Cross Cultural Conversations

Firstly I want to apologize for the tardiness of my blog post, last week was of one of those "hold on to your hat" type weeks and I totally forgot about writing my blog post! That being said my lack of posting is not representative for a lack of developments in my group, in fact its quite the opposite. Last week was really eyeopening having Anna come and co-facilitate my meeting. I learned a lot by watching her interact with my group.

For some reason I feel like I'm slipping backwards with my group meetings. I believe I have lost sight of what has been important... conversation! the week before Anna sat in my group was extremely productive. We had a great conversation about the rise of the emoji language.  The next week I thought it would be exciting to talk about Halloween. My group did was relatively unresponsive for the first half of the meeting I kept asking questions about Halloween and silence would then consume the room.  It wasn't until we started talking about scary movies and roller coasters till the group became more lively. however the question the incited the most responses was Anna's simple question, "how do your keyboards work?"

One of the reasons I believe my conversations have been sliding backwards is because i'm only creating a one sided conversation. How can these students have a conversation about Halloween if they don't have knowledge about Halloween! The engaging factor of Anna's question has to do with the fact that it engages a topic they already have prior knowledge of! it sounds so simple but its something I have been neglecting during these meetings. This brings me to the topic for this blog post: cultural differences. In the past whenever we have discussed cultural differences we end up having a meaningful and productive conversation. I believe the reason for this is because these students have extensive knowledge of their own culture therefore can speak confidently about it. in the future I plan to have more cross cultural conversations to create an environment with in the group where each member can contribute and feel confident.