A few months ago, Jay sent me a huge box of Magic cards. I had a brief dream of setting up a Yantai Magic league, but that was quickly squashed by scheduling problems. My Chinese students were already overscheduled with necessary classes and sports training, starting school at seven AM and finishing around nine PM. There simply isn’t time for a Magic tournament.
Still, I’ve given out a lot of introductory sets to my students. Bonus packs, I promised, would come to those who aced spelling tests. (This was so effective that Stephen would greet the announcement of a spelling test with a little happy shout). I gave Young a pack of Magic cards and told him to find a friend and play the intro game and report back to me.
And he didn’t do it.
Yes, the homework was to play a game and he didn’t do it.
I know that he might not have had enough time, he might not have been able to convince his mom and dad that the lao wai lao shi actually told him to play a game, etc., etc., but I’m starting to think he just wasn’t comfortable with a weird assignment. Young’s my focus right now, but my other classes often respond the same way to unusual requests. Write each word 5 times, yes, but write a story, blank stare.
What if I could actually teach creativity? I’m already in parental trouble because my students aren’t bringing home lists of vocabulary memorization, so why not? What will it take to get creative discussions instead of passive lumps?
Perhaps you need to “justify” your approach to the students and parents by marking and measuring ‘comprehension’ ‘vocabulary’ ‘grammer’ ‘spelling’ ‘sentence construction’ and ‘presentation’ since, it seems to me, they have a need to measure success and achievement.
I would try introducing the creativity slowly, start with factual work and extend e.g. from ‘How I spent last weekend’ to ‘How I will spend the next weekend’ and then ‘How I would like to spend next weekend’ (as exercises in verb tense ?)
Are teachers allowed to smack children in China ?
Meg,
How about association games, and even anti-association games? Typically, when you try to draw creativity out of individuals who are closed-up, you introduce speed and short responses – together with a certain level of anonymity. We used to play something with yellow stickies on a whiteboard for brainstrorming on how to solve a problem. The teacher wrote the problem on top of the whiteboard. Each student had 15 minutes to write 10 ideas or associations to the problem. They then stuck them to the white board. The we discussed each idea, without pointing out who wrote exactly that.We then jointly sorted and ranked the stickies. After a couple of iterations and rankings you end up with the top 5 solutions to the problem, and the class feels like they all participated in coming up with that solution.
I’ll give this site good marks.It’s because if it’s worn out to it’s to the full potential , it might make your line of work very much easier. – heart burn
Eventually, my inquiry finishes here. Thanks to this site, I can instantly stay ensured that my assignment makes up settled and posessing class. – heart burn
I was starting to wonder if the cards ever showed up. I’m glad you’re finding a use for them, and I’m glad I got a chance to send them out before I stopped doing PR for Wizards of the Coast.
I still do find that I spend just as much time justifying myself to admin as I do teaching the kids. But I’ve also found that a little bit of freedom helps make for more creative discussions, so I guess I’ll keep rebelling!
Perhaps you need to “justify” your approach to the students and parents by marking and measuring 'comprehension' 'vocabulary' 'grammer' 'spelling' 'sentence construction' and 'presentation' since, it seems to me, they have a need to measure success and achievement.
I would try introducing the creativity slowly, start with factual work and extend e.g. from 'How I spent last weekend' to 'How I will spend the next weekend' and then 'How I would like to spend next weekend' (as exercises in verb tense ?)
Are teachers allowed to smack children in China ?