As education in most countries is still very much old fashion grammar, rote learning and “chalk & talk” whenever I do workshops abroad I always seem to have lots of people wanting to see what I do. In Thailand it was the Education Minister and today it was the District Commissioner and also the gentleman in charge of getting all the funds for these projects.
I did figure their speeches would go on for ages and I’d have a little break to prepare. But they went straight into it, asking me to start straight away!
Talk about being put on the spot! No worries though, I just blasted through the Genki English rules and straight into the Disco Warm Up and What’s your name? Needless to say they’d never seen anything like it!
I thought they’d go after a few minutes, but they stayed and joined in for ages. Which is very cool, it’s always fantastic to have the support of the high ups in town. And I guess seeing teachers with smiles is not something they see too often!
Then it was time for a tea break. A very interesting tea break as you can see! (Don’t laugh at my Swahili! 🙂 )
Everyone was really cool and really got into it the training.
But …. me being very silly and a) not drinking enough maji beforehand and b) not doing my voice warm ups….. I ended up with no voice at the end of the day!!! On day one, losing my voice????? With 5 days to go! Uh oh ….
P.S. With the price of the Download Pack going up today, I’ve had a lot of people emailing to say they couldn’t get their orders through. I do apologise for this, I completely underestimated how busy things would be. I’ve now upgraded the servers and will keep the current price for a few more days so everyone gets a chance, so please keep trying and hopefully your order will get through!
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Hi Richard!
Sad to hear about you had problems with your voice. I’m thrilled to know you got well next day.
To light up smiles is wonderful!
I wish all teachers and pupils were smiling during the lessons!
Thinking about it, it is actually hard to imagine that in a country where Rhythm and music and dance belongs to daily live like food , people are going ahead studying by rote learning. This just doesn’t fit. So going back to our roots, where obviously rhythm and music has been a base (from the time being in the womb,f listening to mothers pulse etc) it strikes me even more that this rote learning just doesn’t fit at all.
So,why was it invented in first place?
“Genki English=Back to our roots”!!!
It’s because most countries just copied the British system of “learning,” as we saw with the Brave Princess ( http://genkienglish.net/teaching/the-story-of-the-brave-princess )