Last Saturday, April 23rd, our class was held at the Queens Museum. This was a much awaited day since it was the first time many of our students visited the Museum. We all met at the coffee shop; where the students were given a brief introduction to the historical significance of the Museum’s location—The museum is housed in the New York City Building, which was built to host the 1939 New York World’s Fair, The New York World’s Fair 1964-1965 and then hosted the United Nations General Assembly from 1946 to 1950.
Thereafter, we walked over to the The Garden of Forked Tongues, our students were mesmerized by the colorful magnitude of this wall. Students were given the opportunity to recount the details we had been learning about this vibrant piece during the previous weeks of class. This was opportune because we had new students joining the class and this afforded a quick familiarization with the mural.
We then visited the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass. It was evident that many of our students found this collection to be breathtaking; they were taking pictures and seemed truly excited to finally see these lamps we had been discussing in such detail. When asked for reactions and many of the students expressed the intricate beauty of collection. The students were asked to present details of the exhibit they had previously learned; it was a great to witness how much their spoken English has improved and how they are willing to try to convey meaning even if some cannot yet form complete sentences. We also discussed the vital role immigrants played in the creation of this collection. This allowed us to ascertain that we are the new immigrants of New York who can help create memorable things—including art.
Next, the students were introduced to Duke Riley’s, That’s What She Said mural. This was different to our prior introductions because this piece was completely foreign to our students—they had no background. This granted us a perfect moment to speculate, imagine and ultimately ask interesting questions: “What does the division between Canada and New York mean?”, “Do Canada and New York share water?”, “Is that Niagara Falls?”, “What kind of animals are those, are they to be eaten?”, “Why are the trees chopped?” and so forth. Our imaginations were running wild.
We finally installed ourselves in our classroom; we had some delicious snack. We then practiced some important conjugations (‘to do’ present/past positive/negative) and formulated questions such as: “Did you like what we saw today, which one was your favorite one?”, “What do you think the That’s What She Said mural is really trying to convey?” Additionally, we practiced phonetics, whenever a student struggled with pronouncing a word, they were then helped to achieve a better diction. All in all, it was a very successful first day at the Queens Museum! Our students left looking forward to what we will learn next week.
