Culture casserole

This is my favorite photo right now. I recently took a group of high school students to Europe. No, I haven't lost my mind, but it may have been my closest call yet. After two days of sleeping, I am just now able to put two thoughts together.The fatigue was well worth it. For me, the real payoff was not watching them climb the Eiffel tower or begin to love Gaudi's work. It wasn't seeing them FINALLY understand why verb conjugation matters as they ordered their food in another language. What I truly LOVED was watching my students change over the course of 10 days. It is one thing to read about globalization. It's another thing to BE globalized. It's one concept to make "us" ok with being around "them". It's a whole different miracle when they realize

It's all us.

I watched kids grow as they engaged a culture far different from their own. It was beautiful. One of my favorite assignments is the cultural casserole. Try to throw as many different cultures into one situation (your casserole dish) as you can.I get a kick out of this in my own life. For example, I enjoy Spanish food eaten with chopsticks while watching a movie that is a favorite in the african american community. I also like kissing my Chinese fiancee over a burrito stuffed with korean bbq. It's fun to watch students run with the concept as they eat noodles while speaking Spanish at the airport in Amsterdam or trying to find crepes in Spain.  In a world that categorizes people with drop-down menus and bubbles on a standardized test, i think it's a worthwhile endeavor to help students learn to blend and swirl as well as they sort and sift.