A Glimpse Into My Life

...with photos more than words, this time. During 5th period World History, one girl spent a few minutes snapping pictures (which I was fine with, since she was paying attention & contributing to the discussion too). It so happens that there was an assortment of head-wear in my classroom at this time (Freshmen were keeping costumes for a video productions project in my room), and so I cycled through wearing a variety of hats during the course of the class period. No good reason, I was just being spontaneous. I like to try and keep the kids on their toes... not in the sense that they see me as unpredictable or untrustworthy, but in the sense that they come to class partially out of a desire to answer the question of "what will Mr. Gibson do today?"

Our topic du jour was "Civilization"--specifically examining hunters/gatherers. Our entry questions for this topic revolved around defining 'home', discussing why people move and how it feels to move, and also how we use/how much we use technology. What I came to realize is that a discussion of home/moving in a TCK (third culture kid) community is not such a far cry from the nomadic view of home/moving. They're not one and the same, obviously, but I think TCKs can put themselves in the shoes of nomadic groups so much easier than kids who have grown up in one non-international community.

You see, the kids in my class said without any hesitation that home is defined by family and the people around you. I feel like if I'd asked a similar question in the states, the answers would have started out at a much more concrete place--home is my house. Home is my town. Home is a physical location that I can point to on a map.

It was a good discussion, and illuminating for me as I listened to the very deep responses to questions about home and mobility. The technology discussion hit full force today and man, that was an AMAZING discussion--I mostly just sat back and let the kids talk back and forth and by the end of the period, both classes had settled on the realization that technology itself is not bad (in fact, we're created to develop technology), but rather people misuse it due to the corruption of sin. That took absolutely no hinting or prompting from me, whatsoever. I'm proud of my freshmen :)


Anyway, here are the pictures:

I gesture a lot. Wouldn't have it any other way.

"OOH. Good point."

Me doing my impression of a hick farmer (it's okay, I grew up on a farm so I'm allowed). My point was, society tends to look down on farmers as backwards and dumb, but one of THE biggest technological leaps in all of history was the advent of FARMING. Yeah.

"Mmkay now scramble up and discuss this question with someone who you're not sitting next to."