Today was the 4th time I’d been invited by Odate City’s Board of Education in the north of Japan (where all the trees are very different!) This time it was to do a full day teachers’ workshop today and a demo show for the kids tomorrow. And we had a fantastic group of teachers who whizzed through the basic 3 hour workshop in 2 hours flat!
The teachers’ problems we worked through today.
(The same as every other teacher in the country and all problems we solved!)
Then in the afternoon it was their turn, starting, of course, with the least confident teachers. Naturally they proceeded to make a real mess and they looked terrified as they panicked their way through the lesson plans, looking over to me and of course I offered them no help at all!
Why? Because that is the best way to learn! So after an exhausting hour the first teacher was saying, “well I can do it, I just need to:
1) practice and
2) to read the lesson plan properly! ”
Cool. Lesson learned and learned very well because when the next terrified teacher came up he was taking the lead in helping her to move the lesson along, to get out of “repeat after me” and more into getting the kids involved and making them think.
Learn the rules, then break the rules
They also realised that the first time they should teach the lesson plan exactly how it is. Everything is in there for a reason, and if you chop bits in and out without knowing why they are in there then there’s a fair chance you’ll fail. But once you read the plan and do exactly what it says, that’s when you can start adding in your own style, your own way of motivating the students and your own personality into the teaching. And that’s what they did today.
Writing styles?
Doing things by themselves they also found out why we use the gestures. An abnormally large percentage of teachers are driven by written styles of learning, after all teaching is the profession that society recommends to such people. But of course many adults and most children are also kinesthetic learners, i.e they learn with their bodies, actions, gestures etc.
And the teachers today found out how fun it is to just let the kids come up with the gestures themselves. It makes everyone get involved, it’s just good old fashioned fun and the kids really have something invested in the song so everyone does so much better at it.
Explain it
Plus by now they’d figured out they had to explain the meanings of the English to the kids, rather than just rush through the words and phrases. It’s not a case of saying “this means this and this means this”, it’s a case of showing the kids the image and asking them what they think it could mean. The GE graphics have been chosen to get reactions from kids so this works really well and you get lots of laughs! But you will have to translate the meanings for the kids.
“Kids don’t give up because they are bored, they give up when they don’t understand.”
Home time!
Because the other teachers were all sympathizing with the teacher at the front and were really helping her out, for the first time in ages we’d actually finished early. My definition of finished is when I am no longer needed, when I can just hand them the superpack and lesson plans and they can teach themselves. They certainly got that today. So I just finished off with theBetter than the Best song and a touch of personal development and we finished on a really happy note!
P.S. just for the record the themes we did were disco warm up and birthday song – What’s your name? – Super hero How are you?, What’s the weather like?
P.P.S. I’ve also got 6 hours of great video to go through and edit up for you. Except it’s all in HD and I don’t think my PC will take it!
P.P.P.S. this was the sushi dinner we had to finish off with!
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Both your workshop and sushi are impressive! Sugoi!
Richard, you really hit the nail on the head on this one! Homeroom teachers really need to read and at least try the lesson plan as is when they attempt English. I know they are veteran teachers and know their children better than I, but I cringe when many revert to teaching English the way they were taught. Those ways didn’t work for them in junior high and they certainly don’t work in elementary! I most definitely want them to experiment and find better ways to reach their students, but I want them first to see what GE can do and why GE works. Just a question about how you conducted the workshop. What kind of follow-up advice did you give to the first 2 teachers? I know that saving face is pretty big, especially with teachers in Japan. I can see the value in this and the lessons that were obviously learned. However, I would be hesitant to do something like this for the teachers in my town as it could, if done wrong, damage my relationship with the teachers. How do you encourage the teachers to try and not just think,”I’m glad it wasn’t me up there!”
The feedback at the end showed the opposite, with teachers saying how lucky the ones who were picked were and they wished they had been chosen!
The first half of my workshop is always how to learn, and making mistakes is compulsory, so they are fine to make mistakes in front of everyone.
I think the key is to make sure you have enough time to turn things around.
In the 3 day ones I just give them the lesson plan and watch them totally fail and make them go to the end.
Here I kept jumping in when something went too bad, rather than waiting till they had finished. So by the end they were getting much better and could feel it in themselves. Once they realise they can leave most of the English up to the computer they get the biggest confidence boost and it looks like they’ve just got a new Birthday present!
This is the first year I’ve done this in just a one day workshop as I too was a bit scared, but it worked great. I’ll try and get the videos up, it’s an hour for the full process though!
Thanks for the explanation, Richard. Looking forward to seeing the video!
Sounds like your workshops are really getting teachers where they need to be! I’m still having to chase mine all over the place, trying to get them to read a lesson plan in the first palace…!