With a huge screen and 500 brand new teachers, today was all about getting them to believe in themselves, to try something new and get totally confident doing it!

Yesterday’s workshop was really hard.  Really, really hard.   So today I completely changed it up,  I threw out the teacher training and just did an Ultimate Genki Confidence Workshop – and it was awesome!!

It’s basically what I do in business workshops for native speakers, and of course using all the Genki English ideas like eye contact, posture, gratitude etc. that we usually use with adult learners.

Plus it also helped having a couple of really great kids there.  When the teachers were going “This is too hard!” the kids were all like “We want more!!!”

Here’s some of what we did:

– The Agreement – so everyone knows the rules of the workshop – respect everyone, and always tell me when you don’t understand.

– Genki Disco Warm – the first thing we learn in Genki English is to stand up and say “Yeah!”  Your voice counts.  Make it heard.

– What’s your name?  – Eye contact, making pairs and firm handshakes, confidently getting to know everyone in the room.

– How to protect your voice  + My self intro.

– Superhero – change your body language to super charge your mind from Princeton University.

– Then using smartphones the way they are intended in the classroom,  to exchange videos with schools anywhere else in the world!

– And thank you to the wonderfully shy teacher who came on stage and let me show What is “Shy” and how to cure it  + how to make diamonds not coal.

– Gratitude with What are you thankful for and why it is the most powerful force in the world.

Then after lunch ……

With no break I was straight into the What do you do? song and the clap, clap game.  (Well, the Ministry of Education people were there so I had to do some activities :))

– Multiple Intelligences and the teachers were so scared of gestures until we did the  What did you do in the summer? song which has to be the best way of doing this – the past tense in 5 seconds anyone?

– Pronouns and Dinosaur Danger – finishing on a super high positive set of words elevates your class to the next level!

– Good cat, Bad Cat  – now they got the mindset this was one of the most popular parts of the whole workshop.

– And to finish off with an awesome version of I can do it!!!

So that was such a high, high, high end to the whole day.  Amazing!!!  Some of the teachers were still like “Are we supposed to be doing that in our classrooms?”  Nope, this was to get you out of your shells and see what being genki in class can be all about.  And you all did amazingly well!!!

How you think is how you act.  How you act is what the children copy.  What the children copy is who they become.  What they become is what the world becomes.

Let’s go out there and do some amazing things!!!!!