an interview with barbara hoskins-sakamoto
Barbara Hoskins-Sakamoto Interview from darren elliott on Vimeo.
Barbara is an EFL materials writer, teacher and teacher trainer working mainly with children in Japan. This interview was conducted for the lives of teachers website at http://www.livesofteachers.com/
If you have ever taught children, you may well have come across the ‘Let’s Go!‘ series, now on the third edition and a multimedia behemoth! I met with Barbara, one of the authors, today at the ETJ Chubu Expo, and she was kind enough to give this interview. As you can see, she is delightful company and I wish I’d left the camera running because we talked for as long again after I turned it off. She has a lot to say about teaching children and professional development in particular, but we also touched on a few other topics. If you haven’t already, you should check out Barbara’s blog and have a look for her on twitter. Thanks Barbara, I hope to see you again soon!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Valentina Dodge, Darren Elliott. Darren Elliott said: New blog post: an interview with barbara hoskins-sakamoto http://bit.ly/2h0S3V [...]
So inspiring and wonderful. Thank you both for giving us the chance to meet Barbara. Made my Sunday here in Dublin.
Nice to see you Barbara – I like video interviews.
We definitely need to fight this hierarchy. Teacher pay scales are a huge issue and some countries have definitely got it all wrong! With university teachers receiving three times the amount of primary or pre-school teachers. I believe Norway, Finland and Denmark have the lowest pay scales differences and value is attributed to pre-school educators in society (not just financial value).
Your wiki link plans sound interesting. Is this just for your personal use, project management or because there’s soon going to be a Let’s Go Wiki for teachers?
Thanks Darren and Barbara for sharing the interview,
Valentina
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What a lovely interview, Barbara, and thank you, Darren. Have passed the link on to friends. Barbara, do you ever come to Europe? All the best to you, Darren, on your new blog.
Anne
I’m glad you all enjoyed the interview as much as I did! Valentina, you make a very important point about value not just being a financial judgement. If we look at the bottom line, people expect to spend a lot more on their university education than kindergarten and this is probably reflected in salaries, but the question is WHY that should be the expectation.
When I originally wrote the questions I referred to the Japanese teachers of English I used to work with way back in my private language school days, without exeption female, the majority working for an hourly rate without benefits, and working very hard. For doing pretty much the same job, I (as a Native speaker) earnt more money and had better working conditions. I don’t feel good about that.
Thanks for all the kind words. This interview was quite spur of the moment–Darren contacted me on Twitter the day before the workshop in Nagoya. I have to admit I was nervous–Ive never done this before,and didn’t know what Darren was going to ask. I’m glad I didn’t say anything too idiotic
@Valentina The wiki handout is an experiment. It still needs a bit of tweaking (and probably some proofreading!) but it’s up now if you’d like to take a look: http://teachingvillage.wikispaces.com/ETJ+Expo+Presentation+%282009%29
While it’s not officially a Let’s Go wiki, I’ll be using it to collect Let’s Go resources. Obviously, teachers don’t have to be using Let’s Go in order to use the activities. By putting the handouts online, I can include more detail than I can during the time limits of a workshop. Teachers also seemed to be excited about being able to download the simple vocabulary cards I made to go along with the final grammar chant!
The disparity in teacher salaries bothers me, too. I may not be able to do much about getting children’s teachers more money, but I’ll do everything I can to get them more respect for the difficult job they do. Perhaps administrators in charge of hiring should be required to spend an afternoon with a class of 5 year olds before hiring a teacher for them?
@Anne I would love to come to Europe someday! But, I’m not holding my breath. Not too much demand for authors of American English course books to do workshops in Europe. Maybe someday…
And Darren, thank you so much for thinking of the interview idea. I had a lovely time, and it was great to meet you face to face. You made it very easy for me and I appreciate it!
Patrick, thank you for always saying such lovely things–you make my day, too!
For confirmation of Darren’s point see these pictures of teachers at two different YL events in Japan
(pretending to be monkeys in Osaka)
http://tinyurl.com/yhqa4yt
(and mice in Nagoya)
http://tinyurl.com/yjsv2jk
Can you spot the men in each picture? Despite a certain similarity, they’re actually different people. They just feel the same…outnumbered!
A strange coincidence this… I recognise a woman in the Nagoya photo. If you watch the Paul Nation video I’ve just posted, you’ll be able to hear her in the background eating sandwiches very noisily.
[...] This is a podcast version of the video interview available here. [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Berni Wall and Naomi Moir, OUP ELT Global. OUP ELT Global said: Video interview w/ @barbsaka author of Let's Go! 4 #Oxford – http://bit.ly/cxXpSN via @livesofteachers #elt #efl #jalt [...]