::A Geek in Korea::

I teach a wide variety of students in a number of different levels in the school. We use several shared books across classes of the same level, and sometimes use the same series, but students on different levels aren’t studying the same thing twice in most cases. I’ve had a series of conversations this week that students have brought up, or have had come up from book material in class. These conversations have reappeared in different books at multiple levels.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdYOhzAuxvo[/video]

I watched the video above last weekend. Then, this weekend the exact same topic came up in two books I taught on different days to completely different levels. I got to use “Vomit Comet” in class TWICE and explain it in detail. The video was very helpful in getting some of the details left out by the books. I even got good enough to translate it into Korean (ku-to sal-byeul) for the students.

In two other classes, the topic of blood types came up. One student mentioned that his brother had (Rh-) blood. The students actually knew a lot more about this than I did. They were trying to explain it related to different blood types, but even after checking Wikipedia I’m not sure I understand. He told me his brother’s blood type was very rare, so he has to be careful getting transfusions.

In the very next class, students were learning about xenotransplantation. We were talking about the term chimera as it related to both genetic “chimeras“, and mythology. I’d like to remind people these are students in the 4th and 5th grade learning about advanced controversial medical procedures, and that’s totally awesome. The book happened to mention tissue rejection (they initially thought it was about someone disliking a Kleenex) and asked me about my blood type. (The Blood type of the Damned) That brought up the topic of (Rh-) and related blood topics again.

I’m not really sure why these topics keep reoccurring in my classes. It’s so niche, even if I tried I wouldn’t be able to bring up these topics in casual conversation. Yet they keep coming up. Weird.