Work. School. Work. School.

A quick update on things in my life.

Right now across from me, my Korean co-teacher is cutting her hair with office scissors. I find this to be strange but comforting. I can get away with doing pretty much anything I want here. Korea is so weird. It's like teachers don't really teach.

I finally caught up on most of my work. In spite of a terrible computer fail earlier today, I managed to finish all of my final exam questions, and begin working on my lesson plans for my summer camp. My computer decided to eliminate all of my grade 1 and 2 exam questions, as well as all of the charts and pictures I had to include in the exam. So, I had to recreate everything, re-edit the photos, and re-write the questions. But I finished!

I also FINALLY wrote all of my stupid letters back to my students. They do this thing where they write letters asking for advice from a teacher. I get a lot of letters, because I'm intriguing to students, but they don't actually ask for advice because they don't know enough English. So, instead, they just write these ridiculous letters that basically say: "TEACHER! I LOVE YOU!" and the like. So I write back these equally ridiculous letters like, "wow, thank you very much. I hope you love English class a lot too!" and I decorate them with hello kitty stickers and various gelly roll pen doodles. I sound like i don't like this activity, but really I do. It's an ego boost when I have 10 letters on my desk and the other teacher in my office has three. ^_^

I also finally created a board with outstanding student work. It has stars and gold and drawings by my students right now. It seems to spruce up the room a little.

Also, we finally finished stamps. THANK GOD. I hated giving those stupid stamps with a passion. Now, stamps are over. Or at least until next semester! *^_____________^*

Now I just have to adjust to a totally new schedule that was just changed.

Oh, and for the best news of my entire week. This one student, the evil one who made me cry back in November. The one who seems to intentional try to make every teacher go mad, has reformed. By some miracle or some grace of god, this student today in my class was a perfect angel. We had free study time, so it's not like thre was really much of anything to do. But, still. Previous free studies have been like torture for me, where she just loses control and goes crazy. Today, she spent the entire 45 minutes studying. She even raised her hand and asked me a question. And while her question was in Korean, and I had trouble explaining, she sat and listened until she understood. And then she went back to studying. I've never felt such sheer unadulterated joy in my life. And so after, to reward the 5 or 6 students who were really good, including reformed demon student, I had them stay a minute late and I gave them Chupa Chups lollipops. The one student, when I said she could have one, looked at me with a look that could only be described as utter shock and awe, and said, "Teacher, ME?!" and when I said yes, she said, "Oh teacher, really very very thank you! I love you! Thank you!" I think that she and I have been growing on each other. I have to give her lots of attention, but that's okay. If I praise her (even verbally, not just with candy/bribes), she seems to perform much better. So everyday, I look for some way to say something positive to her, in hopes that she will continue to behave well. Then, at lunch, she and her friend came back to my office to talk to me, and reformed demon student MADE ME COFFEE. omg. I can hardly handle it.

So yeah. That's my life these days!

xoxo
A