Delays seem to creep in to fill any open time in a schedule!
After getting a VISA number from my employer in Korea, I sent my documents to the San Francisco Korean consulate: passport, 2 more passport photos, and a couple more forms.
I received my passport with my E2 visa for 13 months on the Saturday prior to my Thursday flight to Seoul!
Phew!
Wow! It has been so fun discovering ways to use audio and video in my classes. If you think about how we learned our language, you have to confess it wasn’t from studying grammar. Instead it was just hours and hours of input in the form of direct experience with people. Video and audio are rich forms of input. Having classrooms with a computer and internet make using Youtube and other sites and easy way to enrich the learning experiences easily.
Classrooms often focus on written materials and consider audio and video as somehow lesser. But why?
In the past few weeks we:
- Did a ‘Friends’ TV episode using an episode free on hulu, with a script found free at friendscafe. Each student played a character and we rehearsed it all week. It was hard to speak that fast, but with practice, they did it and we had fun! If you think this is easy, try it yourself:
- Friends TV Show: The One with all the Resolutions: video transcript
- Even ‘kids’ books have a lot of difficult vocabulary. In our reading class, we often use audio books as a partner to books: Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Walk Two Moons are examples. ReadAloud.com has free samples and some free audiobooks that can help students get a flavor of a book they are reading.
- We also did diaries with drawings, as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid does, to help the writing inspire the drawings, and vice versa. Listening to music, coloring and writing in diaries was a magical class! Diaries can get stuck in a rut: yesterday, i got up at xxx …..yawn, boring! Drawing helps launch it out of that pattern somehow.
- Watching a movie trailer is another helpful way we used to ease understanding for a challenging book like Harry Potter.
- Teaching a Grammar class? Search the internet for ‘good songs for teaching past tense’ …or whatever grammar point you’re teaching. Favorites include:
- Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better (1950 Annie Get Your Gun)
It’s been really fun teaching my Saudi students in Denver. It’s my first chance to get to know so many people from this part of the world.
With Easter coming up, I’ve been trying to include lessons about spring and the many symbols of easter: blooming flowers, bunnies, chicks.
But I didn’t expect that I would have to explain what the season of Spring is. Or that I would do it so poorly. After several discussions, I’ve determined that there really isn’t such a thing as Spring in Saudi Arabia. I guess that makes sense!
Anyhow, we had a great time dying Easter Eggs and then doing an Easter Egg hunt in the halls.
All these students are Muslims. But some of them visit churches with their homestay family. I like how open-minded and respectful students are about each other’s cultures and religions.
When we all forget that we are studying English, I think we are doing a good job of teaching it.
Today I took my Speaking and Listening class to a cooking class. It was more of a community cooking experience than a cooking technique class.
It was $7 per person and included lunch, eating the spaghetti, spaghetti sauce and garlic bread we made. The class is called “Cooking with Lou” and is offered at the City of Denver 20th Street Recreation Center.
I lucked out! I was first asked to substitute but then got to teach full time from March through mid-May, while waiting to go to Korea.
My students are awesome! They are adults that hail from Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia and more!
What it lacks in prepared materials is made up for in an environment that encourages creativity. There are general guidelines of what the students need to learn, but teachers are allowed to teach using whatever materials or concepts they like.
It’s a bit overwhelming to plan but pretty fun!
