It always seems a little strange that many teachers refuse to do part of their job (teaching English) just because they don’t feel confident about it. If we all did that no one would ever do any job. After all you’ve got to start somewhere and a few butterflies never hurt anyone!

So today was the third time I’d been invited to present for the Anan City’s Educational Research Center. Mind you it was only today that the head said to me “What, you can do all 600 teachers at once? You mean we could have got everyone genki 2 years ago instead of 50 at a time?” Well yes, that’s usually how I do it!

All in order

Anyway today was a bunch of over 50 pretty good teachers (well apart from the one guy who walked out in a huff part way through!), and I really wanted to do something new. So after the disco warm up and birthday song I got them to play the game where only using English they have to line up in the order of their birthdays. Very simple but lots of fun.

So after a game of mingle to mix them up then I got them to line up in order of English teaching confidence! Those who have no problems teaching English on one side, those who are terrified to death on the other! And to stop them all going to the terrified side I said they have to line up in single file, no bunching up! I did let them use Japanese to do this. So then I said I was going to pick 3 teachers to come to the front and teach demo lessons in front of everyone. Of course they thought I’d go for the confident ones, but of course it’s not those teachers who need it! So I picked the least confident two teachers plus I said I would be picking someone else at random later – just to keep them on their toes!

Can he do it?

When the first teacher came to the front he was a bit scared, although it’s mostly a case of them telling themselves they are scared of English, rather than any deep seated fear. But I sat him down in front of everyone and went through all his worries about teaching English. I’m getting pretty good at this softly, softly one-on-one coaching, and everyone was listening supportively so we had a try.

I gave him the lesson plan and asked him to have a quick look. To which he said “I need more time”. So I asked him how much time he sets aside to lesson plan with his ALT. “Zero” was the answer, so that’s all I gave him!

He actually did pretty well, doing the How are you? lesson. Using the software takes away any pressure of worrying about pronunciation or what to teach next, and the teachers can then concentrate on looking at the kids (when they are not trying to look at the computer screen!) and motivating the kids.

At the end I asked him how he felt, he said he was much more confident now! And I asked him if he had learnt anything, “that I need to spend more time preparing for lessons with the ALT” was his answer. Let’s see if he sticks with it!

The next teacher did What’s the weather like? But as an older teacher she couldn’t read thelesson plan as the characters were too small! But she did great in asking the kids for gestures and asking them what the different things mean. Again she started a blobbering lump of terrified jelly and turned into a not so bad teacher, all in 30 minutes and just from being pushed into doing it!

Fight time!

The final lady I gave a trickier subject to do Baby Monkey’s Winter Clothes She was doing OK-ish, but seemed to have never used a computer before and was just staring at the screen and not looking up at all. So I got the back row teachers together and we started a fight! She never noticed for ages! But that’s what happens when you don’t keep your eyes on the kids!

I’ve spent ten years making Genki English really easy to use for teachers (probably even more so for non-native than native speaking teachers) and when they have to do it they can, no problems, they just need a touch of practice. Let’s hope whoever wins the election next month realises this and gets them to do it!

Then we finished on Superhero and they were great. Now that would have been cool with all the teachers in the city!

And then next day it was a chance to check out the Awa Odori festival before heading up to Tokyo for some top secret discussions about a secret big new project. Well some of you already know …