"Black Ants and Buddhists"

  This was a reading that I was assigned for my Social Studies class. I am writing about my views and opinions of this reading. This was a story about a 2nd grade classroom. A student had noticed ants in the room and started to stomp on them to kill them. Other students took great offense to this because their culture did not believe in killing any living thing. the teacher was able to turn this whole incident into a lesson for her students. The students became very involved in learning how other cultures viewed killing animals.
This story raises a lot of good questions to ask yourself as you go about teaching. I loved the way the teacher took charge and made such a simple incident into an excellent learning experience. The students in this story were so driven to read about other heritages and beliefs. The students were so eager to participate and it worked really well. They learned so much by the end of the story. I think that they were all so excited because it was based on a true life event and they could easily relate to all the lessons being taught. They learned as a community. The lessons ranged from art to reading, history to culture. It was amazing! I loved this story and loved the teaching methods that were used by this particular teacher. She used critical teaching and really engaged her students in this type of learning.