ICC Video Clip, Wk 10 - Building Socio-Cultural Awarness

The Lesson:
My objective for this lesson was for students to contemplate the emotions and reactions of a person upon first entering a culture greatly different from their own.  First, they compared a group of Japanese students to a group of American students.   As my students commented on clothes, hair style, hair color, skin tone and eye color, I recorded their observations on the whiteboard.  After a brief discussion about homogeneous and heterogeneous (I did not use these terms.) cultures, I posed two question to the class.  First, I asked, "How would a Japanese student feel if they were placed in this American class?"  I then asked the opposite question.  While most of my students agreed that the Japanese student would be scared and nervous, they thought that the American student would feel excited and nervous.  They believe that being from a racially and culturally diverse environment dissolves all fear of different cultures.  I wanted to discuss this idea more, but time was not on my side.  I am planning a follow-up activity that will hopefully widen their cultural lenses a little more.

The Students:
Before seeing this lesson clip, the viewer must be informed on my history with this class.  I have taught most of the students in this class for eighteen months.  When I first met these students, I was immediately impressed with their proficiency in listening, reading and speaking.  Although, they struggle with grammar usage, most of the students in this class are able to speak fluently and express their thoughts with ease.  This group of second and third graders are extremely talkative and highly competitive for my attention.  Random comments develop into group conversations that greatly detract from the lesson goals.  I have recorded this class on at least three other occasions and decided against posting any of the lessons.  Their constant playfulness and foolish comments were even more disturbing on video.

The  Reward:
I am constantly trying new strategies to manage this class more efficiently.  My daily goal is to focus their conversation on the lesson's topic.  

During this week's ICC lesson, students did just that.  Although student enthusiasm and competitiveness overwhelmed me at times and ridiculous comments annoyed me, I was greatly pleased with the contributions made during class discussions.  Unfortunately, the lesson was incomplete, as was my recording space.  

My camera did not record when students described the two groups as being either scared nervous or excited nervous (as mentioned above).  Nor was their any recording of the student who described the Japanese students as clean.  I really wanted more student output.  Inability to incite elaboration, of both perspectives, was not due to technical (camera) issues, but my lack of  class time and the unanticipated eagerness of student response.  Students were uncharacteristically focused on the task and I didn't want to stifle their voices.  In the future, I will facilitate a class activities that allows for more expansion of the topic.