Every other Wednesday evening at CIS there’s an optional
English activity wherein Emily plans something awesome such as “Article Club”
or “Game Night”, and most of the volunteer English teachers attend and some of
the English students show up, and we have a fun time mixing students and
teachers and levels and languages.
This past Wednesday we had a “Cultural Exchange”. What began
last teaching cycle as a lecture/slideshow-type activity transformed this cycle
into something more interactive and, we hope, even more stimulating of learning
language and sharing cultural values. Each of the teachers had set up a little
booth with some visual information of their hometown/state/country which varied
from as near together as Minnesota and Wisconsin to as far away as Maine and
Australia with a couple in between (Arkansas and Oregon – okay, it was a pretty
U.S.-centric exhibition, but I digress).
We set out a variety of U.S.-inspired food fare including
buttermilk pancakes, Wisconsin-style cheese, and apples from the Northwestern
U.S. and began the evening as a kind of cocktail-hour-milling-about-time during
which the English students were free to (and did!) nosh and schmooze about the
room, learning about our different home realities as we learned more about
theirs’ as well (“that’s what it’s like in Maine, so what’s it like in your
hometown?).
After cocktail-hour-milling-about-time, a couple of us
taught some dance forms that we do at home, namely country line and Irish set
dancing. As we danced to Johnny Cash and traditional Irish music and
experienced culture from a more visceral place in ourselves, I marveled at the
universality of having fun and looking silly.
All in all, it was a lovely night to walk the line.
By Rachel Winograd
Some students even took a video!
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