To be honest over the last few months I’ve seen CD8 as a bit of a mismatch of themes to fill holes in the curriculum or to bring about themes that haven’t worked out until now. But today I played the songs for the teachers and they loved it. Out of all the songs we’ve done this week, every song on CD8 they enjoyed more than all the others. Wow.
Otherwise we finished off the three day workshop with some hip hop stuff, phonics and curriculum development (including dissecting other prefectures curricula, and they were quite stunned at how bad they were!).
Then after recapping the projects I finished with this video: “Do flowers fly?”. In India it’s used to show private school teachers how public school fails kids. In Japan I used it to show elementary school teachers why they shouldn’t become like junior high schools. At the end the teachers were crying. Education is important.
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Anyway the teachers were cool and as bright as buttons, asking all the same questions as yesterday but also requesting ways of praising kids. “I hear there’s such a thing as praising kids too much” one asked, to which my reply was “You can never praise too much. False praise is counter productive, but when someone has done something well they have a right to know”. Yesterday I was listening to 
Content wise it was the usual confidence building & questions: What if I can’t speak English, how can I teach it? What to teach? How about 5th and 6th graders? Why teach English? What about katakana? etc. all easy stuff. I also tried out the new 
camera (looks great, very easy to carry) and I’m glad I did because after 5 hours on the train today I arrived in Kumano City in Mie ken (the place of tomorrow’s workshop).
. . . . . 
