300

Group work

Hey ho! Maybe you remember this title from a Gerard Butler movie about a Greek battle. Joe tells me 300 Spartans held off the Persian Army. In my recent experience the number more refers to the number of participants that I "held off" or, better, kept engaged at my last big presentation venue. 400 participants signed up for my last workshop.  The ones that attended cordially worked "with" me! I have been marketing my workshops with the ministry and binational centers since my arrival, and I have struck paydirt! There is a list-serv that the ministry runs that reaches over 8000 teachers throughout the country. As soon as my presentation on Lesson-planning was advertised people were filling out the online google doc (I had no idea that google docs could handle registration info and put it in a tidy excel document for you!).

We capped the registration at 400 which meant around 50% were predicted to show. It seems as though the best of intentions cause people to eagerly fill out registration forms, but often at the last minute something comes up. Well . . . 300 showed up. You can tell from the pictures that the participants were "golden"! They worked in groups and pairs  . . . it was magical (and exhausting!). However, once you manage this kind of group in an interactive plenary . . . you can do anything, right?

All ages event!

We advertised the same presentation again, and in 24 hours over 200 had registered! Amazing. We capped that one right away and will see if the audience that shows up next Thursday is, in fact, more manageable. Ahhh, how to deal with success?? A dilemma that I welcome :) In the meantime, I made a quick trip to Rosario, a city about 3-4 hours northeast by car. The audience there consisted of 20 language school directors. . . so intimate! Afterwards, I was able to run around the city pedestrian mall taking quick pictures before the sun went completely down. I was even able to capture a short video of a young accordian player being intently watched by an older gentleman (maybe a fellow player?).

Pair work with a smaller audience in Rosario

Anyhow, things are picking up . . . which is exciting. My biggest challenge is to take presentations that I am accustomed to delivering to 20-30 participants and make them more user-friendly to a large audience. I have already started moving them to a PowerPoint format, making pair and group work more explicit, asking for microphones for both me and audience member comments, and posting handouts online for participants to print ahead of time and bring with them to the venue. Coming soon to an auditorium near you! Check your local listings