Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Lockdown - Day 16

Yesterday I found myself looking at my cats and realized that they have spent most of their lives "on lockdown". Yes. They only leave the house when I take them to see the vet. Then I thought of all the people that are locked up prisons and sailors on duty in submarines. Eventually I asked myself if the International Space Station is staffed these days. Is it? Probably.

I then started to consider the qualities that an astronaut must possess in order to be eligible for spaceflight and enter the space program. All of a sudden, a strange thing happened. I remembered seeing an astronaut playing the guitar in the ISS. That hazy memory prompted me to look him up on YouTube. I didn't take me long to find the clip below, in which Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield plays David Bowie's Space Oddity. The crazy thing about it is that he recorded a whole album in the space station, which he went on to release! You can check it out on Spotify. It's called Space Sessions.

Anyway, I know the video below is not strictly instructional (not in terms of teaching vocabulary or structures) and it may not even be interesting to students who are not really into music. Yet I found it most inspirational. It was recorded in space by a real astronaut! So my first question is: what kind of man do you think Chris Hadfield must be? If you had to make a guess, how would you characterize him? He's experienced "the ultimate lockdown". What strategies do you think he may have used to keep himself busy? What structures/words do you think you need in order to be able to talk about all this? Grist for the mindmill.





No comments:

Post a Comment

On teaching

So I'm about to wrap the whole thing up. The school year is almost over and I have the distinct feeling that I may not be returning to t...