By far the lessons I enjoyed teaching the most were from a class called Great People in History. Many of us in this course are familiar with the ESL system that exists in a lot of schools in Korea, a lot of dry grammar books and lesson plans with way too much work crammed in them. Anytime time I am given the chance to make unique lessons plans its interesting if only to break up the norm.
The Great People in History class was a great chance to make lessons about interesting topics for students who were almost at native level. As the title of the class suggests, we introduced influential figures from the past to the class, a group of twenty six year olds. Despite the subjects for the class being chosen by R&D from the company headquarters, it was a great opportunity to focus on and talk about musicians, inventors, and other inspirational people the students for the most part had no exposure to.
As someone who studied history in university and spends a lot of my down time reading history it was great to have a hand creating lessons and activities for something that I had a passionate for. It was interesting to see the reactions and questions from students who were had little concept of the world outside of their own community let alone Korea or a different time period. It was pretty satisfying and is something I hope to do more of in the future.
This is a great idea Sean. I have also found that my students are relatively clueless when it comes to foreign famous people and I feel that it is important for our Korean students to expand their horizons. I don't have the opportunity teach history but I do teach a few lessons on countries and nationalities where I include photos of famous people from different countries. It is amazing how many 20 year old Koreans don't know who Elvis is. Crazy!
ReplyDeleteI've always found that Koreans love to know something about famous people, especially famous Americans. It seems that they know about the same ones though. Mainstream actors like Brad Pitt, #1 hit singers like Michael Jackson and the current president are usually the most popular. I'm delighted to have a chance to teach them about someone famous who they have never heard of. Sometimes it's surprising that they've never heard of someone, like Elvis.
ReplyDeleteIt is enjoyable to teach something that you have a passion for.