::A Geek in Korea::

The first day back from my vacation, I had a load of different tasks dumped in my lap.

“This class needed a new book. This class needs to be restructured. This class wants to use new materials when it was previously unstructured. Hey, and while you are at it, pat your head and rub your stomach to keep yourself busy for a bit. How’s the jetlag?”

I try to make the best use of my time when I went to the bookstore near our school. I found a book that one class made up of high school students could use as their new material. We’d be learning debate as a way for them to organize and use their opinions while speaking.

Taking a look at the material, I thought I could adapt and restructure it for my other pure speaking class…for third grade Elementary school students. The same book for Elementary school kids, and high school kids? Was I crazy? I went through the material and came to the honest conclusion it was the BEST material for both of them on the subject, all depending on what you focused on and what you wanted to use.

When I returned from the bookstore with only one book, my director gave me a look. “Maybe he’s too jetlagged to think straight, but didn’t you need another book?” I explained to her my plan, and she was cautiously on board for the experiment. She told me I needed to “sell” the high school students on the book, and that she wouldn’t make it a mandatory requirement for the first class because she thought they might want something different. It was up to me to tell them why this was the book I wanted to use.

Both of the classes needed a book, and there were no other debate books that didn’t require lots of background on previous topics that would slow down the lessons. When you teach the basic concepts of debate, like opinions, reasoning, and logic, you don’t need to go into detailed policy discussions. We would resolve pressing topics like “Best pet: Cat or Dog?” in the Elementary school class, while the High School class could talk about something more substantive. It’d work, because it would have to work.

Before the classes began, I ran through the book, picking the pages I’d use with the different classes. The high school students would go into more detail, of course, and they’d do the reading comprehension and writing exercises the younger students could skip. The debate “theory” would be broken down as easily as possible and spread out as much as possible to keep it fun for the younger students. The best part is, we could do mini debates the entire class to keep them talking.

The book had lots of cartoon pictures that got some of their points across with humor, but had dead on speaking fundamentals that I had learned in my communications classes in college. I had been teaching the students in BOTH classes speaking pointers, but it was great to have something written in a proper book to back me up for once.

I had both classes today and they were both successes. One student even wrote about ME in her “brainstorming activity” to think about a topic for a debate. She said I was a fun, good teacher with a funny cute dog. That was pretty awesome. The high school students went from their usual sleepy, “I’d try, but let me take a rest first” sort of attitude to an engaged, interested group of young ladies. Of course, I spent the entire time asking them what they thought about a series of topics for once, instead of trying to get them interested in a book thats as dry as any tome I’ve ever read.

I had a lot of fun being the devil’s advocate (go figure) and taking up ridiculous positions just for my elementary students to refute me. Even a “Dog vs. Cat” debate can get interesting if you get the students thinking about their positions carefully.

(When I can find the publisher and proper name of the book, I’ll try to come back and edit this post for the details. This is a book I’d recommend and pass on to others.)