New Thing 253, New Thing Every Day: Speak to a High School Class for English Language Learners

For Better Business Bureau, I talk to an awful lot of groups about an awful lot of things, all related to building a more trustworthy marketplace for businesses and consumers. One of my frequent topics lately is ethics, which I discuss with high school students. Today, I talked about ethics to a group of English Language Learners -- yes, this means a room full of kids who spoke very little English.

You know what? I had a blast!

I had converted my regular program into one that combined my usual ethics discussion with a vocabulary lesson, discussing all of the words and concepts. My thought was that if we focused largely on defining words together, the kids would have to learn the underlying concepts; and it totally worked. No, I can't guarantee that every kid learned some fairly complicated words and concepts, but we had a lot of participation, a lot of discussion, and it really felt like many of those kids learned a bunch of important things. It was very fun and cool, and I think they got some value out of it.

Yes, I kind of want to be a high school teacher now.