03/10/11

I’ve been teaching origami to kids in one of my gender groups which include many former students of mine (both math and English) and some of my REDES girls. We always hear about different learning styles, but it’s fascinating to see these kids learning such different things in drastically different settings. It’s intriguing to watch students who pick up English instantly who are absolutely unable to fold paper so that the ends are even. Or my students who really struggled in math who are incredibly precise in their folding. Or even last year, watching some of my better students struggle with Sudoku, while other students got it immediately.
I had a great meeting with my current events clubs today! During the first time only one girl came, so I got to talk to her one-on-one about everything. She didn’t know what a couple words meant (missiles and budget, for example) so we got to discuss topics outside of just the news articles, and I felt like I was able actually make her a more knowledgeable person.
With the second group, the students all had physical education in the afternoon and thus were in no hurry to go anywhere, so after we had finished discussing the news articles, they turned to the world map and started talking about it and asking questions. I told them the story about how Iceland and Greenland got their names and they thought that was hilarious. They asked me if it was true that people in America didn’t have housemaids like here. I explained that throughout the world, it is common in low-income countries for people to have hired help, since the cost of labor is so low. But in places like America, the cost of labor is high and the cost of machines that do the same labor (washing machines, dishwashers, etc) is comparatively low, it’s not as common. I didn’t even begin to try to explain how so much of the labor in their lives (that maids do) doesn’t happen in America, like carting water, lighting charcoal fires, etc.