’s just impossible as each program requires applicants to have citizenship of the respective countries. (If I ever get the American citizenship in the future and have some energy left by then, I’ll try to join PCV.) Just by the look of it though, PCV’s method seems more appealing for me. Sooner you get to your country, better adjusted you are to the new environment.
I guess the reason JOCV conduct its training in the way it is, is probably because of the fact that most of the trainees need to learn at least two languages before getting stationed, English (or French or other common/official languages) and a local/national language (a language widely spoken in the region. Again, Swahili in my case). Obviously PCV (and some JOCV trainees like myself) have their English done, but most of the JOCV trainees are required to learn English to begin with. Now, I’m not sure how they’re going to make us acquire sufficient linguistic ability to perform our volunteer services within a time span of two months, but that is not my concern really. (I’d like to comment on my language training but that comes in later.)
So, when someone, who has never really gone out of his/her own country for fair amount of time, needs to learn at least two languages and how to teach, JOCV’s method I think is reasonable. The trainings are conducted in middle of nowhere surrounded only by mountains and forests. (I’m going to be in the Fukushima facility, located about 200km north of Tokyo. Apparently it takes 30min by bus from the facility to get to populated areas of the closest town.) It sure is an ideal place for you to focus just on improving your skills and your languages without having to deal with drastic changes in environment and number of obstacles caused by it such as getting new infectious diseases and diarrhea.
Now, just to make it clear, I’m not saying which one’s better or worse. It probably is meaningless and impossible to judge. Whether the JOCV system works the best for me or not, I’m a Japanese citizen and going with JOCV is the most reasonable and only option for me at this point.
In any case, the only way for me to get to Tanzania is to go through this training.
And it begins tomorrow.
It is a well-known fact, at least for someone going into JOCV, that the program was modeled after Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) program in the United States. Two years of volunteer service in the third world countries in your specialized occupations, that pretty much sums up the two programs.
After doing a bit of research however, I came to realize that there are some differences as well.
What drew my attention the most was the way two programs conduct their trainings.
JOCV does most of its training at two training facilities located in Nagano and Fukushima, Japan. After the two months of training and arriving in your country, you’ll finish it up by going through three weeks of on-the-job training and continuous lessons of local languages (Swahili in my case). On the other hand, PCV has training facilities in each country the volunteers would work in and the entire two to three months of training is conducted there.
I’d like to find someone who’s gone through two trainings and see what they felt if I could, but it’s just impossible as each program requires applicants to have citizenship of the respective countries. (If I ever get the American citizenship in the future and have some energy left by then, I’ll try to join PCV.) Just by the look of it though, PCV’s method seems more appealing for me. Sooner you get to your country, better adjusted you are to the new environment.
I guess the reason JOCV conduct its training in the way it is, is probably because of the fact that most of the trainees need to learn at least two languages before getting stationed, English (or French or other common/official languages) and a local/national language (a language widely spoken in the region. Again, Swahili in my case). Obviously PCV (and some JOCV trainees like myself) have their English done, but most of the JOCV trainees are required to learn English to begin with. Now, I’m not sure how they’re going to make us acquire sufficient linguistic ability to perform our volunteer services within a time span of two months, but that is not my concern really. (I’d like to comment on my language training but that comes in later.)
So, when someone, who has never really gone out of his/her own country for fair amount of time, needs to learn at least two languages and how to teach, JOCV’s method I think is reasonable. The trainings are conducted in middle of nowhere surrounded only by mountains and forests. (I’m going to be in the Fukushima facility, located about 200km north of Tokyo. Apparently it takes 30min by bus from the facility to get to populated areas of the closest town.) It sure is an ideal place for you to focus just on improving your skills and your languages without having to deal with drastic changes in environment and number of obstacles caused by it such as getting new infectious diseases and diarrhea.
Now, just to make it clear, I’m not saying which one’s better or worse. It probably is meaningless and impossible to judge. Whether the JOCV system works the best for me or not, I’m a Japanese citizen and going with JOCV is the most reasonable and only option for me at this point.
In any case, the only way for me to get to Tanzania is to go through this training.
And it begins tomorrow.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Where I'll be
Here’s a bit of information on my work place and its current situation according to my assignment profile.
As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve been assigned to work at a secondary school, teaching either Advanced or Ordinary level of high school science (two of biology, math, physics and chemistry) 24 periods a week.
The school is located somewhere on the Indian coast also known as the Swahili coast of Tanzania (just for the security reasons, I won’t disclose my exact location on this blog, but I’m sure many of you know and might find out from my future posts where I’ll be). It’s a co-ed school and has about 1000 students currently enrolled (!) with 40 teachers (!) and 7 of them being science teachers (!). As you can imagine, the school is divided up into two sessions each day to accommodate the gigantic number of students. Thus obvious shortage of the science teachers led to the request for JOCV.
The assignment profile I have is at least 6 months old and I’m not sure how accurate the contents would be considering frequent resignations and relocations of teaching staff and policy changes in Tanzanian education system (as the massive education reform has been taking place recently).
At least, I know this should be an interesting experience.
As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve been assigned to work at a secondary school, teaching either Advanced or Ordinary level of high school science (two of biology, math, physics and chemistry) 24 periods a week.
The school is located somewhere on the Indian coast also known as the Swahili coast of Tanzania (just for the security reasons, I won’t disclose my exact location on this blog, but I’m sure many of you know and might find out from my future posts where I’ll be). It’s a co-ed school and has about 1000 students currently enrolled (!) with 40 teachers (!) and 7 of them being science teachers (!). As you can imagine, the school is divided up into two sessions each day to accommodate the gigantic number of students. Thus obvious shortage of the science teachers led to the request for JOCV.
The assignment profile I have is at least 6 months old and I’m not sure how accurate the contents would be considering frequent resignations and relocations of teaching staff and policy changes in Tanzanian education system (as the massive education reform has been taking place recently).
At least, I know this should be an interesting experience.
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