Today was very topsy turvey. This morning started out with a show for the kids in the city sponsored kids club. Every Saturday the kids meet for English classes taught by members of the community. If all the primary school teachers in town were doing their jobs, I guess the city wouldn’t need this club, but there you go.

Today all the classes were together for a Genki English show and for some of the kids it was their fourth one. Needless to say they were amazing, all 177 of them. We started off with “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to show the parents, who suddenly looked shocked at a) how good the kids were and b) how I said I’d refuse to continue if they just left things up to me and didn’t try as hard themselves! To which they became the best group of parents I’ve ever seen and nearly made themselves ill ( or at least lose a couple of kgs) during the “When, when, when” song.

Next was the main meat of “Do you have any pets?” and the Gokiburi ( or now Hamster) game. The trick with this theme is to go through the song enough times so the kids have a good enough grip on the English to play the game, but not to spend too long on it and make them bored. Today my greatest ally was the parents as they had miraculously learned all the English and could hence help some of the first graders in the game. And that was a joy to behold, seeing about two thirds of the kids being able to handle the language going into the game, but all of them being able to use it perfectly after the game.

Then after quite a few “kami samas” had been awarded, it was time for the “Where are you going?” song to end on a mega high note. Excellent.

Then after lunch it was supposed to be the main event, the teachers workshop to follow on from last year, for which had I prepared lots of really nice new stuff to do ( and bought some funky inflatable lightsabers from Toys R US). This year we didn’t do too well on press coverage ( last year NHK and the newspapers did nice features), the reason being the murder that happened in the next town over ( safe Japan?). But the local radio had been advertising the workshop today, so instead of mostly teachers it was mostly adults who were wanting to learn English. Recently that’s what I’ve been focussed more on, but if that’s who I aimed it for, the teachers who took time out on their Saturday would be disappointed, and if I did teacher stuff, the adults would be bored! A bit of a tough decision and although everyone said they really enjoyed it on the surveys, I had to spend way too long talking and explaining stuff! So my very funky list of new songs and games got slimmed down to:

Where do you live? + Where do you live? Shiritori. In which everyone was hopeless at the place names! But at least it helped prove my point that in making the game the tough part, the English was achieved almost instantly and without thinking!
Where is Mr Monkey? In which the adults were again hopeless when I just said the words without writing them down! Ah, I guess I should have done it at adults’ pace instead of kids’ pace!
What do you think of…? Computer Game. In which the parents completely failed to grasp that how kids learn has been transformed by years of Nintendo, to instead of being “aim, aim, aim, aim, aim”, it’s “shoot, shoot, shoot” and try again when you get it wrong. Luckily the teachers got it!
When is your birthday? – At last a hit!! It’s tricky doing “dekiru, dekiru, dekiru” when they couldn’t do any of the games! Luckily this sure fire hit at the end livened things up!
Otona wa jyouzu naru kotsu – lots of ideas from this page on how to learn English, and lots of material from my new book which is an extension of this article. ( Coming soon!)

But that was draining! One of things I always preach is “Teach to your audience”. If you’re teaching 6 year olds, think like a kid, if it’s real estate professionals or astrophysicists, think like they do. The problem comes when you have two opposite groups like today, both teachers of kids and adult learners. That takes a lot out of you. But the kids were energising this morning and the adults liked it, so let’s see how we go.

I was shattered though after doing 3 shows a day for a week, teaching over 2,000 people. If I hadn’t been so fat before, the amount of weight I’ve lost this week would be alarming! Not to mentioned the liters & liters of water a day I’ve been going through. I just collapsed on my bed when I got back to the hotel. But only an hour’s rest before the BBQ, the first beer of the week, and lots of cool people to chat to in the evening.

It has been great though this week and has really renewed my faith in even having only one off visits to a school. Next year they want me back, and I think I’d like to come back to see how much better they can get. But next time it will be just one show, all the kids together in the City’s Dome, then a 2 day workshop for the teachers, because I don’t think I’ll have recovered all my energy back by then!