Throughout the year I viewed my job as the english teacher not only to teach english but to also widen my students cultural understanding of the world. Many of my students barely make it out of their 1 mile long village and they like most of the teachers have very little understanding of how the rest of the world functions. My ending unit with my students was Professions. As their last assignment I asked them "What do you want to be when you grow up?" This might seem like a question that gets asked to children quite often, but I don't know if my students have ever even thought about it. Most of them are without question suppose to follow in the foot steps of their parents and be a rice farmer, which is a perfectly admirable profession. So when I asked them their first response was, Farmer. Slowly as they thought about it one brave student would say, Police Man or Teacher. As soon as someone broke the ice their minds went wild but the majority settled on Teacher, Nurse, and Police Man. Although most of my students viewed this activity as a fun pretend assignment, I hope to have planted a small seed in their minds that they can do and be whatever they put their minds too.
Here is some of their work! (6th grade)
Recently in my classroom I made additions to my world map and put people from different countries around it and taped a string to where they are from. This has ignited a new curiosity. There now is usually a huddle of students pointing to the different people and tracing them back to a country. The student are most curious about the other asian looking people and where they are from. It's been exciting to watch them explore the world from my classroom!
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