Snippets from the Classroom

In less than two weeks (jeepers) I'll be giving a short presentation at a Christian teacher's conference in Pohang, S.K. My goal is to present a coherent lesson plan on the subject of beauty that is both educational in an EFL sense and thought-provoking in a philosophical sense for Korean learners of English. Above were the documents I did to fuel a discussion for my juniors on the subject. They performed marvelously and seemed very engaged.

In part 1 they had to describe their celebrity (each group had a different one) and then write the physical descriptors on the board.

While i snickered.

Then I had the other groups guess whether each celebrity described was Korean or not, male or female, and we discussed how they knew. Part 2 they all had to design their own fictitious culture and prescribe it's standard's of beauty based on what made their culture different from others (no-eyes culture, polka-dot culture, underwater culture, and - my favorite - Androgynean culture).

Part 3 we looked at a few different Bible verses and tried to uncover what Christian culture says (or ought to say) about beauty.

In other news, my Avatar class was pretty baller. Their final exam is next Thursday where the entire class (of roughly 50 students) will perform the first two episodes in their entirety. I'm really hoping they dress up and that someone brings a polarbear dog.

One of their recent assignments including a short sketch:

Not everyone's an artist!

But Grace is. I want her to illustrate my life.

Points off for not following directions. Bonus points for drawing Bolin so well.

Everyone loves Meelo to distraction.

With my freshmen we did a movie trivia game, competing against the other freshmen class. (We lost, but my kids fought hard.) They had to watch 5 movies and answer a bunch of questions. As a sort-of reward/end of the year party type thing we had breakfast instead of class one morning. Their idea of breakfast, turns out, is choco pies and chips. Even I was a little grossed out.

And I'll let you ponder this last one on your own: