Day 1:
The focus of today's session our group (Group 2: Minds, bodies, and voices) had was helping students explore a various types of global issues in our contemporary society and experience and feel how those issues are interconnected with each other. We started with class discussion with several facilitating questions such as "what do you think global issues are", "what kinds of global issues you can think of", how is certain global issue is connected to the other such as global warming - food. Then, we encouraged students to have pair discussion with questions that focused more on how the global issues affect my lives such as "what global issue do you feel the most important", "why is that important to you", "what experiences have you faced in your life related to this issue" and so on. Then, when we get back to the class discussion, we asked how the global issue discussed in one pair is related to the global issue discussed in another pair.
Actually, these class discussion and pair activities were designed for doing the next main activity of "Web of global issues" smoothly. The essence of the activity is letting students make a statement that show connections among global issues. While we worked on the lesson plan for this activity, we were concerned about.."what if students can't come up with a statement that can make connections among the global issues". However, today's class turned out to be really fantastic particularly in terms of students' active discussion and engagement. I got really surprised to see and hear that how the students deeply and critically thought about many types of global issues. We took the activity of "Web of global issues" out as we could see that they did really great in seeing the connections among the global issues.
Especially, I got impressed with their critical perspectives on many global issues. I even asked Teresa whether these are the typical American students' discussion quality. She said no. They were definitely outstanding. Plus, I really liked the ways they make a sense of community by sharing their thoughts freely on any topics. I appreciated to have them in our class. I was feeling that I learned a lot from them. I could also see that many students truly enjoyed the class. In fact, several of them said this class was the best class and the most fun class they had as they were allowed to share their thoughts freely instead of just listening to teachers' thoughts. So rewarding and informative experience ever!
Can't wait to see them tomorrow!
thanks Mina, this is such a helpful review. I am wondering if you think that raising global issues through an "art" lens helps students become willing to probe deeper or share ideas and experiences that may under other circumstances be difficult to communicate. Or do you feel that the level of awareness (and willingness to share this) is something that the students brought with them?
ReplyDeleteYES, definitely! We had students make protesting posters against global issues that they found the most important to them or relevant to their daily lives for the last half of an hour in our class as a group work. I could see that they shared their own stories with other group members freely to choose one global issue that they are going to make protesting posters as a group and felt that they advanced their thoughts about the issues with questions needed for making effective protesting poster such as what message they should deliver through the poster, how they can effectively express the message in the poster, what color would help them manifest their thoughts and things like that.
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