Anna, Stevie and I do various things as ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) at the Federal University. We hold conversation clubs, do classroom visits and meet with students to offer individual help with writing assignments, TOEFL test preparations and college essays and applications. One of the most fun things that we work on together is putting on workshops about American culture. We have started offering workshops every Friday and so far they have been very well-received and successful. Last Friday we had our most ambitious workshop yet - decorating Easter eggs.
We each did a short Powerpoint presentation and then led four different stations while small groups rotated through. Anna talked about the history and regional variations of Easter celebrations in the States, Stevie shared about Easter candy and fun family traditions, and I talked about decorating eggs. After the short presentation, we divided the students into four groups. One group started with egg decorating and the others played various word games and participated in activities to stimulate conversations about Easter in the U.S.
We gave the workshop twice: once in the morning and once in the afternoon and had about 15 students at each event. Fortunately, Sean came along and volunteered for the day which helped out a lot. Obviously, the highlight of the day was dyeing eggs and none of the students had ever done anything like it before. It was fun to see how different all of the designs were and how creative the students were. At the end of each workshop we received lots of thank-yous and compliments. One student said that our workshop was the most dynamic English class that he had ever been to - so cool! We are looking forward to our future Friday culture workshops and I hope they all end up being as successful as this one was.
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