Behind the Scenes with Teacher Trainer and Comic Artist, Mike Kanert
Today, we’re taking you behind the scenes to meet another member of our Daily News team. Please welcome … (drumroll) …
… Mike Kanert!
Originally from Canada, Mike has over a decade of experience working as an English teacher and teacher trainer in Japan. We hope you’ll find his advice on working with Japanese students and tips on motivating kids useful!
– So tell us about yourself.
My name is Michael Kanert. I now live outside Toronto, Canada, but from 2001 to 2017 I lived in Japan. I worked as an ALT (assistant language teacher) in Shizuoka prefecture, and in 2008 moved to Tokyo to do training and develop teaching materials for ALTs.
In 2013, I started working at Metropolis, Japan's most widely distributed English-language magazine, and the next year I founded an English-language tourism site for Japan.
After returning to Canada, I began working as a freelance writer and editor for companies both in Canada and Japan. This is also when I joined the Engoo Content Team as one of the Daily News team’s main editors.
– Could you tell us about your experience working as an English teacher in Japan?
I started out as an English teacher with a private conversation school. However, after visiting a friend who was an assistant language teacher (ALT) at a public school, I realized that was a lot more fun.
Even though I was just a guest, the students were so excited to see me and talk to me. Also ALTs are encouraged to play with students at lunch, do after-school activities and get involved in the local community. So when I had a chance to become an ALT, I did.
– And can you tell us how you became a teacher trainer and what that entailed?
After two years of teaching, I was promoted to my branch’s first full-time trainer. This began my 11-year career as a teacher trainer with my ALT company. During this time, I trained over 1,000 people, wrote training manuals anywhere from 50 to 150 pages long, and prepared about 1,000 pages of lesson plans with point-by-point advice on how to make sure each technique could be implemented successfully.
I was lucky to be mentored by the head of the training department, from whom I learned about early education, psychology, special needs education, and other areas of expertise needed for the role.
– Based on your experience, what would you say tutors need to keep in mind when working with Japanese students?
I’ve found it helpful to compare English to another school subject: math. Everyone has spent years learning subjects like these, but some have not used it much (or at all) outside of school, and some really didn't like studying it.
This means that while some people love English and speak it very well, for others, being asked to speak English is like being asked a hard math question — sort of like suddenly walking up to someone and asking, "What's the cosine of pi?"
So if someone is shy about using English, it's important to give them time to prepare to answer on top of making them feel that it’s OK to explore, experiment, and make mistakes.
– What a great analogy! Given your experience working in school settings, do you have any advice specifically on teaching young children?
I believe that a lesson is only as exciting as the teacher makes it. In other words, the teacher needs to bring engagement and excitement to the lesson, not demand it of the students.
If students seem jaded about English, sometimes teachers think it's cool to try to be similarly negative — complaining about odd English, poor materials, or agreeing with students that something feels unnecessary to study. I've found that this is entirely counterproductive, as it only ensures that NOBODY is excited to learn English — not even the teacher. Once they enter the classroom, be it physical or virtual, it's the teacher's job to make the materials and content come alive.
An example is the “Hello Song,” which elementary school teachers in Japan used to be required to sing. It’s a song that everyone hated – students and teachers alike. I didn't like it either, but a school I was working at insisted that I do it for every class, even grade 6s who were clearly not interested.
But it was my job to make it come alive, so I had to find a way to love it myself. So I did something very simple: I made the gestures so fun that the kids demanded we do it multiple times each lesson. For example, we would sing the song, but with our elbows stuck to the sides of our bodies or with the heels of our hands stuck to our cheeks. As a result, the gestures would feel very strange and even ridiculous, and halfway through, the kids would start laughing at how weird it felt to do this familiar, boring song in a new and unusual way.
The moral of the story is, the materials I was given did not change. I was required to sing a song, and I sang it. But rather than let myself give in to negativity, I determined that the key was to eradicate any possibility that the students would have a negative feeling about what we were doing — and found a way to make it so fun that the students were begging to do it more.
And the difference was not that the materials were better, or that the students were better, but that the teacher found a way to breathe life into the materials in a way that engaged the students right where they were.
– Alright, back to Engoo! What’s your role on the Content Team?
So I’m mainly an editor, though I also occasionally write my own articles and adapt news stories from the Associated Press. I am also in the process of training other editors to work with the team.
– How would you describe the Daily News team?
The team is highly committed to creating content for our readers that is interesting, fun to read, and accurate. I would say this emphasis on accuracy allows us to be better fact-checked than most other online news sources. We’ve even corrected a major news site on mistakes we’d found before! We also hope that people will discover new and exciting things about the world as they read.
– What’s the most memorable article you’ve written for the Daily News?
Probably my most memorable article was "Child Finds 1,500-Year-Old Sword in Swedish Lake." This was my first article published with Daily News, and it was surprisingly popular with readers. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the family of the girl actually saw the article and shared it!
– What do you do in your spare time?
I draw a comic strip on Instagram called Unremarkable_Us, which is about my crazy family. I’ve recently turned it into a book and my dream is to sell a million copies of it! I spend the rest of my time playing with my 2-year-old son.
👋 That’s it for now!
We hope you found this interview as insightful as we did! In the meantime, a happy autumn from Mike and his family in Canada!
