[First published July 24, 2014] My regular classes wrapped up at the end of June. The dean of my department and some of my colleagues decided to offer a one week summer camp for middle school students using the campus facilities. I was invited to join the effort. I'd never worked with this age group (12 to 15) but enjoyed it immensely. I think for most of the kids, this was their first experience in a classroom with a native English speaker. My style, mannerisms and teaching methods are quite different from the more formal lecture style that they are used to.
The first class with the students was advertised as a "demonstration class" and any interested parent or teacher could sit in and watch the foreign teacher in action. Gulp. Imposter syndrome, anyone? The faculty had decided upon the theme of the camp -- "My Dream" -- and they decided the kids would study Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and would memorize and deliver a short speech themselves. The "Dream" speech has very challenging language for ESL students. It's stuffed with biblical allusions and has so many metaphors that if metaphors were candied fruit, "I Have a Dream" would be fruitcake. So I thought I'd better get the kids started on recognizing metaphors and similes, No problem for low-intermediate kids, right? ...
The first class with the students was advertised as a "demonstration class" and any interested parent or teacher could sit in and watch the foreign teacher in action. Gulp. Imposter syndrome, anyone? The faculty had decided upon the theme of the camp -- "My Dream" -- and they decided the kids would study Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and would memorize and deliver a short speech themselves. The "Dream" speech has very challenging language for ESL students. It's stuffed with biblical allusions and has so many metaphors that if metaphors were candied fruit, "I Have a Dream" would be fruitcake. So I thought I'd better get the kids started on recognizing metaphors and similes, No problem for low-intermediate kids, right? ...
I re-worked a lesson about poetry that I wrote during my teacher training and used Power Point to illustrate examples of metaphor. i.e., "Dreams are like balloons," "Life is a rainbow," etc. I gave them examples and later challenged them to find the metaphor among a selection of phrases on each Power point slide.
For the activity part of the lesson I prepared dozens of strips of colored paper printed with metaphors and simple aphorisms like "Hold on to your dreams," "Life is what you make it," "Every life needs a dream," etc. Every student was invited to choose five slips and arrange them to make a poem, which they assembled on colored paper with glue sticks. Hooray, the activity worked, the kids got it and the bravest ones read their poems aloud in class. With the colored paper it all looked very pretty, too.
For the activity part of the lesson I prepared dozens of strips of colored paper printed with metaphors and simple aphorisms like "Hold on to your dreams," "Life is what you make it," "Every life needs a dream," etc. Every student was invited to choose five slips and arrange them to make a poem, which they assembled on colored paper with glue sticks. Hooray, the activity worked, the kids got it and the bravest ones read their poems aloud in class. With the colored paper it all looked very pretty, too.
For the rest of the week I was asked to do classes on American culture, American food, lead discussions of "what is your dream," the American Dream and the Chinese Dream. I added some information about the civil rights movement as background to studying The Speech. One of the planned segments was on camp songs, so I taught the kids a song I learned when I was a kid at my grandparent's farm, the round song Chairs to Mend. First I showed them a little Power Point, telling them that just as they had (and still have) people who sell their wares in the city streets by singing, so did we in the West. So I got to conduct a children's choir! A dream came true for me as well. (to be continued).
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