{"id":4475,"date":"2012-11-08T13:49:01","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T21:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=4475"},"modified":"2012-11-08T13:49:01","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T21:49:01","slug":"the-tipping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2012\/11\/08\/the-tipping-point\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tipping Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first started at my Gymnasium, Carsta, my Betreuungslehrerin, told me I only had to teach for 15 minutes or so, at first, but that I would eventually be teaching the whole 45-minutes.\u00a0 I concealed my terror.\u00a0 Forty-five whole minutes??\u00a0 How will I ever be able to stand up there and teach for 45 minutes?\u00a0 It is so long?<\/em> was basically my inner-reaction.<\/p>\n

My biochem professor, Amy, once told my class that time passes differently depending on which side of the teacher\u2019s desk you stand.\u00a0 On the classroom side, time passes agonizingly slowly.\u00a0 On the chalkboard side, time flies.\u00a0 She was right.\u00a0 This week, I have been at risk of going over<\/em> the 45-minute class period, multiple times!\u00a0 And, today, with Carsta\u2019s 12th grade, I used the entire double period: 45 of my minutes plus all of Carsta\u2019s 45 minutes.\u00a0 Wait, I did what?\u00a0 I taught, by myself, for an entire 1 1\/2 hours.\u00a0 That\u2019s right.\u00a0 I could not imagine doing this, before I did it.<\/p>\n

Of course, it helps that the topic was US Elections.\u00a0 I explained the electoral college, and introduced them to the idea that America actually has more<\/em> than just two political parties.\u00a0 Imagine!\u00a0 Then I went over the reasons why third parties are so small and powerless in the USA.\u00a0 Then I asked them to come with pros and cons of a two-party system vs. a system with more parties.\u00a0 All of this took 45 minutes.\u00a0 For the second half, I gave them a 7-page handout which is basically a survey of the presidential candidates\u2019 positions on almost 100 different issues; their positions are reported as \u201cpro\u201d, \u201ccon\u201d, \u201cnot clear\u201d, or \u201cunknown\u201d.\u00a0 Included candidates were Obama, Romney, Johnson, Stein, and Goode.\u00a0 (If you don\u2019t know which parties the last three belong to, shame on you.)\u00a0 They had maybe 10 minutes or so to read through the handout by themselves, during which I explained what abstinence-only education, subsidies, felons, and tenure all meant.\u00a0 The saddest was to explain what \u201cracial profiling by law enforcement\u201d meant.\u00a0 (Why, Arizona, why?)\u00a0 Then they had the chance to form small groups and discuss what they thought about the candidates and their positions.\u00a0 Finally, we held a mock-election.\u00a0 Interestingly, at the start of the hour, I asked them who would vote for Obama, and who would vote for \u201csomeone else\u201d (not necessarily Romney).\u00a0 Everyone said they would vote for Obama.\u00a0 At the end of the lesson, the final tally was 10-Obama, 4-Stein, 2-Johnson.<\/p>\n

And those 90 minutes passed by sooo quickly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started at my Gymnasium, Carsta, my Betreuungslehrerin, told me I only had to teach for 15 minutes or so, at first, but that I would eventually be teaching the whole 45-minutes.\u00a0 I concealed my terror.\u00a0 Forty-five whole … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kat-schmidt-12-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}