Thankful

At 6:30am on Thanksgiving, Sunny and I boarded a bus for Thailand.  The passport office was unable to renew my visa more than once while I was in the country, so we had to leave to get a new one.  One always meets the most interesting people on a bus.  On our way home that night we were seated next to 2 Caucasian men.  We chatted for a large portion of the journey back to Phnom Penh.  This trip was an interesting  one for many reasons, but the most useful thing I learned came from the older, Swedish gentleman.  The government schools here use a memorize - repeat curriculum.  There are multiple reasons why this is not the most effective teaching method but the most crippling is that it inhibits one's ability to create.

It was as if the skies parted.  I've been trying to assign words to the resistance I was finding as I  worked with cicfo on storytelling.  This gave it a name.  Create.

This is why it's hard for kids to tell me about something they've done -- they have most of the vocabulary, but it's difficult to talk or write about.  This is why it takes a lot of guiding the students taking classes online.  This is why the little kids have a hard time retelling The Three Little Pigs.  They know the story, but have a hard time re-wording it into simple sentences.

Well, now I know.  And it may not be the best method, strictly speaking I'm not particularly qualified in this respect, but the only way I know to improve is to practice.