wow, thanks again for another great lesson leo. these days when i log onto waygook i have found myself wondering if you have posted a new lesson... i'm not sure if that makes me a bad teacher or you an excellent one. probably both.
i have one question - i'm wondering how your students responded to the slide showing korean vs. american minimum wage, average salary, and whatnot. was it just simply surprise? as an american, i think i might be a little sheepish to show them that particular slide. i guess i just worry that they might mistake my desire to enlighten them about such things as some weird desire to brag about america and/or put down korea. i have found that my students generally have a very inaccurate perception of wealth in america. long story short, many of them essentially believe that the vast majority of americans are very wealthy. In one lesson in which I was talking about university life, the background of one powerpoint slide was a picture of the library at my university... upon seeing this, many students shouted, "teacher! you're house??!!". and they weren't joking. anyway, i'm just wondering how your students responded to that particular slide. of course, i could just delete it, but i have found that many times my expectations of students' knowledge/perceptions/etc. is wildly off. and, like you say, i think it is part of our duty to teach them more about cultural/worldly things than just simply english.
thanks again!
Thanks WIIMH.
Just to clarify though, I may make good lessons, but it doesn't mean you don't have your own strengths. I've seen other teachers create highly engaged classes with mere handouts with no PP whatsoever. This is something I have great difficulty doing. I rely quite heavily on well executed PP's to the point that I would say I'm over reliant. You could say that I developed my PP skills to compensate for my faults. Some teachers make great councillors, some teachers make great mentors, some teachers make great friends. I make great PowerPoints. And on this forum, it just happens to be the most valuable skill that can be shared. Therefore, I don't such simplistic judgements can be made from only our lesson making skills.
I had the same debate myself before creating that slide. Here's my reasoning:
Cons:
1. It's sure to fuel the USA-envy the Koreans tend to have based off only their simple knowledge of US supremacy (in whatever regard)
2. They will probably feel a sense of helplessness in knowing they're "stuck" in "poor" Korea
Pros:
1. I purposely added the slide afterwards showing the other nations at the top and bottom of the scale to neutralize the negative effect of the "how much money" slide. If you orate the countries in the list, you'll essentially get a bunch of "WTF" comments from the students. Particularly regarding nations such as Luxembourg, Qatar, UAE, Australia, Isreal, Cyprus, Slovenia and if you mention North Korea. I mean, most of these countries were probably not anywhere near where they thought they would be in the rankings.
ex: Luxembourg = almost 2.5x as rich as Americans? Australians are richer than Americans? Isreal is...rich? What is Cyprus? Qatar?!? etc.
2. If you emphasize the other extreme of the scale, the poorest countries, and basically frame it by saying "people in these countries make less money than you can make at a part-time job in one week" they'll see that Korea is in fact a "rich" country. They seemed to really enjoy finding out they make 20x more than north koreans.
3. You can break the simple concept of "America is the best" by showing how far down the scale it is in almost every metric.
For example, you can state that some European countries have minimum wages that are twice that of America's. They also work 2/3 the hours.
On this note, I've made it my personal mission to make my students envious of as many countries around the world as I can.
So far, they've been taught these extremes:
tallest men in the world = netherlands (girls love this one)
best education system = norway
richest = luxembourg
most peaceful = new zealand
happiest = costa rica (this one is highly debatable) - based off of the global happiness index
most livable city in the world = vancouver
in this way, my students now view 6 countries that are NOT america that can be defined as the "best"
anyways, I'm writing way more than I originally intended. The decision is entirely yours to make, but I hope that helped you undersatnd my thought process.
