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Drama Week 1: Suspended Disbelief
This is the first day of drama class. I enter the classroom posing as a doctor, wearing a white lab coat, surgical cap and stethoscope around my neck– all borrowed from a medical student at the university. For this mini-drama, I carry my Medical Terminology textbook and introduce myself as “Doctor Matt”.
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Trauma or drama – That is the question
In this podcast I describe the first day of teaching drama class, noting that I was totally unprepared for the experience. I anticipated teaching “English as a Second Language” to college seniors, but this changed as the college administrators asked if it “would be convenient” for me to teach drama as well. With doubts coursing through my brain, I accepted the challenge …
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Back to School: Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom!
They were a tough crowd. I introduced my first two literature classes to my concept of learning as a journey. At first their faces were impenetrable masks. Then I told them, “Even in America we know about Chair Mao’s famous Long March, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.†Their faces lit up with pride. That’s when I knew my students understood me. “So this is an honor for me to be here on the China’s 60th anniversary, and be your guide on another journey. And it is an honor to be part of your education in the beginning of the Chinese Century. Of course, this journey will…
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Lit Week 1: Intro to Thoreau
I gave students an assignment: read Thoreau’s essay “Reading” and make notations about passages that have special meaning. For instance, why does Thoreau refer to some readers as cormorants and ostriches?
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Lit Week 1: Why Read?
Through various readings, I find out how familiar students are with Western literature. One poem about the Congo River by Vachel Lindsay, an American, intrigues them. They ask if it is really a “rap” song…
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The Journey Began
Reality Laid Somewhere Between Daydreams and Nightmares I got out of bed at dawn Wednesday. It had been restless night spent thinking about all the clever things I would say to make students wonder if I was some reincarnated Confucius in disguise. I had spent the last few days losing track of time in a kaleidoscopic tour of Chinese culture and hospitality. And I had spent the nights of that last disorienting week of summer vacation dealing with nightmares about the first day of class. These nightmares had nothing in common with my daydreams. In them I was continuously lost in labyrinthine hallways, losing my books despite fruitless nightlong search…