さいたま市 教育委員会学校教育部教育研究所

Earnest faculty, valuable orientation

Saitama City's board of education research facility is a brisk 15-minute walk from Urawa Station. In the spring, I attended an orientation to the city's Global Studies induction of foreign teachers as part of their "tokubetsu native" hiring initiative. The faculty is organized, thorough, and provides a comprehensive introduction to the program, its aims, and the induction system for non-Japanese teachers. The orientation organizers provided practical workshops in both Japanese and English. They also fielded questions in both languages. I got a sense of their earnest initiative to include non-Japanese teachers in their system. The workshops were eye-opening, and I recommend the experience for teachers who speak Japanese as a second language and appreciate a brief but informative introduction to Global Studies, a program promoted by MEXT, the ministry responsible for education.