Hello, and nice to meet you. My blog is called "Teachers' Work Reform, Explained So a Middle Schooler Can Understand."

I taught English and business at a high school in Japan. Then I worked as an engineer and interpreter. Now I build software for schools.

In this newsletter, I will show you how to cut a teacher's workload, little by little, with spreadsheets and AI. I will use words a middle school student could understand.

This is my first post, so let me tell you a little about who I am.

Where It All Started: "I Don't Know What You're Saying"

I started thinking about how to explain things because of a part-time job I had long ago. I taught at a juku, an after-school tutoring school. Many students in Japan go to one after regular classes.

One day, I gave an explanation I had prepared again and again. I was proud of it. When I finished, I asked, "So, how was that?"

A middle school student looked at me with a straight face and said:

"I don't know what you're saying."

I had nothing to say back. In my head, every idea was connected. But not one of them had reached the student.

From that day, I made a rule: every explanation must make sense to a middle schooler.

My Teaching Days: Great at Lessons, Bad at Files

At high school, I taught English and business.

Let me brag a little about my lessons. Maybe my lesson from the juku paid off, because students liked my classes. When they said, "Your explanations are easy to understand," it made me happier than anything.

I had one trick: compare a difficult idea to something from everyday life. For example, in bookkeeping, "debit" and "credit" are hard words. So I started with a simple allowance notebook: "money I got" and "money I spent." Just that, and I could see the students' faces light up.

With my students during my teaching days. The photo is pixelated to protect their privacy.

My file management, on the other hand, was terrible.

In Japan, teachers do not have their own classrooms to work in. We all share one big staff room, and we share files in one shared folder. During grading season, I would open Grades.xlsx and see: "This file is being used by another user." I couldn't wait, so I saved it anyway. And a new file was born in the folder: Grades(1).xlsx.

The person making those files? Usually me. I would like to take this chance to apologize.

Here is something many teachers will know. In Japanese schools, each teacher also takes on school-wide duties and coaches clubs. When I was the person in charge of the school's information systems, I was doing that on top of several other duties and club activities. I had no time to rest.

My Job Now: Turning Teachers' "What a Pain" into Systems

After teaching, I worked as an engineer and interpreter. I stood between engineers in Japan and engineers overseas. Every day, I heard difficult technical ideas in Japanese and explained them again, clearly, in English. In the end, my job was still "explaining."

Now I build software for schools.

Because I was a teacher, I know what really causes trouble in schools. And after moving to the side that builds the tools, I noticed something:

Much of a teacher's work can be reduced, not by talent, but by systems.

Copying the same numbers three times. Writing the same message five times. Work like this is like a rice cooker with a timer. You set it once, and it does the job by itself.

I have already made tools like these for my own work:

• A system that turns questions in a spreadsheet into a quiz (a Google Form), automatically
• A career guidance tool that assigns students automatically to work experience places, or to university spots that are reserved for students from our school
• An Excel file that creates exam timetables automatically, even when students take different course tracks or cross-subject classes
• A LINE chatbot for keeping in touch with students during a school closure (LINE is the most popular messaging app in Japan)

I will show you how to make these, step by step, in this newsletter.

Outside of Work: I'm Usually Fixing Something

Outside of work, I love fixing and making things myself, without spending money.

• I am a licensed electrician (Japan's national electrician license, Class 2). Because of this, when I saw a power strip plugged into another power strip in the staff room, I could not stop adding up the watts in my head.
• Air conditioners, bathroom faucets, car door speakers, computer monitors. I install and fix most things at home by myself. I have even repaired the circuit board of a home appliance with a soldering iron. When it works again and I say "Yes!", that feeling is the best.
• For English, I hold Eiken Grade 1, the highest level of Japan's best-known English test. I make YouTube videos that help people remember Grade 1 words through stories.
• I am also a Registered Information Security Specialist. This is a Japanese national license for information security experts. It is the reason I will keep writing about "how to handle students' personal data" in every post, again and again.

All of these share one feeling: "Once you understand how it works, you can do it yourself." Electrical wiring and spreadsheets are the same. When you know what is inside, they are not scary.

What I Will Do in This Newsletter

We will go in this order, a little at a time:

1. Spreadsheets for beginners We start with "How is this different from Excel?" Then we make class lists, use simple functions, and count up form answers.
2. First steps with GAS GAS (Google Apps Script) is a small program that tells a spreadsheet to do work for you. We start by copying and pasting five lines to make "press a button, and a message appears."
3. How to build finished tools Things you can use in school right away, like automatic quiz making and assigning students to career options.

I will not jump into programming. We will go one step at a time, like climbing stairs while holding the handrail. In the classroom, we call this "small steps."

And not only tech. Good teaching does not start with a computer. I will also write about the things that need no technology at all:

• How to explain clearly — using everyday comparisons so that even students who struggle can say "I get it!"
• How Japanese teachers earn students' respect — not through fear or strict rules, but through the way we listen, prepare, and care for each student

Tech can give teachers time. But what we do with that time — how we teach and how we stand in front of our students — matters even more.

My Promises

• I will not tell you "anyone can easily earn X dollars a month." I will talk about steady, real ways to cut a little work from your day.
• I will talk about students' personal data in every post. Safety comes before convenience.
• I will not write about real schools or real students. All names in my posts are made up.

Finally

I especially want teachers who say "I'm not good with computers" to read this.

Long ago, my students said "I get it!" in my classes. I hope teachers who read this newsletter will think, "Oh, I can do this." That would make me happiest.

In the next post, I will explain "What is Google Sheets?" and how to say goodbye to Grades(1).xlsx.

Have you ever made a Grades(1).xlsx of your own? Just reply to this email and tell me. I'd love to hear from teachers around the world.

The Japanese original of this article: https://note.com/sensei_asia/n/n59327dab30da