Kayla_CO_#3

Date/Time: Feb 19th, 2:00 pm
Location: Matthew Cohen's Listening Class

Matthew was awesome and let me sit in on his class. Two students gave presentations for the class. The first one used a TED Talk video about Palestinian and Israeli intercultural tourism. It was a great idea and facilitated a good conversation. This was a level two group, but they were able to communicate most of their ideas efficiently.
The second presentation was about animal testing and the male student was very against animal testing. However, he was so aggressive about the topic that he seemed to be for testing. Matthew asked him a few times "so are you for or against animal testing?" One of the girls in the class was just presenting the idea that maybe animal testing for cosmetic purposes is useless, but maybe testing for medical use is important. The boy got mad and said "well it's your fault that they test on animals for makeup anyway!" I was sitting in the back of the class fuming. >.<
I think Matthew could see what I was feeling, and asked me to chime in on the conversation. Rather than freaking out and calling the student sexist or anything else, I suggested that maybe we don't need to test on animals and that there are other methods, like using natural products for cosmetics and practicing natural/holistic medicine. That way, we wouldn't have to test on animals for our benefit and we would have better quality (maybe) products.
The entire class carried on smoothly, but anytime a girl would suggest an idea the boy would argue and would ignore the girls. It took a LOT of effort not to get verbally angry, and I think I learned a lot about classroom dynamics. I'm glad I finally got to sit-in on a lower level class and got to have my patience super tested, haha.