Burns _ CP Compsite with Ramin's Multicultural and Intracultural Thursday sessions

This is such a great experience for TEFL students, because Ramin provides a broad structure for conversation topics and small, informal groups share:

1.  How that relationship or social convention works in their home countries.

2.  Many, many questions regarding how and why Americans handle the same relationships and social conventions.

3.  Genuine questions and comparisons across cultures, but there is a special focus on how and why Americans do certain things. 

That is the added value that these classes bring to TEFL students.  We have to become consciously aware of things we usually do without giving it a thought.

With each passing week, Ramin took the conversations to a deeper level.  (The base of the iceberg was a significant shift to subjects with deeper meaning.)  The CIES students were eager to teach TEFLers the customs, traditions, deeply felt assumptions and they were never shy about pressing the American students for a similar openness.  This caused me to really examine why my generation still does things a certain way and how much it has changed.

A recurring question was the nature of the American family.  American families are scattered all over the country.  When did this start?  Why?  How do American families sustain the close ties exhibited in other cultures?  Do we miss family that is hundreds of miles away? 

When I was a child, big families tended to stay close together and gather frequently.  That all changed for my family in the 1950's and I do not believe our family was an exception to the norm.  The impact of the Depression, the Dust Bowl and WW2 created increased mobility with a purpose - leave my family to feed it; or to fight for my country was a great impetus to scattering families.  The automobile and cheap oil made it easier to scatter.  The "cowboy" sense of independence became a national trait and not just a "wide open spaces" trait of the West.  The CIES students taught me so much and, even more, really made me think about matters that we take for granted as "universal," when in fact they are not.

I believe that I was partnered up with students from most of the world - Africa, Latin America and East Asia.  I would encourage Ramin's Thursday sessions as a great place to have a variety of conversation partners who discuss deeply held customs and values.