I had doubts about whether the students in my class had the
maturity levels to appreciate different culture and take the subject matter
seriously. I used the oldest students that I have ( 12 years old) to try and
give the lesson plan the best chance I could to succeed. There were as expected
some immature moments. On seeing a Buddhist monk, one student kept repeating “monk-ey,
monk-ey, monk-ey”. There were also some snickers at the Balinese Monkey Chant ceremony.
Like I said, I expected some of this to a small degree, as they are young
children, and would automatically laugh at something they perceive as ‘weird’.
Despite some inappropriate laughter, I do feel like many of
the students broadened their cultural horizons while watching the different
cultural ceremonies and dance rituals. I believe that they enjoyed what was offered,
and appreciated doing something different in class as opposed to learning
another grammar chapter in their textbook.
One feel good moment in the class was watching a shy
Nigerian teen girl (Gloria) smile when observing the Maasai jumping dancers and
identifying with their culture. I don’t know how many of these culture classes
I could do with my students, but I’m glad I did this one.
It sounds like a fun class. Do your students have the ability to describe in English, some Korean cultural ceremonies? That might make it really interesting for them to try and explain them to you. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteWe did do a short talk segment on what culture is to them, and some Korean examples. Their answers however, where pretty much one or two word answers. "Hanbok!" or "Kimchi!" came up as examples of Korean culture.
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