The Bucket List Lesson

My bucket short-list, an in-class example.

As of today, I've finished teaching my first unit to my second-year students. The theme was "Dreams", and in the last lesson, I taught about bucket lists (with video supplements from the 2007 movie and a nice TED talk).

I tried to emphasize putting realistic dreams and goals on these lists, knowing that if I simply said, "Anything is possible!" they would all write that they would marry Suzy or Won Bin or live on the moon.

As a result, I got lots of great bucket lists. The majority of them, of course, were nothing out of the ordinary: my students want to travel to all sorts of countries, meet celebrities, find love, learn musical instruments, and get good jobs. (But there weren't as many "become very rich"-es as I expected).

And what surprised me the most was that, given that I was compiling each class' Bucket List Top 10, all of the dreams and goals they came up with were so original. With about twenty-two students in each class, each of them writing five things on their list, I actually got eighty to ninety unique bucket list items.

So now, I will present some of my favorites, the ones that made me laugh or think for a moment. (And I am quoting verbatim, so please excuse their syntax!)

"Before I die I will raise a hawk."
"Before I die, I will spread many money, standing on a building's top"

"Before I die, I want to make my mine. I want to dig my own mine."

"I want proud myself"

"I will meet David Tennent"

"I want to catch fish with hand"

"I will to be a VIP at Outback"

"to do a speaking at TED"
"Crash a wall on my punching."

"believe religious"

"Be someone's eternal knight."

"have dramatic love"

The ones that should be on my bucket list:
"Before I die I will make a very very Big cake"
"eat cheese that is most delicious cheese in the world with honey"
"Meet very handsome and rich guy and make him mine."
"be with Polar bear"

And now, the best of the bunch:

Runner-up: "Take a nap under the warm sunlight in the green field."

The winner: "punish my middle school music teacher"