Teach and Learn with Ms. Yee

Learning how to teach difficult topics seems to be a difficult topic in itself. Everyone always says to stay in the middle of the debate, but then sway in whichever direction is personally their favourite to back. So what are difficult topics? When I think about difficult topics, what comes to my mind are the divisible topics where we see more anger or hatred on any side of a conflict or topic. Politics, war, identity. These are things that are ingrained into the way people conceptualize themselves and the people around them. I understand that people come from many different walks of life, and no one experiences the world in the same way. Conversations around validity say that everyone's feelings and opinions are valid, and I have no desire to dispute that. What I think needs to be focused on is having compassion and understanding.  Everyone knows how they feel, they have an understanding as to the reasons why they feel the way they do--to an extent. What they may not know is how a...

Pachinko  by Min Jin Lee is a story of a Korean family spanning over the 20th century as they grow through different world events, including The Depression Era, Imperial Japan, and the World Wars. This epic follows Sunja as she grows from a toddler into an old woman, focusing on her story and how her life influences that of her family.  This story begins before the birth of the main character, we meet Sunja’s parents as they begin their family, Sunja is born and we watch her grow up in the early-mid 1900s. We see the impacts of the depression era that followed the First World War on their family-run business. The character Koh Hansu is introduced as an older man who begins to fall for young Sunja, they have a brief affair and she becomes pregnant. Passing minister Baek Isak marries Sunja and brings her to live with him, his brother Yoseb and his wife Kyunghee in Japan. Sunja and Isak eventually come to love one another and have a son of their own following Sunja’s firstborn. ...