Reward Barefoot Run

Aug. 14, 2022

I feel...serene. Very much. I am deeply content. Physically, I feel a little tired. But not in the negative sense of being sluggish or unwilling to do anything. Perhaps I could go for a slow bike ride or something if somebody wanted to do it with me.

From Aug. 8 through 14 I taught 6 five-hour seminars. The participants were English teachers of various levels: junior high, senior high, and college. The topics covered include reading, logic and expression, introduction to English training, and conducting lessons in English. 

Thanks to Zoom, teachers from across Japan were able to join the seminars, some one, and others more than one of those seminars. They were eager to brush up their skills as well as to get fresh ideas for the lessons they teach in the fall semester. They were all positive and asked me lots of questions. They were all so enthusiastic I fully committed myself to sincerely addressing all the questions they asked. 

But probably the best part of most of the seminars I teach is model lessons. Over the course of one week, I demonstrate countless small activities, and a few 50-minute full model lessons. The participants join the lessons as students. This is important for a number of reasons. One, if they have fun, they can believe that they can also share it with their own students if they try the same. Two, if they disagree with my approach, they can ask me questions after the demos, and through discussion, we can discover a way to address the concerns they may have, suppose they apply the same approach with their students. Either way, it takes us a step further toward better lessons. 

During this non-stop seminar week (the teacher seminars I offer in my company are called APET seminars) I wake up at 8, start teaching at 10:30, take a lunch break between 1 and 2, finish at 4:30 pm. I usually go for a jog in a nearby park right after the seminar. By the time I get home from exercise, I feel hungry, so I have dinner. Somehow, as soon as I finish dinner, I feel sleepy, so I take a nap for a couple of hours. I wake up between 10 and 11 or thereabout. I preview the seminar on the following day. I also research the schools where participants work. I use the information for an icebreaker when I see them the following day. They often look surprised that when I mention some of the things that I found on their Web pages. They do not seem to expect the facilitator to be interested in participants' schools. To me everything related to my participants are valuable information. My preview also includes going over the PowerPoint slides that I will be using on the following day. The information gets imprinted in my subconscious this way. When I wake up the following morning, my mind is already focused on what I'm supposed to present. I can always make a good start. 

During the seminar week, I eat lightly. I eat lots of fruits. I try to eat veggies. I eat fish also. I eat carb of course, but only a moderate amount. This is because somehow, I feel that you are what you eat. If you eat garbage, you feel like garbage, you become garbage, and so does your work. I don't want to let that happen. When I see my audience, I want to be presentable like a well-trained, well-disciplined athlete ready to run a race. And I feel that way of thinking is not totally off the mark, because all professionals are, in more ways than one, like athletes. 

Today marked the last day of the APET seminar week. When I said goodbye to the participants in today's seminar as I thanked them for their active participation, I felt numb like your feet often feel numb immediately after you take off your ski boots after hours and hours of hitting the slope. I was like, "My goodness, it is finally over."

After the seminar, I threw myself into running gear and hit the nearby park for a jog. The grass felt refreshingly moist after a typhoon passed the day before. The sunset looked like an oil painting by a maestro. As the sun got nearer to the horizon, the air got cooler, which made the run more pleasant. The park was being visited by like-minded fitness buffs. Some were elderly with walking sticks in both hands. Others were local sisters kicking a ball back and forth between them. Yet others were fathers teaching their sons how to play soccer or rugby. People exercising in the park all seem to me to be cheerleaders for one another. We don't say it, but deep inside, we all admire each other for our motivation, and wish each other's well-being.