Ellen TS#8

Tutee: PJ Chang

Date/Time: Thursday 10 September 2015, 6:30-7:30 pm

Today’s lesson was unexpected and turned out to be very interesting. I was not scheduled to tutor today but one of PJ’s other tutor’s had something come up and had to cancel his session. Since PJ still needed to get tutored and I was available, I agreed to step in. I spoke with PJ’s other tutors since I would be working out of their text book and not the one I usually had. I did not want to step on any of their “lesson planning toes”. I ended up selecting a lesson on the growth and history of democracy. I was pretty excited to teach this topic because the vocabulary (such as “democracy”) was just outside of PJ range so he would definitely be getting something out of the lesson and democracy is a crucial concept when it comes to international relations and domestic politics in the United States. It was the perfect input + 1 situation. Our discussion of democracy lead to a debate about tolerance and its place in interstate politics. PJ was eager to discuss the ongoing interactions between Japan and South Korea. This was the part of the lesson I found the most difficult because I am not an expert on either country. This is obvious but I think it is worth it to spend sometime learning about ongoing political and social situations in your student’s home countries that way you can try to incorporate them into your lessons, especially when those lessons relate to the government or economy.