Day: August 7, 2009

Caveat: Old Hand

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Today, I felt like an "old hand."  Cynical and well-informed.  We had the annual summer speech contest today.  It's my third speech contest for LBridge, so I knew the routine.  Last-minute disorganization, great kids, but a bit scaled down from previous events.  I got to be the finalist speeches' MC again.  It's weird how I just kind of shrugged and went with it, when the boss came to me five minutes before and said, oh, by the way, can you be MC?  There was a time, I remember, when such cavalier deployment of my limited talents would have pissed me of f and made me uncomfortable, but I just went with the flow, and it was fine.

I was please to see several of my students place in the finals, including Willy (6th overall), Tracey (5th overall) and tiny Dana (4th overall).  I'll try to post a few pictures later, although I don't have as many as I'd have liked, since my camera ran out of batteries. 

Willy gave a speech about how parents shouldn't try to make their children into slaves.  "I can think for myself, so please let me think for myself," he explained.  Another boy, David (not my student) gave a really serious, excellent and compelling speech about "one thing about Korean culture I would like to change":  his choice?  Korean men's drinking culture.  That's a pretty heavy-duty topic for a 5th grader.  And he did a really good job with it.

Caveat: Narrative

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

I have always felt there was something central to the role of narrative in the human psyche.  And recently, as I evaluate myself and my progress as a teacher, I have come to realize that if I assess my "toolbox" (those various tricks and gimicks and techniques that I've accumulated over my recent several years of teaching EFL), there is one thing that stands out as a consistent "winner":  telling stories.  Telling good, interesting, compelling stories is possible at all levels of EFL instruction, and I have yet to have a bad reaction to a story, as long as I've taken the time to make sure it is well-structured (beginning, middle, end, character, etc.).   I used to give away prizes or play games with my students, but nowadays, when they clamor for some kind of reward, they generally say, "tell us a story." 

So, to be a better, and better-equipped teacher, I need to work on building my repertoire of narratives.  Many of the narratives I tell the students are semi-fictionalized (some more, some less) episodes from my own life:  the time I cut my hand on a machine at work, the time I got shot at by a drunk man in Mexico, the time I was in a small airplane struck by lightning.   Lately, I've been telling purely fictional stories about mad scientists transplanting brains, since we're doing a unit in my Goldrush classes reviewing parts of the body.  They really seem to enjoy these — I came into class today to cries of "draw the man with the brain."  That's reference to the sketches I do on the whiteboard.

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