Tried out one of my new synths this morning, oh very nice!! It sounds great, so I was in a really good mood for today’s school. And the signs were good, with the kouchou sensei having a good chat about Japanese schools and the sister school they have in Korea.

The actual workshop was OK, but there were a couple of sour faced teachers who were really against anything to do with teaching English. Obviously they came round at the end with my final speech about why this is so important, but until then they didn’t really join in. The CD player didn’t work at first, so I also missed the chance to get them all smiling from the beginning – the songs are sooo necessary to get them relaxed and in the mood! I also had only 2 hours today so did things a bit faster than before. Which all together meant I tended to fall into the “chalk and talk” syndrome of not letting the teachers take the lead! I think I’ve had so much practise this Summer that things are a bit too smooth and flowing. So I need to change things! I think from now on instead of getting requests at the beginning and then doing a workshop to fit them, I’ll take the requests one at a time, listen, then solve, get another request or problem and solve that. Hopefully that way the teachers will have more thinking time and it won’t matter if the overall time is quite short. As with any presentation or lesson, it’s not what I say ( or want to say ) that’s important, it’s what the teachers take away from it that counts!

Then I walked back from the school, it was quite a way but I had plenty of MP3s on my phone. And I got a lot of time to think. For a while now I’ve been trying to thing of an easy way to explain the international understanding meaning of these workshops, recently I’ve been using “Ware ware mo ningen” which works great ( it sort of means “we ( non-Japanese) too are people” but it uses “ware ware” which is usually used to accentuate the difference between Japanese and foreigners and hence the irony accentuates what I want to say). The problem is that it doesn’t work if said from a Japanese person’s point of view ( as “ware ware” means “we”)!

In the workshops the thinking behind the actual Genki English teaching has now solidified into two rules “Dekiru, dekiru, dekiru to omoeba dekiru” ( think you can do it and you can!) and “Maketara, mou ikkai!” ( losing just means “try again”) and I always felt there should be a third. And whilst I was walking along today, it clicked. The third rule is this International Understanding point and the line is: “Ningen ha ningen” ( people are people! but it doesn’t sound like depeche mode in Japanese!). So let me try that out tomorrow!! These sound bites, plus knowing about the website are what people take away from my workshops, and now there is a full set.

1. Dekiru to omoeba dekiru
2. Maketara mou ikkai
3. Ningen ha ningen

Cool! And just as I figured that out the random songs on my phone changed from sad songs to genki ones! And from Neneh Cherry I got a great idea for a musical instruments theme! Excellent!

So now in Starbucks I’ll get my mail and stuff sorted, then back to do some music work tonight! Great.