Surprise Rebound
By: Heather Kretschmer
Last semester I taught a long-running, well-established Intermediate English course at my university for the first time. In this course, broad topics, such as globalization, consumerism, and the environment are covered. I have to admit I rolled my eyes after reading the list of topics. To be sure, they’re important topics but ones that students have already discussed ad nauseam in school. So, I carefully considered how to motivate my students to talk about the topics in English and simultaneously avoid dying of boredom.
In my search for relevant reading materials, I found a recent article on electric cars that I felt would pique students’ curiosity. Nice, I thought. But how could I entice students to start talking about cars? After all, not everyone is crazy about cars.
I decided to go for novelty and adapted an activity I found online for my students. So, before asking them to read the article, I gave them this think-pair-share task:
- Imagine you were a car.
- What kind of car would you be?
- What would be the best driving experience for you?’
- Jot down your ideas.
- Then, share with a partner.
- Imagine you were a car.
The students looked at me in astonishment. No teacher had ever asked them to experience the world as a car! Certainly not a university instructor. But they took it seriously and started thinking and writing. After a few minutes, they were eager to discuss their ideas with a partner. As they talked, they were smiling and genuinely interested in what their partner had to say. I mentally patted myself on the back—they were having fun talking about cars in English.
But then I noticed something else. Something that took me by surprise.
As I went around listening to my students, the individuality, creativity, and depth of their ideas humbled me. I was expecting them to restrict themselves to superficial properties like the car’s color, make, and year, and unoriginal experiences like driving fast on the highway. But my students surpassed my ideas by a long shot, some of them even expanding the notion of “car.” I’ll never forget the student who said she would be a bus and invite all her friends to take a road trip together.
Heather Kretschmer, who is still in awe