This weekend I had another workshop in Fukuoka, this time for two days where the teachers actually teach in front of each other and get feedback!

We did quite a few themes and also took some good videos so I’ll get those up for you this week.

Getting over the dip…

The toughest part with these workshops is getting over the “dip” – the tough bit where you first get an outside view of your teaching and get pretty shocked.  Teaching can be a very lonely profession and usually we never get chance to work together.

So to suddenly have your teaching reviewed and all your failures brought to light can be terryfying.  One teacher came in the second day saying “I don’t want to do this, I’ll just watch from the back”.   As if I’d let her do that! ; )

The trick, of course, is to put the ego aside, listen to the criticism and then put the things into action to make you even better.  The way we do this is to ask everyone their feedback and split it into three parts: What was good?  What was bad? What would you do to make it better?

The things that always crop up are:

1) Reading the lesson plan and having a clear image in your head of what to do.

2) Using the right language, i.e. not “all English” that goes over the kids’ heads, or not using Japanese for English the kids already know.

3) Explaining clearly things to the kids, so they know exactly what you want from them and they don’t switch off.

Even the parts where the teachers were actings as kids and watching the other teachers really got them saying “ahh, I’ve been doing that!” and things like “Wow, I thought I was thinking of the kids, but now I see I was focussing on myself”

So I’m quite happy I did it this way as is it’s the first time I’ve done one of these that is open to the public to join (usually they are just for schools that are implementing GE full time).  Many of the teachers had been to my workshops before and commented how different it was to the previous ones.

Oh, you need to think?

One thing I did get surprised about was the teachers’ reactions to the Genki English games.  They were saying “Oh, I never thought to get the kids thinking.  I just wanted them to repeat back the English”.   Wow.  And there was me thinking education was all about about getting the kids to think!

Songs too fast, I don’t know what to do!

Also, as with every time I do these workshops, part way through I was thinking “This is never going to work…” as I watched them struggling with the lessons.  The songs seemed too fast, there was no eye contact, their pronunciation was terrible, the computers baffled them and they couldn’t explain the games.

But by the 3rd time they’d done a lesson they were actually really, really good, they could see the lesson in their heads, the “kids” were the focus and hence the songs seemed too slow, the games were over too quickly, everything was flowing and time flew by!

I also wished I’d videod them actually introducing the language (as opposed to just the songs and games) as they also got really good at eliciting responses, gestures and conversation from the kids. (I think I should do a post on this do you think?)

The next workshop like this is in Okinawa in November.  But keep an eye out this week for the videos  …