Modifying Metaphors

In teaching we use countless metaphors and illustrations to help teach difficult concepts. However, when you are teaching at an International School whose population is predominately Asian, you have to modify your metaphors to make them relevant to your audience. The majority of your students do not know  the movies/commercials /television shows/music that you are referencing to make a point. This can be hard especially when you are also unfamiliar with the movies/commercials/television shows/music that they are referencing. This conundrum has helped me develop as an educator because when I am lesson planning, I purposefully look for sources that are not American. American sources are my default, but I don’t want them to be because simply looking at one source, gives a person a limited view of the world. For example, today, I showed a British biography about Ben Franklin. It was interesting because while it did mention his contributions to the American Revolution; it made it seem like he was passively involved in the revolution rather than actively helping to bring about the revolution. It was interesting to notice this nuance in how the information was portrayed.

Though I am able to find sources that are not American, it can still be hard to make the illustrations that I use in class relevant to my student’s lives. But there is one things that we can all relate to and that of course is FOOD.

One food metaphor that I have used in the past is how a paragraph is like a hamburger. Now, all of my students have probably had a hamburger or a chickenburger (yes, that is what we call chicken sandwiches over here), but I have found an even more perfect metaphor: Kimpbap! (This is a Korean Sushi-like food, but it does not have raw fish).

For those of you who do not care about my magnificent metaphor, I give you full permission to stop reading this blog post while I explain my brilliance.

A Topic Sentence is seaweed in kimbap; it’s the first thing your bite into, the main idea. Rice is the Concrete Details because without it your paragraph will have no substance. But if you only have concrete details your paragraph will lack flavor, so of course you at the filling, the meat, carrots, radish, eggs, the brown thin sweet stuff that apparently is called wang —this makes it delicious! Now you have all the necessary ingredients, but you can’t really eat your kimbap yet – you have to roll (wrap) it up – this is your concluding sentence. Then all that is left to do is eat!

(I am well aware that writing a paragraph is like kimbap does in fact make it a simile and not a metaphor, but modifying metaphors proves the necessary alliteration that is needed for a catchy title).