In this week's class time Rachel and Thea began the class with a discussion about building awareness and practical skills for communication especially cross culturally. They began by asking if any of us would ever decline someone our notes for class if we were asked. Everyone in the class said that they would not have a problem loaning their notes. Maybe it is because I live in Minnesota but I think that would not be very kind to not loan notes to a fellow classmate.
After the wonderful presentation by Thea and Rachel we got in a circle and discussed what we thought some cultural differences were with respect to food, gender, etc... Some interesting points got brought up, such as other cultures are more "touchy-feely" than Americans. Also, some cultures view sharing food as socially acceptable but in America some people are protective. Although I love America and being American, sometimes I wonder if I am from another country! The things people were describing about their culture are all the things that make me an enigma in the U.S.
Finally, we went to the G.L.L. and made units and lesson plans to practice what we will have to do in the future. I really liked our lesson plan because it was based on teaching children astronomy! Two of my very favorite things in life! I liked hearing the questions about the lesson we planned because it made me look at some things that I would have to pay more attention to when planning a lesson.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I also very much enjoyed the talk about cultural issues in class last week. I liked the atmosphere then and the fact that all of us had something to share. From a teacher's viewpoint, i think relaxing conferencing like that can be utilized in the language class when the topic under discussion is close to students' heart.
ReplyDelete"The things people were describing about their culture are all the things that make me an enigma in the U.S." I think its interesting that when you bring up many of the issues that we talked about in class to another part of the US the answers change dramatically depending on where and who you talk to, but even through we're a country of diverse opinions we still come up with strange ideas such as double-dipping and make them cultural "rules". Maybe it's just our way of actually agreeing on something even though it's usually only practiced when we're with complete strangers.
ReplyDelete