Reflections for Session #3 (Sat., 2/9)

[Anonymous]

I often try to find lesson plans that are different and fun to engage my students. From today’s seminar I enjoyed the use of visuals and primary sources. I will definitely use the pictures of the stamps with my students and ask them to analyze them. In my 6th grade class we are currently covering Ancient China and The Lunar New Year stamps would be a perfect strategy to hook their interest. I think they would also enjoy looking at different examples of the Yin and Yang symbol.

[Anonymous]

I liked Professor Dube’s idea of comparing teachings of Socrates, Siddhartha Gautama, and Confucius. I think this will serve as a great way of reminding the students of the importance of looking at historical context. How/why was there an increase of questioning life’s purpose in Greece, China, and India? This gives the opportunity for students to examine social, political, and economic issues within these regions.
On another note, I loved the crab leg example from The Joy Luck Club. I keep a recommended list of books on my wall for all of my history students, and I just added Amy Tan. Her books demonstrate so many aspects of Confucianism in a way students can really relate.

Attached is a handout I give to students from the Tao of Pooh. It’s something I adapted from http://www.mrdonn.org/index.html.
edited by gsharpe on 2/11/2013

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[Anonymous]

I enjoyed the lecture on Saturday and made a list of other books I want to read--including Sun Tzu (The Art of War) and the Dao de Jing. I was interested in the idea of how Buddhism would mesh with these other ways of thinking. I would have thought that Daoism which sees striving as part of the problem would be able to connect with Buddhism's stress on eliminating desire. But, perhaps the means to the similar end would clash--where the Daoists advocate following The Way and just 'letting it flow', the Buddhists have clear ideas about the Middle/Eightfold Path. I wonder about how Buddhism took hold in China (as opposed to India) and how it incorporated the existing philosophies. I used to do a great History Alive activity with my students. They had to read a series of quotations and guess who was the author (a Confucian, Daoist [font=Times, 'Times New Roman', serif]or Buddhist. I can't find a copy of the lesson online. But here is a link to some other good materials I have used in the past with 9th graders:[/font]http://ancienthistory.mrdonn.org/Behavior.html
edited by abrown on 2/11/2013
edited by abrown on 2/11/2013

[Anonymous]

I enjoyed Saturday's lecture, I had no idea how much I didn't know about all these terms that I hear all the time. It's nice to know about the origins and the people who started them. In terms of my students, I think it would be fun to take an issue going on today, and have them take on the perspective of one of the philosophies to answer it (much like I am assume we are doing tomorrow). Saturday's lecture also reminded me that I have copies of Joy Luck club in my classroom. Might be fun to use them for a compare and contrast essay on cultures. I also liked knowing about the Ying and Yang. Had no idea I was pronouncing it wrong for so long!

[Anonymous]

I very much appreciated Saturday's discussion of yin and yang. In my notes I have written, "nothing is one--all things come in balance; the world requires both ends of a dichotomy." I really love this notion, especially since I feel that our Western perspective so often favors one force over another. For instance, good is good and evil is bad. This reminded me a lot of the ideas of the Balinese people in regard to good an evil. In Balinese dance, there is this black and white checkered cloth that is sometimes used as a costume. The cloth is meant to pay homage to both the good forces and the evil forces in the world, as these dancers believe in the importance of both forces and respect both forces. When I studied this in college, I remember thinking this perspective was so wonderfully humble and wise. I still do. Though, in my western mind I usually am on the side of the "good."

[Anonymous]

I was inspired to share information about Chinese New Year with my classes. After Saturday's class, I stumbled through Chinatown on accident Sunday. It was a sea of red and lines at the temple. I wanted to share with my students. I showed them the variety of stamps around the world, discussed what they know/did not know about the holiday and discussed the varied interpretations of the snake images.

[Anonymous]

In honor of the Chinese New Year I taught my first East Asia influenced lesson today. It can be found somewhere in the Lesson Plans section of the Forum. The theme was Zodiac signs. I began by asking students to share astrological signs and to organize them by date on a circular calendar on the board with December located at the 12 O’clock position, June at 6 O’clock. I made connections with the months, seasons and presented the French names for the twelve signs. I then explored the solar calculations that determine the passage of time throughout the year, working to get students to figure out the significance of solstice and equinox with prompts and clues. Most students had never previously made connections with the concepts of longest day, decreasing or increasing daylight and so forth. We then quickly explored the significance of certain celebrations or events associated with those times of the year, including some commentary on how Christian festivals replaced pagan festivals.

The transition to East Asia was introduced in the last 15 minutes when I asked students if these calculations were universally accepted. Using the Chinese Year as a topical link I surprised some with the concept that the year was not necessarily 2013 in other parts of the world. I challenged them to explain the fluctuating dates for the Chinese New Year until we established that the calculations were based on lunar cycles, and thereby introducing the Year of the Snake, 4711.

The lesson ended with a quick introduction to the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac which is based on the birth year as opposed to date in the year. Using a chart students could establish which year they belong to (boar, rat, ox and tiger mostly). Homework is to look up personality traits or other characteristics of both their Western Zodiac sign and Chinese Zodiac animal.

The lesson was engaging. Students welcomed the topic because it held their interest and presented a lot of “fun” new material to grapple with. I was able to sneak in some French vocabulary. We will follow up by learning the French word for the Chinese animals and some adjectives for their characteristics.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/social_customs/zodiac/

[Anonymous]

Very sad that I missed Saturday's session, but I must say that I used the philosophies debate in my Geog class last year and it went well. I had to structure it over 2 and half days, but it was fun. Kids really got into it. I did however have to assign groups, knowing the kids' personlaities helps. Sad I missed it. Go legalists!!

[Anonymous]

I was able to better understand the reasons why Chinese is a “standardized” written but not a spoken language. I found it interesting that Chinese philosophers were contemporaries of Buddha and Socrates: as a grade 8 teacher, this is a great parallel to draw on when preparing the students for the CST! In addition, now I have better understanding of what Confucius means, students will find this interesting and more of a reason to log the name into their “internal” drive. I gained a better understanding of ren and li. Furthermore, I can now add the en when I teach Confucianism. I have found that students understand the proverbial pecking order in Confucianism, but now the why it is so. Sun Tzu is a necessary read at almost all levels of military professional development from corporal to junior officers. I have had friends who had to read Art of War in their MBA classes. I believe our students would get a kick out of Art of War if properly presented in our classrooms. Finally, for those still in a celebratory mood, the Huntington Library is hosting Lunar New Year this coming weekend, not sure about the cost.

[Anonymous]

Wow, that lesson sounds awesome. I definitely have to check out your lesson plan. After Saturday's lesson I was curious to figure out which Chinese Zodiac I belonged to, and learned that I was born in the Year of the Tiger. My birth-date on the Chinese Lunar Calendar is also different. Very interesting.

[Anonymous]

The third session was very informative. I really enjoyed the introduction to the New Lunar Year. This gave me an insight into a culture that I once felt unfamiliar with. Aside from taking this seminar to learn ways to introduce East Asia to my students, I am also here because I want to learn about the culture, diversity, and historic background of other people. Moreover, the transition into early Chinese philosophy and the four schools of thought was informative and enjoyable. All four philosophical thoughts have their own history, key ideas, and beliefs. I liked the concept of family from Confucius and how the importance of rituals is embedded early on in people’s lives. I think that in a traditional sense, I tend to follow some of the ideas that stem from this theory like honoring my parents and pursuing the belief that I can become a better human being. Furthermore, living in a time of legalism and laws that have been established has also shaped my beliefs about the world that I am living in. Although laws are important to society, I believe that people should still be able to respect one another and make the best of the place that they are living in. This section of the session and reading reminded me of Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the panopticon and how this structure behaves as an eye that watches everything that everyone does, thus, making people believe that they have to behave a certain way.
edited by dcoronel on 2/12/2013

[Anonymous]

Saturday's lecture was very interesting, I really enjoyed learning about the different philosophies. I am very interested in reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I talk extensively about Machiavelli's The Prince and would be interested in having students compare and contrast both works.

With the addition of common core, many of us are looking for more primary source activities to do with our students. An idea for a lesson plan that incorporates primary sources might be taking excerpts from The Art of War, and other contemporary works and having them categorize some of the writers' ideas into categories. For example students would have to take the excerpts that talk about love, politics, society, war, family etc and explain why they chose the specific category. For more advanced students, having them choose the categories might make it a bit more challenging.

[Anonymous]

I appreciated how the professor gave us a detailed description of each of the four philosophies as I had very little knowledge of them. I was specifically intrigued by how Confucianism’s main ideas have been adapted over time, particularly the shift from “people are bad” to the notion that “people are good” when the book “Three Character Classic” was written. I would like to know more about how and why that shift occurred and how much impact it had on overall society. I have learned that it was essentially a simplified version for teaching kids, but I want to know why it happened in the 13th century, and not, for example, in the 9thth or 12th. Was it just because the writer was such a good writer? Did he have political clout (or connections) and used it to change the philosophy? Did the happenings of the time lend itself for the change? For my anthropology lesson, I am going to explain that the changed occurred and have students work in groups to hypothesis why the change occurred, how things might be different if the change did not occur, and compare it to other major shifts in philosophies and/or religion that have occurred throughout history.

I also want to do an anthropology lesson where I assign multiple groups of students to each of the four philosophies and have them research it and describe what they think are the important ideas about each before I give them a lecture similar to the one our professor did. I think it will be interesting to see how the minds of 17 years old view and describe each philosophy and what parts they relate to. I then want to have them use each philosophy to describe how our school would look if it were based on each one (using our school as a representation of a state).
edited by rlaunius on 2/12/2013

[Anonymous]

The differences between the Socratic Method and Confucianism and how they manifest themselves in schools strikes me as worthy of further exploration. The very best teachers I have ever had used the Socratic Method. Teacher asks questions, students discuss with teacher input and we learn through collaboration. This model could not work under Confucianism. Under Confucianism, teacher is expert and students memorize the answers. It seems shocking to me that I never made the connection between the Roman ancestry of the West and the Chinese ancestry of the East directly affecting the pedagogy of our classrooms right now.

[Anonymous]

Saturday session was very interesting and according to the notes the lecture was as always amazing. The use of visuals and primary sources is a great way of getting students interested in any topic and I will be using some of the pictures of the lunar new year stamps to start my lessons on the upcoming week. Also my students are reading Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" and it is very interesting to make connections with events that are happening such as the lunar year and the political situation in Asia.

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