Of the assigned readings for this week, I was best impressed by CultureQuest, especially the example of Ghana. This teacher is dedicated to teaching and students' real experience in interacting with people from different cultures. She typed in letters of 150 people... This is extraordinary amount. When I was working at a Japanese high school, I actually had a chance to do such interaction with school from America (thanks to my friend from Minnesota). However, my friend did not have enough students for my 200 students (I could have divided students into groups of 4 or 5 or taken turn 40 students at a time etc., but such ways could cause issues on fair grading, which is one of the most important things in my teaching context [high school GPA could be a high-stakes issue in Japan]). Additionally, I did not know how to assess students' message, their engagement, and I was also worried about how frequently I would be able to have contact with the teacher in America to run this project effectively. Therefore, we could not try…
One of my friends said before, if you think something impossible, it will never be possible. This is true. I know it. But there is a risk to be too idealistic. Once you experience the real teaching job, it is very important for you to know what is possible and what is not. If you do something impossible, it would do harm to your coworkers or students. I recently have a strong dislike about idealistic thoughts. Even so, CulrueQuest is interesting to me. They have a guide (a more than 40-page long PDF file) which provides framework of conducting cultural interaction projects. I saw possibility for my students to do something that is real cultural exchange through adapting this program or participating in this program.
4 件のコメント:
Wow, you sound very pessimistic and even slightly sarcastic;) However, I do agree with you that the ambitions and goals have to be high enough to be able to reach them;) As for this Culture Quest project, I also went to their webpage and was amazed at their accomplishments;)
I think it is important that students connect with people who are native to the culture. Understanding cultural content is as vital in understanding pieces of information. Sometimes it is so hard to understand somethings because you don't get what it means culturally. And ya, I agree, the culturquest people have done a magnificent job.
Yes, Karina. I have to admit that I was very pessimistic. I am also surprised when reread it after checking your comment. This is how written communicatino can be scary. If my statement is affected by temporary feeling, my statement stays longer than my feeling and sometimes it embarasses me...
I agree with the grading issue. If students know they won't be graded on something, they typically won't do it. (that's not to say I wouldn't make them think I'm grading something when I'm really not).
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