Self intro recommendations

4 comments

1. You might want to prepare a short self-intro in Japanese for the other teachers or various situations in your life here. I don’t know about other schools, but mine had a welcome ceremony for me and I introduced myself in both English and Japanese for the benefit of non-English teachers (and low level students). Like 3-4 sentences, name, where you’re from, maybe your hobby or something.

   Then you may also have dedicated self-intro lessons in your classes. These could be anywhere from a few minutes to a whole class period depending on your school/JTE. You could think about some fun facts about yourself, places you’ve lived, facts about the place you’re from, hobbies, family, pets, that kind of thing. It can be fun to make it into a quiz game where the students try to guess the information if you do have a whole class period.

2. I made a game on PowerPoint slides with pictures and words – asked kids to guess where I was from, what I liked, my family members etc… then I also had a section about the country I was from (JET programme means you’re also a cultural ambassador). Bonus was I could just use those slides to check for language ability (whether they knew the vocabulary used) and could adjust for the next group. My JTEs translated when they felt the students didn’t understand.

   That set of slides could also be used for anywhere between 10 – 50 mins, depending on how long my school needed me to run introductions. I was sent into every class (junior and senior high) my first 2 months there.

   Forgot to add: for the teachers I just said the shortest I could – my name, where I was from, what I liked about Japan (best to not say anime), よろしくお願いします.

3. I did a “guess the answer” game with my self introduction. Class divided into groups of 4-5 and given a sheet of questions in English that talked about me. Questions were in simple English and were given hints. For example, one question asked “When is itsabubblylife’s birthday?” and for the hint, I had a picture of the Nissan March car and a calendar with a heart circled around the day.

   After all the questions and hints were said, each group had a chance to answer a question for a point. Group with the highest points got a cute sticker and candy (with the teacher’s permission). This was a hit with my 1st SHS students. I had a high academic base school and a lower level visit school and both schools enjoyed it.

4. For the teachers, I spoke to them in Japanese. Made a self intro in Japanese and shared things like where I was from and that I wanted to get along with everyone.

   If you don’t know Japanese, it might still be worth it to try it. The teachers will likely see that you are putting in effort to connect with them and that can go a long way with relationships between you and the other teachers.