{"id":882,"date":"2021-09-21T18:57:56","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T18:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engoo.com\/blog\/?p=882"},"modified":"2021-09-21T18:57:58","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T18:57:58","slug":"meet-mike-teacher-trainer-comic-artist-and-daily-news-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engoo.com\/blog\/engoo\/meet-mike-teacher-trainer-comic-artist-and-daily-news-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Mike: Teacher Trainer, Comic Artist, and Daily News Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Engoo Daily News<\/a>, which delivers fascinating news for students to discuss every day, is one of our most popular materials. But did you know that a lot of work goes into making sure our news articles are as accurate, learner-friendly, and fun-to-read as possible?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we\u2019ll go behind the scenes and talk to Mike Kanert, a Daily News editor who brings decades of teaching and writing experience teaching to our team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Tell us about yourself.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My name is Michael Kanert. I now live outside Toronto, Canada, but from 2001 to 2017 I lived in Japan. I started out as an assistant language teacher at a public school in a small town teaching kids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The town was wonderful and my students were amazing, and I always thought of it as my hometown in Japan. Also, the fact that the town had no more than six other foreigners meant I had to learn and constantly improve my Japanese if I wanted to talk to anyone! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mike when he was an English teacher in Japan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After teaching for about two years, I became a teacher trainer for 11 years. During that 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2013, I started working at Japan's most widely distributed English-language magazine, and the next year I founded an English-language tourism site for Japan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s main editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 What\u2019s your role on the Content Team?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mike at his workstation<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 How would you say your experiences as a teacher, teacher trainer, and language learner shape your work with Daily News? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I'd say there's a huge influence. I am always conscious that I am preparing materials for students, not for me. So what is most important is not what I want to say, but what students will get out of the materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always consider:<\/p>\n\n\n\n