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Being the Teacher: Asian Arts

by Julia :: Sunday February 5, 2006

A special assignment in A.P. Art History class, or rather, an opportunity to be in Mr. Robinson’s position came to me recently: I got to teach the class for a day. The class was divided into groups of three students, and we were to give an introduction to Asian Arts. I was assigned to a Chinese Art group with Alex and Ariel, who had worked in a national art museum in Taiwan over the summer.

In spite of growing up in South Korea, a country very close to China, I was not actually much acquainted with Chinese art—so for this project I did a lot of research and discovered some astonishing facts. For example, The Great Wall was originally made as independent walls for different states before 200 BCE. During the Qin Dynasty, the separate walls were joined together in preparation for the Huns’ attack, yet it was during Ming Dynasty that the wall finally took the shape we see today. Because it was all done by human labor, people used local resources in building the Wall, and because at that time weaponry only consisted of swords, spears, bows, and arrows, it did not have to be built with solid rocks. Usually, earth rammed into blocks was good enough. During the Ming Dynasty, the Great Wall needed to be restrenghtened, and that is when people replaced the breakable wall with stronger blocks.

The presentation went well, but we were not so good at time management. We had about 18 slides prepared, but only went over 13. Teaching is definitely a hard job—but certainly rewarding!

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