teaching english continues to go well! and i've been getting good feedback from my students. it's hard to believe that today was only my 3rd class. i'm proud i already have everyone's names down pat. (julieta, gerardo, emilio, yuki, xavier, jean, didier, roni, isabelle, maria....)
for tonight's class we did a quick review of the future tenses from last class. then we went on to explain modal verbs (would, could, may, might, should, must). I had a handout made up with each modal verb, its different usages (possibility, obligation, permission, etc) and then examples for each.
then in order to practice the verbs, we read an article on global warming out loud together and i had them find the modal verbs in the article and define their use. then we moved into a discussion on global warming and what should we do as individuals and what our governments should be responsible for extra. As a group they were pretty well informed about the issue, but there was a lot of emphasis on the government's responsibility to impose changes and respond to global warming rather than individual's obligation to act.
I tried not to give my own opinion too much, but did try to play the "devil's advocate" (which i admit was sometimes my own opinion) in order to keep the discussion going and interested.
personally, i believe that we don't have time to wait for governments to respond to global warming- yes governments do need to take action, a lot lot lot more action- but it at the same time, individuals are going to realize that we can't go on living the same way we do. we have to make sacrifices, and we have to start now! to start examining the way we live next class I'm going to show a short film called the the story of stuff . its a 20 minute film that you can watch online or download. its all about being conscious and rethinking of cycles of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. take a couple of minutes to check it out! i'll be sure to blog about how showing it in class goes.