Final Essay

[Christine Moguel]

This is my second course with the US China Institute.  The structure of the lectures were very helpful- they were chonological in order and gave a great over view of each topic covered.  Many of the themes in this class were new to me as the historical perstective of this class went much further back in time.  It was interesting learning about the way in which culture, language, land territory, social class, leadership all seemed to weave the story from the beginning of such countries as Japanand Korea- with China in East Asia.  

My students have many academic challenges- so one of my biggest obstacles to over come with them as a teacher is making content comprehensible.  The content, I admit, in theis course is pretty dense and would be very confusing to most of my students, however using strategies for English Learners, accomodations and modifications I was able to create fun and exciting lessons for my students that helped them understand East Asian better.  In my lesson plans I chose to dive into a comparative lesson on funerary art practices.   First I though about what sort of "hook" or background knowledge I could tap into- death and dying is something they all have been around growing up so close to their families as they all are.   They are students that are entirely dependent ont heir families for all their needs and so diving into this content was interesting to them.  Hard to believe but true- they loved the lesson.  

The arts in East Asian are a great spring board for teachers like myself to dive into as well.  They Sijo poem lesson I created was a great way to intgrate cross curricular studies into my teaching practice.  For this particular lesson I used many visuals and large print materials that helped everyone jump on board with the learning that was taking place.  It was a very fun lesson- and it was all thanks to learning about the fine arts through the course that I was able to them teach my students.  They really expressed themselves and really seemed to like the format that the poems have.  Simple and artistic- it worked.

The lecturers for the course were very engaging.  Thier passion for the subject came through in many ways.  Their excitement for the subject and the country they were covering was passed onto us - the students.   There were so many facts about ancient Wast Asian that were very fascinating to me.  How Japan was formed?  Who commissioned the Great Wall of China? and why? ,  what was the social class system like in China, Korea and Japan in Ancient times?  How is China dealing with the pollution problem we face today?  Although this was a more recent study, it was very informative and interesting.