Over the weekend I was racking my brain over what I could teach this week. I decided that I should teach my high school kids about the New Horizons probe to Pluto. I thought this would be a great lesson and get them excited about science at the same time. I downloaded the launch video and prepared an activity sheet with all the information I wanted them to pay attention to. I also planned to show where the probe would go. I wanted to start with the Earth, then expand my talk out to Jupiter and then finish with Pluto and beyond.
Obviously, since this was an ELT situation, I didn’t want to hit the kids with any complicated science jargon. So I took some time and edited my talk to make it as simple as I could. I looked it over and decided it was a killer lesson plan. I went into class ready for a knockout. How did it turn out?
Well, the first year students thought it was good enough. They seemed to enjoy learning the English names for the planets and most had no clue this mission even existed. The teacher for this class also enjoyed the talk, and everyone got a kick out of the launch video. This was not the case, however, for my second year students. During the talk(somewhere around Jupiter) , the class starts giggling. I can’t really figure out why, and continue with my diagram. Then at about the half way point, my teacher comes up to me and indicates that I have a dried up piece of rice stuck to my crotch. It seems that crotch rice is far more fun than a science based lesson.
What have I learned from this experience? It seems it is better to act like a buffoon than it is to actually teach about something that is important to you. It would be so easy to just show up with a grape juice stain down my shirt or my fly wide open. I know I am over reacting, but I am having a less than amicable week with my second grade students. It seems there is nothing that interests them. Either that or I am not trying hard enough.
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