Welcome Agi Tron – our newest Teacher Trainer

Congratulations Agi Tron – our very first TT (Teacher Trainer) for Hungary!  Agi got started with RSM in the summer of 2008 after a friend told her that Helen Doron was opening the Ready Steady Move! program and needed teachers.  As both a physical education and English language teacher, Agi has the perfect combination for RSM.

In addition to the classroom, the Ready Steady Move! songs can also be heard in Agi’s house and in her car.  Her two boys were only 3 and 5 when she first started with the program and RSM was their initial introduction to English.  Agi told me of how, after only a few weeks of listening to the songs, her younger son was already able to pick out words from popular English songs playing on the radio!

Agi loves teaching RSM – especially when she gets positive feedback from the children.  “I love when they make me feel that they like me; after or before the class they show me their favourite toys, or they want me (not their mummy!) to help them change their clothes or when they run to me and simply hug me.  I so much enjoy seeing their eyes open wide, as they do their best to copy my movements.  Sometimes it is quite difficult for them and they are so lovely and cute as they try their hardest.”

It is obvious why Agi has decided to be a Ready Steady Move! Teacher Trainer – she loves what she does and the children love her back.  Good luck Agi!

RSM – Does it Stick?

After teaching RSM for four years I wondered if RSM really worked in the long run. I know it works over a period of three years because of my experience in the Tiberias school system and where the children remembered songs, stories and vocabulary from year to year. But what would happen if the kids had a gap of a year and then went back to the program, let’s say between kindergarten and second grade? Would they still remember? Would they have the same positive attitude as they used to?

This year I have had the chance to find out. I am now teaching four kids whom I hadn’t seen for over a year. They are now in second grade and just about remember the name of their kindergarten teacher, never mind RSM. Kids have a habit of “formatting” their brains between grades as if they have to clean out their memories before starting another year. So would they remember the program? Or me?

To my relief, they remembered my name. They remembered which kindergarten they went to but hadn’t gone back to visit, and judging by their reactions, never will. They also remembered the most of the songs. Not all the words, let’s not get carried away, but when I started singing “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” for instance, they finished it, without the music, including all the versions! In fact they knew some of the songs so well I found it hard to teach the new kids as they kept jumping in ahead of me. They also knew what flash cards were coming up in the yoga stories as if they were clairvoyant! In the end I had to ask them nicely to let the new kids have a chance.

I now consider them my “helpers”; they have learned to restrain themselves when trying movements and learning vocabulary which is very hard for kids who generally like to be first to show off their knowledge. They greet the songs like old friends which helps, as the others see them as role models and tend to follow their lead. I really didn’t expect them to remember as much as they do or show interest in re-learning the songs and activities they had learned as smaller children, but they do.

I played “Sky is Blue” last week, just in the background while they were working in the activity book. One of the girls was sitting on the ground, carefully colouring her drawing, simply singing along without even looking up at me. That was a shame, as she missed the stupid smile on my face.

Julian Harel
Ready Steady Move! Program Developer & Teacher Trainer