And now we work

So today we went to the middle school where we will be teaching our lesson. We met with the teachers and the administrators including the mayor and other city officials where Jon described our program and thanks them for their hospitality and they in turn told us about their programs and schools and thanks us for coming such a long way to honor them with our presence. The tone was set from the very beginning when we entered the meeting room to a sign on the wall that read "we warmly welcome the experts from GK12" or something like that. Of course I had to get a picture under the sign that called me an expert. :)

The real excitement came when Helen and I got the chance to meet with 5 8th grade students from the school to ask them questions that we had and they were in turn allowed to ask us any questions that they had. This was a 2.5 hour meeting which felt like 6 hours and to hit the high points...they are NOT excited about our lesson tomorrow...their teachers are forcing them to smile while we are here....and they love Korea (not the US). Every preconceived notion that I had about my interaction with them was dashed and my enthusiasm about our lesson flew out the window too. Remember this is coupled with the fact that our mentor/interpreter thinks that the lesson is too hard for the students and that they will look at us like "huh???" (in Chinese of course). So, as much as Helen and I have faith in this lesson, we are assuming that it is going to be a colossal failure that way if they do not boo us out of the room while throwing things at us it will be considered some degree of a success. All joking aside, we learned a lot by meeting with the students, most of which I was not expecting at all, like the fact that they do not listen to American music at all since they do not understand the lyrics and that their first choice of international travel is not the US. I fear that much was lost in translation, but what did come out of the meeting was definitely interesting and a priceless experience.

For our lesson tomorrow, we are basically blowing up soda. If you are familiar with the mentos and coke phenomenon (Eepybird.com if you are not) then you know that when you put Mentos in coke it basically erupts like a giant geyser...well this fun activity can be manipulated in a number of ways to teach a number of different lessons in science. Well, instead of focusing on the science since we only have 40 minutes to teach the whole lesson from start to finish with interpretation included we altered the lesson to be an engineering lesson. How can you make the geyser go higher using x materials? The best part is that we are going to go outside and actually do the activity of putting the mentos into the coke. If they learn nothing else...they will learn how to erupt soda. My job here will be done LOL. We will just have to see how much they engage in the activity and how successful it will be according to the 200 or so teachers that will be observing the lesson!!

For the rest of the afternoon we observed a few different classes including a chemistry class, biology and a physics class. Their teaching style is different in terms of being as far away from inquiry as you can get, but the biggest difference in my opinion came in the behavior of the students. They are SO quiet...even when they are working in groups on an experiment. One would think that this would be a great thing in a classroom...to have complete silence, but in fact it was very strange and did not promote new ideas or scientific engagement in the slightest. It is their discipline which will hold them back in their attempts to implement inquiry in the future. The teacher must be able to handle controlled chaos for inquiry to truly be successful.

Helen and I still had a ton to do for our lesson tomorrow morning so we patiently waited through dinner and we were so thankful when it finished up in record time (only 2 hours I think). We came back to my room and prepared for tomorrow. Due to all this hard work...I am writing this blog at 10:30pm and I am about to fall asleep on the keyboard. I promise to have a much more entertaining entry tomorrow. Fully loaded with not only picture from our soon to be infamous Mentos and Coke lesson...but video too!!!!

Thanks again for all your comments...they make my day! And Sarah...not a DP in sight and believe it or not I am surviving. Also...no TD so far...it might be a miracle!!!!!!!!! :P

I just spent 20 minutes writing captions to all the photos and only 5 out of like 15 uploaded, so I did my best and I will try to edit the captions tomorrow morning. It is going to be an early morning for this one!!!

---

---