Jackson TP12

On Wednesday, after I had my meeting with Claire and her TP Mahmoud, I met with Fei for our final tutoring lesson at Korean BBQ & More on Tennessee St. It was definitely a bitter sweet meeting for me personally because I realized that this whole TEFL experience is winding down to a close. Instead of having a structured lesson I agreed to help Fei work on her Culture lesson. She seemed to be having some issues figuring out how she would make the lesson appropriate for multi-levels so I gave her many suggestions. Her lesson plan is a speaking lesson based on the students "interviewing each other." She had provided a list of questions and so I suggested that she go through and rank the by their difficulty. During the class, once she asks what level all of her students are, she can provide each of them with an individual sheet of questions based off of their skill. The rest of the lesson consisted of brainstorming ideas to make her lesson as good as possible. Since it was based off of family, I told her that it would be a good idea if she showed the class video of her own family (one video that came to mind was one of her uncle singing in front of their whole family at dinner). Next I gave her ideas based on a class that I observed with Vicky at the CIES. I gave her a worksheet that Vicky had given me, and also told her that in order to encourage further discussion beyond just the interview she should have the class go around and speak about what they each learned about their partner. A unique cultural difference between Fei and I came up when we were discussing possible vocabulary to cover. She had a list of words that she felt were related to family and wanted me to go over them and tell her which ones were best. On their, I saw the word "spank". I told her that, in American culture, spanking is a practice that is sort of out dated and looked down upon. She insisted that it was good for discussing though and that in China it is not uncommon at all. I realized that she had a good point and that, just because the word made ME uncomfortable, it actually may be good to bring up for discussion in a group full of international students. I offered to help Fei in any way I could to prepare her for her Culture Class, mainly by helping her prepare any media she needs (i.e any videos). I also told her I would be happy to attend her class to help her out if she had any issues as long as she would attend mine :P