Conversation Class

Recently, I had the privilege of substituting at the language center in an Intermediate Conversation class.

I haven't taught in a classroom since Kylie was born (if you don't count a 10 minute Algebra lesson I gave in an African village).

Kylie, in fact, went with me when I substituted, because she said even though I had been her teacher since Kindergarten, she had never seen me teach in a classroom.

I loved every minute of it.  I didn't realize how much I missed it.

The "conversation topic" for the night was "fear."  It was a two hour class, and we covered a lot of ground.  We role-played, teamed up for a game, let them give presentations on their previous class topic of "Utopia," watched two short videos, and just talked.

Their Utopia presentations were insightful into the culture.  To see what was "perfection" to them in a society was interesting.  In all presentations, money was not needed because everything was free, and all presentations said oil would be nowhere in their land.  I guess they see it as a big problem for their current homeland.  And as for money, in a place where SO many people are not getting paid, this is on the forefront of their minds.

(As a side note, our language helper who went back to work in September in his field of engineering, still hasn't been paid for one day of labor, even though he says he's "sure" they will pay him eventually.)

Back to class.

After the "fear" game, where they came up with 23 fears, we brain-stormed a longer list of fears, and I wrote them on the board so they could copy down any words they weren't familiar with and ask any questions they might have.

It should be interesting for you to see that many of their fears are the same as yours, but it's also interesting to see some of the ones you would never think of...