“Losing just means try again!” is one of the most powerful things you can teach your students.
Here’s an email from Todd, who very kindly let me post it for you:
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When I first had my school purchase your teacher’s set (with CDs and workbooks) I was truthfully skeptical. All my years of teaching at elementary schools was synonymous with searching high and low for games at a dozen different websites, cutting and pasting, copying, coloring and straining my brain. Your website was so simple -deceptively so -I thought at first. Simply too good to be true.
After three months I can say you made this English teacher’s job super easy. I now simply follow your curriculum to a tee and effortlessly succeed 99% of the times – avoiding the spectacular disasters of my own game plans or someone else’s ideas in the past.
I see the power of teaching kids English they want to learn.
Today I saw the transformative power of your central tenet -Genki English rule of “losing means try again!” I’ve been at it for 8 years. I know -as well as you – that Japanese kids take light competition far too seriously. I’ve been in desperate need of solutions.
The first time I explained the idea of “losing means try again” -I had trouble translating into Japanese. The HRTs unfamiliar with the idea and themselves sore losers always said “makettemo daijobu” -like EVEN if you lose its OK. Well, I thought…telling a kid its OK too lose is like telling an adult its OK to fail. I tried games like the “Line Quiz” and there were still a few crying, devastated kids who lost in the end.
But then I saw your demo-lesson “you tube” clip on the Rock Paper Scissors lesson when you explained simply “makeru no imi wa…moo ikai ganbarimasu.” And about how Japanese athletes (as you showed humorously) don’t boohoo. I did the exact same thing….just imitating exactly how you did it….and the kids got it. We played the Line Quiz -and when asked the losing team “donna kimochi?” they chanted like Rocky Balboa “try again! try again!” It got so infectious that they were chanting it long after the game ended as I left the class.
Thanks again man.
Todd
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How do you introduce “Losing just means try again” in your class?
