Transportation

Every week I meet with the third and fourth year students for a course entitled "Culture of the USA." Out of all my classes, this, which should be my favorite considering the subject matter, is actually anything but.

I have yet to really figure out how to impart knowledge to them since they (as a group) are not too talkative, save a few students, so it is hard to get discussions giong (plus the group is just too large).

In addition, I have a lack of resources, as I did not know what (or where), I'd be teaching when I came to Ukraine, so books were left at home. Thankfully we were given a book by PC by the State Department about the US. I am not a fan of the book, but in such circumstances, it will do.

So, I've done such exciting things as have them read or summarize portions of the text, and uh, listen to me. I just have yet to really get their collective attention, and truthfully, by the time we covered education, I gave up and just had them play Mafia (which actually ended up being a trend, as now in any PC quarters involving us folks from N-- we play it).

I've tried a debate game since then, but it was more difficult than I thought since they really didn't disagree about anything.

But a few weeks ago I seemed to make a breakthrough. Faced with the riveting topic, "Transportation," I thought to myself, "Shoot. How am I going to stay awake, let alone my students?" I then realized that of all the authentic materials I brought, I had the most of maps, so I decided to get them out, along with some SEPTA and plane tickets I had kept and come up wtih some questions for each. In total I came up with seven "stations" for groups to do things like find how many interstates traverse the whole US.

Admittedly, some where more fun than others and I selfishly made them find Kemblesville, PA and Ocean City, NJ on the map. They had a challenging time with it and yet enjoyed it.

After coming up with that while lesson planing, I decided to talk about car culture and how much it has influenced us as Americans--from the places we travel as a family (resulting in the tourist traps along the highways near popular tourist attractions) to the food we eat (delivery and drive thru) and how this aspect of our culture is also shown in our media. Trying to think how I could demonstrate this, I realized all I really had at hand was my I-pod.

Searching through what I quickly put on it before I left, I found two songs by Americans that sort of dealt with the topic. Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic," and REM's "Driver 8." That evening I went to the internet cafe and wrote down the lyrics, went home, typed them up and printed them out.

The students also seemed to really enjoy this as well, and are probably the only people on the planet who collectively prefer REM to Jimi Hendrix.

I am glad that putting in the extra mile (or kilometer) for the class actually paid off, for at the end several of them (unsolicited) told me how much fun it was.

This week we did the Environment and talked about more serious issues like garbage and pollution and how we can solve these problems. Needless to say, I think that they liked the Transportion topic better. Just goes to show that if you think that something will be too young for them, they'll just think it's fun.