Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Vietnamese Hot Dog

Monday. Back to school today from a relaxing weekend. We found out the results from the tests on Friday, and I was appalled to find that 90% of our students failed the physics portion of the test (less than 50% correct). This was extremely frustrating news, given that the test was entirely multiple choice and true/false (dung/sai) questions that perfectly matched the examples we went over as a class. At least half  of the students participated and answered these problems (the EXACT SAME PROBLEMS) on the board to demonstrate their comprehension. At first I was in denial. It must be that the answer key was entered incorrectly into the computer. It was NOT a hard test, and we are SURE that they at least know how to plug in numbers to the formulas because they did it in class. I feel like I failed as a teacher, but I don't know what I could do to make the class or test more straightforward than it already is.

It is now Thursday, and today was our last day of teaching new material. We have only tests and competitions left, which I am very much looking forward to. I have now come to the conclusion that the material we have been teaching is very advanced. After all, in America I did not learn most of this material until Junior year of high school, and these are rising 8th and 9th graders, so it seems like the program has slightly unrealistic expectations of the students. From what i have seen, only a small percentage of very smart kids really grasp the concepts, and its very cool to challenge these individuals because they really shine. Most of the others can regurgitate what we have drilled in, but that isn't quite as satisfying.
I can relate to most of the students (except the ones who don't even try), in that I have been in physics classes where I really grasped everything and participated a lot, but I have also been completely mystified by certain concepts despite many repititions (e.g. 1st quarter Quantum mechanics). Unlike college courses, Matt and I put a lot of effort into requiring the students to think in class and contribute answers. We also have a sports-related demonstration everyday to help out the kinesthetic learners and get the class engaged. Each lesson ends up being pretty fun, but once I see the test results my heart just sinks. Hopefully this Friday will be better!



Gravity demonstration in physics class


The students DID learn how to do proper layups!

As for the rest of our daily life, we have had an exciting week of 'Nam noms! On Monday alone, I crossed three novel foods off my bucketlist I ate snail for lunch (marinated in a yummy sauce), and for dinner our bus driver treated us to cooked dog leg. It is very dark meat, with a lot of fat and skin around the edge, which I could not handle. I piece with no fat or skin, and then boiled it in fish broth for about 15 seconds (it was already cooked), and found it to be quite tasty. This hot dog tasted nothing like hot dog (or chicken). Most of the others could not get past the chewy fat or skin.



 For dessert, we were treated to fertilized duck eggs. These are essentially soft-boiled duck embryos. If I did not look at or examine or think about what I was eating, it actually tasted quite good. The crunch of the beak was disconcerting, and you could see feathers if you looked carefully. Devon opened hers up to examine, and found it much harder to eat after the beginnings of wings became visible. The Vietnamese coaches were mostly disgusted by the dog meat (they didn't dare to eat it because they keep dogs for pets), but they all considered the duck embryo a delicious delicacy  and were excited to introduce us to this new food!

See the beginning of a feather?
Friends enjoying duck eggs


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