cars...vulgar language... and barenaked ladies...

What do Top Gear and Anthony Bourdain have in common? probably very little. But! I've shown clips of both to my classes, and my Korean students have learned valuable lessons. Such as, what happens when a car is struck by lightning? I didn't know, but Top Gear filmed it. What are the national dishes of South America? again, I haven't the faintest idea, but Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver know. Although, of the two I kind of prefer Bourdain, nothing against Jamie but Bourdain is brutally honest, and I appreciate that. 

I guess you could say I love being able to show YouTube videos in class. I've been able to expose my kids to highly censored clips of Anthony Bourdain, and non censored clips of Emeril Lagasse. I've also shown clips of Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. All to show my kids that the world eats great food, and so they can see what gorgeous food expanded American waistlines.

I have had to mediate a debate between my Grade two's as they argued which was better, the folk tale Mulan, or Disney's historically inaccurate Mulan. Instead of drawing horrible diagrams of weather, I brought Hurricane Katrina alive in the classroom through NASA's 3-D satellite imaging videos. The same grade two's have also witnessed the phases of construction of the great wall, and all the global empires from the last millennium.

Nobody quite says "Houston, we've got a problem" like Tom Hanks. I'm sorry Jim Lovell, but Forest's got you beat. Tom Hanks didn't play Neil Armstrong, but if he did I'm sure he would kick ass, instead I've had to improvise in class by showing the actual moon landing video. Truth be told I've actually shown that video to four of my classes, as apparently the moon landing is not shown in Korean schools.

Some might say that my use of video in the classroom pushes the limits, I'd say that some of the time they are right, like when I showed David Copperfield make the statue of Liberty disappear (although to my defence, my students were reading the book 'David Copperfield' at the time). Pushed line or not, I find it amazing how educational Anthony Bourdain can be, I find his blatant honesty the best way to describe food that my kids have never heard of. Grammar can also be perfectly demonstrated through the song 'If I Had a Million Dollars', even if I had to spend time explaining why it is cruel to buy a real fur coat.

Perhaps this post just a long winded way of saying, thank you school for buying projectors. It is because of that kind gift, that James May and Top Gear were able to show my Korean students that the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport is the world's fastest car.