Max CO #2

Yesterday, I observed Angel's 4A Speaking Class. I was very surprised to hear the banter that went on before the class. Students were comparing the European vs. North American urban planning design of cities. They were saying that in Europe, city centers were often closed off to car traffic, and because of that, the cities were much more walkable and less busy. I was impressed that they were able to discuss in depth concepts off the cuff without having to be forced to speak in English. I also thought that because of the smaller class size they were more friendly with one-another. Instead of being segmented by ethnicity (which was my experience in Alexandra Ramos' class) they were more integrated and everyone seemed friendly with eachother. Initially, Angel had planned on two students to do a presentation, but "coincidentally" neither student was there that day, so Angel had a backup lesson planned. The lesson was a mixed speaking/reading/writing activity. Angel cut up a story into sentences and cut up 10 sections of a short story about a woman who was in love in Paris but had gotten an incredible job offer in Chicago, wherein her love could not follow.

 The idea of the story was to present and discuss the concept of "Love or Money" and to discuss which was a more important priority in one's life. In the activity, one student would walk around the room where the strips of paper were posted up, and report back to the stationary student who was writing what the "runner" student reported to them. Once they had copied the 10 sentences from around the room, they were to reconstruct the story into it's original order. I thought the students there were much more engaged and mature than the level 2 students I had previously observed, these students seemed genuinely interested in trying to do the activity. They actually wanted to win the in-class activity, and I thought that was important. After they constructed the story, they had a classroom discussion on who was the most moral in the story, and discussed students various priorities in life, and how money related to happiness. The consensus of the room seemed to be that while money could help one be happy (ie. have world class healthcare available to you), money did not make you happy. I think that's fair. I thoroughly enjoyed observing this class and the students determination.