English is my business: 2012

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Following J.R.R. Tolkien's footsteps in Oxford, UK

Now that Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" is on theaters, I felt like sharing this amazing experience I had while staying in Oxford, UK, for an exchange program.

An edition on "The Hobbit" left by a fan at Tolkien's grave

Oxford is renowned because of the University of Oxford, one the most important educational institutions in the world. Founded in 1231, the University is also famous because of the stupendous architecture of its colleges (the buildings of each department at the University).

Radcliffe Camera, the Heart of the University of Oxford

Besides that, Oxford is the city where John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the author of Bilbo's adventures and The Lord of The Rings trilogy spent most of his life and did most of his work, studying, teaching and writing, of course. So, when in Oxford, you can follow Tolkien's track by visiting some places that were important to him.

A sign showing the way to Tolkien's grave

For example, in the Exeter College, where Tolkien studied, you'll find this statue in his memory.

Tolkien's statue in the Exeter College

Another nice place for visiting is the pub "The Eagle and Child", where J.R.R. Tolkien used to meet with other intellectuals in a group called "Inklings".

Eagle and Child, Tolkien's favourite pub

Among them, there was another important fantasy writer: C.S. Lewis, author of "The Cronicles of Narnia", what makes the pub a 'must visit' place.

Finally, the most peculiar episode on this little tour was the visit to Wolvercote Cemetery, where Tolkien is buried. I went there with two nice fellows that I met during this trip, a Chech and a Spanish, both very smart and friendly.

When we got to Tolkien's grave, we were a bit disappointed cause it was a little bit messy. If it weren't for some 'gifts' left there by some fans, you couldn't tell that there lays one of the most important authors ever.

So, we did the only thing we could do: we respectfully cleaned it and rearranged the fans' itens, and I think it got a little better, as you can see in the pictures bellow.

Tolkien's grave before and after the cleaning

People are proud of what's meaningful to them. Maybe these episodes can be considered meaningless for some people, but they meant a lot for me.

"Not all those who wander are lost", once Tolkien wrote. And wandering through Oxford I found myself.

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The Ducks Go Gangnam Style (or 'what's meaningful learning?')

When I got back from Oregon after taking part on the ELCP course (read more here), one of my first actions was to talk to my students about the experience of living in the US and studying in an American University.

And, of course, I couldn't talk about the University of Oregon without mentioning "the Duck", the symbol and mascot of UO football team. The kids loved that and all the stories that followed.

That was six months ago. But, to my surprise, last Friday, the 'duck' subject arose again. One of my students come to me saying 'hey teacher, do you remember the Oregon duck you talked about? I saw it dancing 'Gangnam Style!'.

Psy and the Duck: who has more style?

At first it sounded like an hallucination and I thought to myself 'what's this boy talking about?', but he explained before I could ask: he had seen a viral video on the Internet featuring the Oregon Duck performing the song 'Gangnam Style', an international mega-hit by the Korean pop singer PSY.

So, what's all of this has to do with teaching or learning? Well, in my view what we call 'learning' is the capability of making connections between different aspects of our experience as 'living thinking beings'. Some connections are really obvious, and based on that, we teachers create our expectations over our students as a minimum curriculum. But some connections go beyond our expectations, which leads to the creative thinking. Of course, this happens on a very personal level, but the quality of the 'input' we offer to our students is crucial for that. The more diverse this input is, the more creative can these connections be.

And then we have marvelous (maybe miraculous...) coincidences like this: a singer in Korea has this song that happens to be a worldwide phenomenon; it echoes on an Oregonian mind who comes up with this parody, that's heard and seen in a small city in the countryside of Brazil by a young boy, who had previously learned about the Oregon Ducks from his teacher and talks back to him, who's now writing about this and coming up with some ideas for a lesson plan, which means that the echo will go further and, therefore, more connections will be made.

By teaching, we learn. By learning, we teach. Both ways we make connections; both ways we get connected...

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