Today was one of those rare days when everything just seemed to go right. First up were a couple of meetings at Starbucks, great stuff. It’s always nice talking to people who have big plans and intend to carry them out! Cool.

Then in the afternoon it was off to a school in Fukuoka to do a seminar. The great thing about this school was that unlike most of the places I visit where they either hand over the reigns to the ALT or are “thinking about” introducing English, here the Japanese teachers already have to teach it once a month!! Needless to say they are finding it difficult, so they called me in to help.

As usual the confidence activities were the key, but they did great at the first assignment so they really got a boost. Then I went through how to use the Pronunciation Guides and Animated Mini-Lessons on CD2 and CD4 – their faces looked like all their prayers had been answered!! With teachers who actually do have to teach every week, they are over the moon when they see that all they have to do is to press a button to hear the words, and then another to hear me teach the lesson to the kids. Even the older, ungenki teachers were really happy! And for me that was great. Obviously the songs are great, but it’s the software that makes everything possible for the Japanese teachers. I guess I just have to make that a little more obvious!!

The brief I got from the Kouchou sensei ( a female kouchou sensei – makes sense as the teachers were so good!), was that she wanted ALL the teachers to feel they could teach English, and I think I did that.

Today was also the launch day of the Phonics CD and I’ve already got people asking when the next one will be out!!! Wow! But I think the answer will be “not for quite a while yet!!”

So after a good day’s work it was back to getting ready for Kobe tomorrow!