As quickly as it came, the Spring semester and academic year is over at UMKC! Here at the Applied Language Institute, we love to encourage our students to engage in fun activities around the metro while they are studying, but we also make it a priority to organize events that benefit the education of our students and their language acquisition.
This spring, that included another trip to the Nelson-Atkins museum, service learning at Visitation School, and hosting a conversation club for students to practice conversation outside of class time with native English speakers. Keep reading to get a glimpse into what cool things our students participate in.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
On a chilly March morning, all of our different level classes met in the Bloch lobby of the Nelson. A museum docent met our small group and led us through many different exhibits throughout the museum, telling us about art from all around the world. It’s always incredible to get immersed in small slivers of cultures from around the world in one space! Below you can find a firsthand recount of the experience our students likely had, from the perspective of our Graduate Professional Assistant, Cheni:
It was a chilly morning. Everyone met at the Bloch Lobby Coat Check and checked in their coats. The docent came to meet the group and started off with the sculpture hanging on the wall: Dusasa I, which is right in front of the coat check area. Then she led us to Kirkwood Hall where students get to explore massive marble columns and limestone walls where names of doners and founders are engraved.
The first collection the students were taken to after Kirkwood Hall was the European collection. There, students were introduced to the works by different artists of different centuries, including one of the prominent paintings in the collection “Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness.”
Not to forget, the immersive experience where students get to sit and get immersed in the painting of Monet’s “Water Lilies” was remarkable. The tour then moved onto the next location: the Ancient Art Collection where students learned about the ancient portraits and sculptures including the “Inner Coffin of Meret-it-es” and “Mummy of Ka-i-nefer” to which most of our students showed most interest to.
The museum tour took over an hour exploring different collections from the east to the west with interactive questions and answers. Given the large exhibition space with the extensive range of art pieces, the group did not get to see every bit and piece of the museum. However, students get to observe quite a few collections and some of them included American Art, South and North American Indian Art, East Asian Art, South and Southeast Asian Art collections. The tour concluded after exploring the “Guanyin of the Southern Sea” which is displayed in a Chinese Temple Gallery in front of a mural “The Assembly of Tejaprabha.”
As you can see, there is an expansive amount of art represented in the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Ancient art to contemporary, there is something interesting to be taken in by any visitor to the museum. There is a reason why the Nelson is always high on locals’ recommendation list. If you ever find yourself in Kansas City, make sure to take some time to visit the Nelson and its iconic giant lawn statues of badminton birdies and more importantly, it’s vast art collection.
Visitation School
Every semester, our students also participate in service learning—an opportunity to go out into the Kansas City community and practice their English through service. Like last spring, our students visited a local school. This time it was the Visitation Catholic School nearby, where they led games and/or taught crafts from their home countries to kids.
Our enrolled students this spring paired up with another student and visited the school, where they took turns leading and assisting their planned activities. While service learning continues to evolve, change and include new locations, the core element of practicing English in a real-world setting and connecting cross-culturally remains. We look forward to all our future service-learning projects that come to be, with the input of our faculty and students.
Conversation Club
This spring we also started Conversation Club, pairing English-speaking volunteers (often UMKC academic students) with our IEP students for more opportunities to practice English outside of the classroom. Chelsey, our Student Support Specialist, coordinates this club and creates lesson plans for each meeting. Guided conversation activities prompted students to chat with their partners and created a casual environment to get to know others and practice speaking. Our last gathering of the semester involved playing some classic games like UNO FLIP! and an unexpected silent word game (charade-like, but with no miming allowed) called Word Slam!
We hope next semester students and volunteers alike will show up and make the most of the fun ways to engage with their new environment and the people who make up the community of UMKC Roos. Also, we always bring snacks! It will be quiet on campus this summer, but we look forward to the liveliness that will return come August.
See you then.
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