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 Printable Lesson Plans Genki English CDs:  Volume 1  Volume 2  Volume 3  Volume 4  Volume 5  Volume 6   New CD Vol. 7   MP3 Songs |
Take any problem in the World and it's invariably caused ( or made worse)
by a lack of education. Too many kids hate school because it's too boring.
The aim of Genki Learning is to have all subjects in all countries taught
in a fun, engaging and effective way. There are already a few million kids
benefiting from this, and even a whole country where the government has
put it in all their schools. But there's still a long way to go!
While I'm on the road you'll hear about my travels & workshops, and
when I'm doing studio work I'll keep you up to date with ideas, updates
to the site and some of my favourite teaching resources. So if you want
to find out what's it's like behind the scenes or how & why I do what
I do or even if you're just nosey or a bit bored, have a read.
I'll update the diary as often as I can, so keep coming back. And of course
whilst I'm away, the office staff are always ready to send off your CD orders just as soon as you send them in!
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Today I didn’t have any workshops but had a meeting with a teacher from one of the schools I’m going to next month. So was really cool and just like yesterday it was great to sit down with an enthusiastic teacher, help them out and also learn some cool stuff myself! There are now a ton of new things I’ve been wanting to put on the site for ages that I really should put up ASAP!
Then another couple of hours checking out keyboards at the music store and the rest of the evening spent at Seattle’s Best auditioning demo versions of some cool new music programmes!
Today I was scheduled to have a workshop from 1 o’clock, but after chatting with the teacher last night we decided I’d go to the school and have a look at the stuff they were doing in the morning. The teacher there is really good and has some cool ideas and materials. They base their curriculum on NHK’s Eigorian, which I haven’t found to have such good results in the past as many teachers just use it for input but don’t get the kids speaking. But here they use the video and the Eigorian website for one hour, then in the following lesson they do games and activities to actually use the English from the programme. This seemed to work quite well and I went through a few games with the teacher who seemed very happy!
Then in the afternoon it was the seminar. I thought that went well, there was this school plus the one next door, and they were asking quite a few questions, but there was certainly a difference in attitude between the two schools. Usually in these Summer workshops I’ve been doing a long warm up with How are you, my self intro, Q&A, the official guidelines, curriculum, lesson planning, how old are you?, mingle, Where are you going?, goal setting and the war speech. But they were quite good today so I also had time for the Harry Potter game - which they nailed! I thought it went great, but when I went back to the head teachers office the first thing he said was “Yes but of course we Japanese people are unable to learn English” - oh my goodness, had this guy not listened to anything that I had said over the last 3 hours??! Usually with this type of head teacher I know in advance from the initial chat we have and so can usually step things up in the seminar to counter it, but I hadn’t met him before so didn’t know he was one of these teachers! So he got a very quick response telling him he was completely wrong. When I came to look back at the workshop it was his teachers that were the ones who sat back doing nothing, and the ones from the other school that were really into things. As usual the rule applies, “good kouchou = good school” “bad kouchou=bad school”!!
But although the teachers who I chatted with today will have this to deal with they are really good and trying really hard so I think they’ll do well.
Tonight it was the Okayama firework festival, which would have been good to check out, but I was hot and sweaty so took the early shinkansen back to Fukuoka.
Off on the Shinkansen to Okayama this morning, and it was the nice Hikari with the posh seats and PC power supplies - excellent!
I got picked up at the station by two teachers from today’s school and then out for lunch to a very posh Japanese restaurant with a ton of food. Then a three hour workshop. That was good and although the room was very hot ( the air con seemed to make no difference) the teachers were well into it. Then afterwards I had a chat with the teachers, they’ve put an application in to buy the Superpack but it won’t get approved till next year! They were also impressed with the card game.
Then an hours sleep and out for dinner with some of the teachers from the Okayama English teachers group, a group of elementary school teachers who are well into doing English in their schools. After several weeks of “from the beginning” workshops it was good to chat about some more high level stuff. One of the teachers has a big Ministry demo lesson in November and plans to use GE which is cool! They also liked the card game and want more DVDs - interesting!
So a good day and a great night!
I’m quite excited about doing the new CD now! Getting my laptop set up to act as a synth and songwriting tool is fantastic, there are just so many great sounds to use! I normally use dedicated music computers, which are great, but recently I just seem to have used up all the decent sounds in there and nothing jumps out as being “wow”. But with the computer I can just use my credit card and download a whole range of really just fantastic new sounds, just the thing to get the creative juices flowing. It’s just great and I’m totally free as to what styles to do the new songs in - any requests?!!
So after a very happy morning doing music stuff I had a quick break, then went to check my mail and it crashed again! The spam mail I get is now so much the computer can’t compress it enough to back up properly and deletes everything! Madness. But luckily I introduced a fourth back-up system ( this time online) and I got things back to normal. But it is a hassle if this becomes a regular occurrence.
Today’s two gigs were in two different cities in Fukuoka prefecture, and for both of them it was my first time in the city. So of course for this morning’s school they had no idea what I supposed to be doing, even though reps had been sent out to them and they had agreed to the terms of the visit! Apparently they were under the impression it was an English lesson, and hence half the staff had taken a holiday ( the average Japanese teacher’s reaction to English or International Understanding Education) . Man, what do you have to do to make schools realise what my job is?!! But the teachers were really good and although they do no English at all ( except for one project in 4th grade) they were keen. It is a long time since I’ve seen a school that does nothing! But the teachers asked good questions, they didn’t have the air of desperation ( and hence relief when I show the materials) that I find in Fukuoka, but were still quite cool.
Then this afternoon’s school was completely different!! They are really into things and hence know all about Genki English! In fact the Head teacher seemed to know more about me that I do myself!!! They made a ton of requests for stuff to present which is great! There were 4 or 5 really keen teachers and really I could have done a really high level workshop, but there were also some not quite so confident teachers so I did the basic “from the beginning” gig and they lapped it up. Then afterwards I had a meeting with the teachers and went through a lot of suggestions for refining the good work they’re already doing. Excellent. Certainly a school to watch.
Then back home for a shower, a bit of a rest ( watching Richard & Judy with Eddie Izzard as a guest) and then spent the evening playing around on some of the really fantastic soft synths that you can download legally from the net for free. Wow, these are cool, tons of classic sounds and all from my laptop. Excellent, now if only my fingers would stop playing techno music I could get some great work done!
Only one school today, but after Saturday’s affair it was great to be doing a real workshop to real elementary school teachers again! This time it was 3 hours for a school that will start teaching next April and are now working out lesson plans, curricula etc. and of course running into the same problems ( pronunciation, what to teach etc.) and so invited me to help out! One of the teachers attended my seminar in May, and one had been to a city workshop where they used my video for training and had become a fan!
And the presentation was great, they went from being terrified of having to teach to seeing how easy it can be, how much support there is, why it’s so important they do this well and above all believing that they can indeed do it! So a lot of happy faces and a big round of applause at the end. Great. Thanks!
Then to Starbucks to catch up on my email, and then out to the music store to play around on the keyboards for couple of hours. I have to get some new stuff written, so why not do it in the music store where I can play loads of synths really loudly! The store are always cool as they know if I hit on something cool I’ll buy that synth. But although there were some cool stuff, it’s the Korg Triton that seems the best, but it’s just too big! I reckon soft synths are the way to go.
Then to Seattle’s Best for a another coffee and flippin eck my computer’s hard disk decides it’s going to play up and destroy my email inbox!!!! Argh. So I pulled up the back up and that was corrupted as well!! Argh!! So I had to come home and back up from DVD, which means 5 days emails are completely gone! I’m glad it’s July where I don’t get too much mail, but it’s still pretty bad.
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