Day 417 School Daze

You never know what you will find in the Sunlitun village on
the northeast side of Beijing.  This is where we Westerners go
for a taste of home, a good margarita, or shopping in some
of our favorite stores.  This month, it's giant M & M's;
next month it's likely to be dancing pink poodles.

This year I am challenged by my "Chinese babies."  I am
teaching 10th graders for the first time here in the 'jing. While
a few have exceptional English skills, the majority are really
struggling to get up to speed with being fully immersed and learning
all core subjects in English.  Consequently, I have had to slow it
waaaaayyyyy down, and to find other creative ways for
psychological terms to make sense.  This last unit was on
research methods used in Psychology, and to help them review
terms to prepare for their test, we did a fun lab.

Earlier we talked about the two ways experiments can be conducted;
single blind or double blind.  I looked up from helping another
group, and found Geronimo quite literally, trying to "blind" his
lab partner, so that he engaged in 'random selection' of the colorful
beads in his cup. These kids take things so literally All. The. Time.
I have to choose my words carefully, for when I often speak using
metaphors, slang, or euphemisms, they get thoroughly confused!
On another note, I just love yelling GERONIMO's name when I
call attendance! Yep, that is the English name he chose for himself, lol.

The kids participated in a "bead" lab to help them
 review the meaning of terms such as population, sample,
biased sample, representative sample, and such.

I made them count their beads in English for the extra practice.
Some got lots of practice, as they had to keep starting over!
When we combined all of our data, suddenly the message
 became clear- "the larger the sample size, the more the results
are representative of the whole population."  We'll run a
similar lab in a few weeks, with fun size packets of
M & M's that I brought back from home earlier this month.
That lab is always a big hit :)

This week I am challenged in trying to explain psychoanalytic psychology
 as was developed by Sigmund Freud.  Freud suggested that much of our
behavior is motivated and influenced by our unconscious thought. They
had a hard time wrapping their minds around this idea. If we're not
even aware of the thought, how can that influence our behavior???
Freud talked about 'levels of awareness', and this concept is illustrated
repeatedly in psychology textbooks using the 'iceburg analogy.' From
there, I moved on to discussing the three structures of personality-
the id, ego, and superego. It was a long, hard slog all period long.
 It wasn't until the bell rang signalling that it was time for lunch 
that we finally had a break through!  Geronimo went running out
 the classroom in a rush to beat the crowd in the cafeteria.  As he
 pushed past his peers and exited the room, Antonia said, "Miss,
was that his id running to the lunch room to be fed first in line?!

Hallelujah! Praise Baby Jesus! We have success!!!

And so, we currently have Sig watching over our classroom :)
In another recent lab with my seniors in AP Psychology, the
 students made their our own Rorschach inkblot projective test.
So tell me, what images do you see in their inkblots?
Droopy flowers? Seahorses? Children reading books?
Butterflies?  Kidneys? Scary monsters!  A penis?!
Oh wait, save that thought for next week's lecture- the 
five stages of personality development:
Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital stages.

See?!  Psychology nerds can have fun, too :)))

G'nite, y'all!