Kagawa, Japan.  Workshop for the prefectural Education Center.

I should start reading my own blog. Last time I was in this prefecture one teacher came from every school and they did really well. But then they had a series of other workshops that just demolarised them and defeated everything I did.

So what happens today? Exactly the same thing!

They were great in the morning. Although I only had 100 minutes with the same content done twice (as they couldn’t find a room big enough, why didn’t they just take out the desks and leave the chairs?) they did really well, and I even had the second group of teachers say “Challenge!” when asked if they wanted it easy or challenging. Cool. I added in lots of new bits and got everything down in 105 minutes.

The whole thrust of my workshops are to take away their stress. I find out what they are worried about and give them, often really simple, solutions that make them go “ooooo”. They’re overworked and underpaid so don’t need the extra hassle of having to learn too much English before they teach (they can learn with the kids) or to have to spend hours making materials and lesson plans (we’ve already done that for them). They’re teachers and that’s what they do best. So needless to say by the end they were revved up and totally ready to go!

Then in the afternoon it was a model of exactly how not to do a training session. They just completely contradicted and ignored everything I had done by putting the teachers in groups, giving them a (photocopied!) “Eigo Note” book and told them to plan their own lessons.

Surely it would be better to give them lesson plans and get them to practice teaching them? After all, that’s what will happen when they go back to their classes!

Making a lesson plan from scratch is hard. Making a good one is even harder. And finding what the kids want to say, choosing the correct English for it, then creating fun activities and materials to make a child centered effective lesson that covers all the bases takes months of feedback and practice. I know because that’s what I do everyday in the Winter! There’s no way in a million years they could have done that. And there’s no way that that is necessary. Even if they did go with the Eigo Note instead of the much easier to teach Genki English lesson plans, there is a full teacher’s guide book, but they weren’t allowed to use it!

Without knowing how to teach English (they’re all beginners at this) or even speak it they were supposed to give model lessons in front of everyone else. I wondered round and it was appalling. They were inventing mistaken English left right and center (it doesn’t help that the Eigo Note contains lots of irregular items as examples). One group even had the funky idea of going to Kyoto, picking out the white people and introducing Kagawa to them. I think they heard my jaw drop on the floor, but the teacher insisted it was fine and racial profiling is quite a natural thing to teach in school!

The lady in charge gave a demo class where the ALT introduced himself and she was saying “Just pick up on a few words he says and repeat them to the class. It will make you sound like an English teacher.” Ah dear.

Luckily one group had a computer so I slipped them a copy of CD 1 and the lesson plan book. They were over the moon saying “Hang on, this is so easy? Why weren’t we given these anyway?” Why indeed!

This is certainly another place on my “not to visit again list”, because there’s no point me motivating the teachers just to have them brought back down. The teacher in charge basically gave the insinuation that “you just want to promote your stuff”. Well yes, because it works! I didn’t spend 10 years developing it for the good of my health, I did it to solve the teachers’ problems. There’s no point asking teachers to re-invent the wheel when a) they don’t have the skills to do it and b) they don’t have the time to do it. Real teachers aren’t going to spend 3 hours planning a lesson.

And what about the kids? Don’t they deserve something with correct English, I’m sure 1 + 6 = 8 wouldn’t be allowed in a maths lesson! What’s best, something that’s based around their needs and has been improved and improved with input from thousands of other kids and teachers? Or something put together on the back of an envelope the day before?

The only good thing today was that the lecturer who was on at the same time as me in the morning was from one of the institutions that wrote the Eigo Note book. Apparently he wasn’t too glowing in its praises either!