I don't know what is wrong with me, but it seems that all the little things around me are sort of falling apart. It's a miracle I can stand in front of my classes with any semblance of legitimacy given my general lack of preparation as of late. I really try to get everything in order, but I manage to let go of all the strings holding everything together and I have to flip into crazy mode to get everything back together. Examples: a) Last Wednesday I started teaching a class thinking it was the first time I had seen them that year, and I was suddenly reminded that I had, in fact, taught them once already and had nothing prepared to teach them that day. Luckily I whipped out the name cards and stuttered my way through a new explanation. b) Wednesday is the shittiest day every weekbecause I teach four classes, and two of them are to learn previous week's lesson while the other two are on the upcoming week. This means that I have to prepare a new lesson on Tuesday when I have a shit schedule and don't really want to make anything. This week, Tuesday came and went with a search on waygook to find things but nothing solidified. Wednesday morning I threw something together but decided to change the second half of class to accomodate a new lesson (in an attempt to get my classes back on track, and with a new week's lesson starting on THURSDAY!) So I looked online for ideas and nothing really great came of it. I'm trying to change my approach to teaching, trying to incorporate what they are learning in their other English classes, so my class doesn't seem so left field to them. Unfortunately, I can't get all my thoughts down together. So, Wednesday I essentially found nothing and then at 4:15 (I leave at 4:30) I discovered that due to a schedule change my class would start at 8:30 as opposed to 9:00 which is a huge difference when you have nothing prepared. So I brought the texts home but hardly looked at them between frisbee practice, desperately trying to stay awake on the subway, eating, and passing out at 11:00. I woke up early and left for work at 7:30 this morning just so I could arrive early enough to work undistracted until my class begin at 8:30. Luckily, my lesson plan went over just fine. PHEW.
On another note, Nova is sick. I have been taking him to the vet everyday since Monday (it is now Thursday and supposed to be my last day of vet visits) and that has been a huge time drain. I have to go home, get nova ready for the vet, go to the vet, come back home, all before I can do anything I need to do. He gets two shots everyday, one on his back and one is his back left leg. He hates them, but he is getting better at dealing with the shots. He had a big ol' scratch on his nose as well (I to this day still have no idea where it came from... maybe his nose was too dry and cracked. That's my suspicion) and the scab got pulled off Sunday night and he started bleeding EVERYWHERE, which was pretty effing terrifying. Luckily I had noticed the scab on his nose on Saturday so I at least knew that it wasn't something that Baram had caused or something. Luckily, the blood didn't seem to bother anyone buy me. Nova just kept playing around with his nose all bloody, getting blood on some textbooks, his paws, Baram, my planner, and my floor. Luckily that is healing. Then on Monday I came home to Nova throwing up and with more gunk built up in his eyes than could ever possibly be considered healthy. So straight to the vet who doesn't speak english. I stammered out a foolish sounding explanation of what happened and stuff, and he says a bunch of things I didn't understand but nodded to anyways. He gave the shots and we were off told to return each day for another round of shots.
On a more positive note, I've gotten some more presents this week.
I got Hello Kitty stickers, more hella sexy Taeyang/Daesung/TOP pictures and the 2011 FILA BIGBANG back to school planner. Jackpot, right? Well, I'm definitely pretty darn happy with the turnout, I'd say. I was really surprised about the planner, but I guess she's not a huge bigbang fan and just got it with some big fila purchase so now I have it!! hehehehehe. It's amazing.
Wow. Love me some BIGBANG and Hello Kitty
Also, Monday was White Day, but I couldn't meet Hoon because we were crazy busy. Instead, he came over on Tuesday and I made that delicious tomato cream sauce pasta and some deliciously amazing rice krispie treats (thanks melly for shipping me some marshmallows and krispies). Hoon basically fell in love with the krispie treats. He ate almost an entire batch. It was cray cray. I was really surprised that he got me anything for White Day because he thinks that all the Korean couple days are played out. But I like them. And he knows I like them, so he got me a big box and filled it with lots and lots and lots of candy and gave me this adorable clear plastic hello kitty zipper cosmetic bag. SOOOO cute. And, he wrote me an amazingly sweet letter on Hello Kitty stationary. Even down to the little details (the kitty stationary and padding the box with the shredded paper to make it pretty) he did a perfect job. I am so thankful. Also, white day is awesome!
Well, another school year has started and this means, a couple hundred new students who are completely enthralled with a) my blonde hair, b) my eyes which are green/gray/brown with gold flecks, c) my long eyelashes, d) my height or e) my extremely good grasp of English and ability to type English quickly on a keyboard.
This also means that I get a round of introduction lessons and a pretty painless first two weeks of school. My grade threes are creating facebook accounts and joining class groups so I can send out class information and extra credit opportunities to the students to use English in fun ways outside of the classroom. Hopefully there will be enough participation to do scavenger hunts, crosswords, video game quizzes, etc.
My grade one and twos will be making name cards this week. This of course means we get to do a whole bunch introductions and I get to learn lots of ridiculous things about my students. For example, a grade two student (this is a girl who is 14 years old mind you), wrote, "My dream is to be a femme fatale." Legitimately, that's what she wrote. As her future job goal. Ridiculous.
My grade ones are adorable and love me and today I got some gifts from my students: a Hello Kitty pen and some really really really sexy Taeyang stickers. SCORE.
Frisbee practice has started up and it looks like we're going pretty hard this year with practicing and stuff. It's gonna be intense me thinks... Track workouts, strategy meetings, all sorts of fun stuff to keep me super busy.
And my babies survived their first few weeks at home TOGETHER without mommy. Nova barely escaped death once when Baram decided to push a bath gift set box (containing a full bottle of body wash and a full bottle of body lotion) off a table and onto Nova's leg. Luckily I was home to hear Nova's howl of pain and I cared for him while scolding Baram who thought that immediately after doing this, with Nova walking around on just three legs, it was the perfect time to play fight with Nova. I had to keep them separate as little Nova kept crying and I was so worried. But the next morning (it was about 11pm when it happened, and no emergency clinics to be found) he was hopping all around everywhere and attacking Baram with as much playful energy as he had been before the injury. So everything seems to be all fine now. But, he's got a vet appointment to get his shots next week and I'll be double checking with the doc to verify everything is all clear.
What's the point. I am feeling pretty annoyed right now. I don't really have a right to be, but I'm still annoyed. I'm pretty aware that I'm being a shitty, but I don't care.
Well, now that that mystic brooding is over, onto some other shit.
I haven't been up to translating the lyrics lately because I'm tired all the time and I've been kind of down. Winter blues maybe?
Anyhow, my students have been really great. I'm not actually teaching any classes right now, but about 5 former grade 3s (I guess now that the year is over, they are technically high schoolers or something. I don't know exactly) come in to study every morning (with some other korean teacher) but they always come to my office early and we've been cooking. Yesterday we had a horribly failed attempt at ddeokbokki (떡볶이- fried spicy rice cake) and today we had an amazingly successful go at banana pancakes with peanutbutter&nutella syrup/sauce and whipped cream. Tomorrow we will be making 김치전 which is one of my all time favorite treats so I hope they turn out well.
Also, I anticipate I'll be compiling a hot list in the next week or so. Maybe I'll do a video instead of regular written post. Who really knows?
today is my last day at Haesa Go and I am so effing happy. For about ten seconds at the end of my first class I was a little sad but then I remembered the hell that those students put me through and I thought yeah eff em. I dont mean to be negative but this was a total waste of my time consisting of literally no guidelines, completely no organization of class levels and generall across the board poorly behaved students. I am positively thrilled that its over. I say this with two classes left. But I dont really care. That first one was the tough one.
So today might be one of my best days ever. Okay, so that's probably an exaggeration, but still, it's been a really really great day. Yesterday and today and tomorrow have all been great. Really really really great. Seriously.
This week I've been teaching at an English summer camp for the Nambu district of Incheon. It's maybe 15 schools or so, and the camp combines some of the highest level English students from each of the schools to attend an English camp led mostly by foreign English teachers such as myself. All classes have 12 students, 6 boys and 6 girls. This is probably the first time boys and girls have been in the same class since they started middle school, so that was strange. In my class, the boys and the girls will totally separate. They didn't talk to each other, they didn't work with each other unless we literally forced them to. It was awful.
But beside my classes stark gender segregation, everything in the camp was great. My students were all awesome, if a little shy at first. But, by Thursday, the boys especially, they could hardly be corralled into orderly groups. On Thursday we had a field trip to the Incheon Science Hall and Incheon International Airport. The boys basically ran wild in the museum and we (my korean co-teacher and I) had to go searching for them on more than one occasion. We also played faux-basketball at the station that had a fan underneath a ball that pushed the ball through a hoop. You know, that exhibit that every single science museum ever has. Well, we took the ball and played basketball. I hit the first shot I took, you know, since I'm a baller and all.
Then at the airport, I was in charge of the boys group and they were absolutely terrified to speak to any foreigners. I had to literally drag them to people in order to get them to start talking. Then trying to keep them away from the dunkin donuts and family marts was next to impossible. Luckily after that activity was over, they were seated for the rest of the time. That day, the boys also snooping and reading my text messages as I wrote them and discovered that I can speak some korean. They saw me write 영화가 재미없었어 and were like omg omg you speak korean, and then proceeded to speak a ton of korean to me. It was annoying, but funny because I wouldn't speak to them in Korean.
Then today was our last day of camp which was kind of sad because we had bonded over the week, but mostly I was just thrilled because camp was exhausting for me. It ruined my sleeping patterns completely as I had to take naps just to stay up past 9 p.m. But today, my students all said goodbye and my girls were sad (and my boys didn't care, obvi). But I gave my cyworld address to my students so hopefully they will add me on cyworld or whatever. So far one student already has. Weeney (that's her English name which she chose. It gets me every time).
Plus tonight I finally get to see my boo after a whole week.
Plus plus plus the best bit of news ever: I GET TO MEET SE7EN TOMORROW! OMG OMG OMG OMG. Yes, I mean the Se7en that I have been fawning over the last few blog posts. Same Seven. I got picked to attend a fan signing. Only 150 people will be there and my friend Coleen also got picked. OMG, I can't even express how effing thrilled I am to get to meet him. And he's gonna sign my new digital bounce cd. And I'm gonna write him a letter and hopefully he'll read it and show it to Taeyang and then Taeyang will fall in love with me via the letter. Ok, obviously this is just wishful thinking, but still. ^_____^ Tomorrow at 6:30 I will be in a line of people to talk to and (possibly) HUG Seven. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I screamed when I got the text message from Hottracks, the music store at Kyobo that said I was picked.
Today really was awesome. I don't know how else to explain it.
Actually, my whole weekend has been awesome.
Friday I went to Hooter's for Miranda's birthday. I got my ears pierced. I sang the shit out of Taeyang's I need a girl (90점 on an all korean song the first time I sang it? hell yes). Saturday, woke up, went on a date. Snuck into a building. Lost everything and got it back. Played 20+ games of go-stop. Ate really really good spaghetti (even by American standards, it was good, and that's saying something here in Korea).
Today, I went to Seoul with four of my students. They are four of my best students at my school. Seriously, they love English, they love speaking English, they love practicing English, and it is students like them that make me want to teach forever. We went to 신촌 and ate lunch at a 고기부페 (meat buffet). We ate 삼겹살 (really thick bacon meat basically) and other meat and lots of soda and it was funny because you can't leave leftovers, but we took too many sides, and 재연, one of my students, put a bunch of the food back in the bowls, which you totally can't do and probably isn't very sanitary, but buffets generally aren't that sanitary anyways, so eff that. Then we went to red mango and had awesome yogurt and got the toppings for free, because 유진 had a coupon. Then we went looking for a sticker picture place and while looking stumbled across a HELLO KITTY CAFE. There is one in Hongdae, but in my opinion the Sinchon one is better. It's less pink, but has way better kitty accessories. It's more demure, I think. We took a detour there for coffee and more sweets (choco bread). Then, we found a sticker picture place and hurriedly took sticker pictures. They weren't the best pictures ever (Christi, Miranda and I got the best ever, hands down) but they turned out cute. The sticker picture place wasn't that good (the one at bupyeong has 반짝반짝 film, or bling bling film to coat the pictures) but it sufficed.
Then we went to 서대문 which is a historic site. It used to be a prison during the Japanese opression. They put political prisoners there and tortured/executed them. It was pretty depressing. The girls had to go there for summer homework and it was kind of near Sinchon (closer than, say, Incheon is) so I went with them. I think their parents were grateful because they didn't have to take them there. Then, we took the subway back.
I'm pretty exhausted now, but I'd definitely say it was well worth the time and exhaustion. The students were wonderful, the date was great in spite of the rain, I had a wonderful time singing and eating and playing with my friends.
The only downside is due to the rain on Friday/Saturday, I fell TWICE. Once going downstairs to Hooters (minor), and once when I was at home taking off my soaked shoes on Saturday (major fall). The fall on Saturday caused some minor hip/leg/ankle/wrist pain, but it's not so bad now, minus the bruise on my thigh). I'm so clumsy.
So it's crazy that my semester is finally almost over. I have four more days of classes, which consist of my students and I watching the first 40 minutes of either Princess Diaries 2 or Monsters, Inc. a total of 11 times (this doesn't include the 7 times I've already watched it yesterday and today).
After school I saw an archery competition and some boys from a different school freaked out when they saw me.
Yesterday at school I got a package from home. In it was some clothing I ordered from the gap (cropped khakis and a navy slub dress), the newest Rooney cd (which was signed since I pre-ordered it!), plus some other goodies from the parents such as a hello kitty washcloth and Florida Kitty magnet.
Tomorrow I'm going to see Shrek Forever with three students. I'm really excited. We were gonna see it in 4D, but it was sold out, so we're just gonna watch it in regular old 3D. This is good though because 4D is only in Seoul and it's 5000 won more.
Also, I sort of maybe kind of have a date tomorrow. eep.
Oh, and I'm updating www.reallykpop.weebly.com as we speak. New 2PM lyrics up by Sunday evening! Plus, I'm probably registering my own domain later this weekend. I got a coupon from weebly for 33% off domain registration, I figure that's as good a deal as any. ^_^ So yeah, that's that.
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 I just wanted to take another break from posting our last day in Shanghai in order to share some things.
1. World Cup.
Korea won. 대~한민국!!! I tried to go to City Hall with Miranda to watch the game (ok, really it was so I could see Big Bang who was going to have an appearance at 5 before the game). We got to city hall at 11 and it was raining and there were not many people at all there. We got a bite to eat and I bought an umbrella and a red poncho and we got in the short line. We saw a bunch of big bang fan club vip girls. THey saw us and asked, Big Bang see? And we said yessss. And they said, no come, and formed the x with their hands that is a universal no sign. But they were still waiting so we thought maybe there was a miscommunication. We asked another guy if big bang would come and he said, at 5. So we sat down in some grass and started playing Go-Stop. We got confirmation that Big Bang was no going to be there, but we were playing go-stop, and it wasn't a big deal. It was raining a bit. Then we met two Korean guys who were impressed by my go-stop skills. And they joined in on the fun. Then it started raining a lot. After two hours in the rain, Miranda and I left, defeated. We went to Myeongdong and I got a red striped shirt to show my korean patriotism during the game. I watched the Korea game at Dillinger's, a frisbee favorite haunt. Then went to street stalls for food after the game, plus then Candacee's for relaxing and trying to stay awake and eating popcorn and squid and playing dice. We played dice even through Yong dropping one out of the window and therefore making the game a bit more tricky. Then Rocky Mountain Tavern for the USA v. England game. It was really hard to stay awake since the game started at 3:30 a.m. my time. By the second half, I felt like I was gonna die. I was nodding off and barely made it. By miracle, USA pulled out a tie (as I'm sure you all know) due to a big mistake by England's keeper. But anyways, I'm rooting for Korea, so I guess it doesn't really matter.
This is how I felt when I found out I couldn't see my 대성이.
These are the 천원 (1000 won) bets that the boys made on everything from who would have the next corner kick to which coach would get the next close-up on camera.
2. Tutoring
The gentleman I tutor here is a funny man. He is as old as my parents but he seems nice enough. He has lived in Incheon pretty much his whole life (minus a 10 or so year stint in Australia). When he was young (high school age) Incheon was obviously a much smaller city. He still keeps in touch with a number of his high school/middle school friends. As I had mentioned a bit ago, election day was a couple weeks ago. He had three friends running for seats in the city council and another running for something he called the manager of the district. It seems like some sort of mayorship role, but for a district. I don't know what the word is. The district is Yeonsu-dong, which is where Songdo is. Songdo is a huge area Incheon is pouring money into calling it an international free economic zone. Incheon is banking on Songdo becoming the biggest port area in East Asia. As such, construction in that area is booming. The man I tutor works in a granite import/export company (by works in I mean is the CEO of), and he has a decent amount of work largely in Songdo. He said to me, "my friend in Yeonsu-dong he is a good man. much better thn the city council friends. Honest. No bribes." I responded well, that's good. An honest politician is hard to come by. He said, "yes, I had dinner with him the other night. Big dinner. I pay. And I say to him, friend, you send business people to me. I work for you. He must because I always buy him dinner last year when he had no job. He must."
I laughed.
3. I got a new tattoo. I'm going to hold off on posting pictures because people read this who don't necessarily need to see my new tattoo (read: my parents and the occasional student). Don't worry Mom & Pops, I didn't get a naked she-devil tattoo or anything. Not anything to bizarro. Just some flowers. It's just that they're big, colored, and currently super painful. Like wrecking my life painful. Like I literally lept for joy when I discovered I couldn't tutor because the man had to meet with a business partner because it mean that I could lay under the a/c and hope to escape the fire-y burning that is overwhelming me.
4. My students made these awesome pictures for parents' day which was like a million years ago, but my school didn't get around to putting up the posters until way afterwards (anyone surprised? not me), but they are pretty cool. My students can draw. They are all grade 1&2 middle school. One of the pictures, the one with the frog, references this Korean story I read for homework when my co-teacher gave me that children's story book. I was proud of myself for understanding! *^__^*
Oh, and I saw this out my window last night. Thought I'd share. A bit blurry, but it was the nicest sunset I'd seen from my window so far.
I think people are literally drag racing outside my apartment.
Anyways, I made a new movie on iMovie to compile all the video clips I took during my school's student trip. Unfortunately I couldn't include any pictures of teachers playing go-stop and drinking soju for two reasons: a) my students will probably see this video and b) I didn't actually take any pictures of those things.
Here is the video, and below that some pictures that didn't make the cut. Enjoy the music, it's from my latest music hot list. *^__^*
This is an idea of what me and the teachers did all weekend. Eat food. Drink alcohol.
A lake in Jaecheon right across from the retreat place where we stayed.
Me (middle, in case you mistook me for a korean) , Kim Bomi (p.e. teacher, Left) and Kim Hyo Jin (English teacher, Right)
My students also go to do paintballing. I'm jealous. I could have played but I didn't bring shoes.
1. I am going to kill my grade 2 class 6 students. They are pure evil. Last week I assigned classwork and then collected it to check and grade and such. This morning as I was grading my last batch of work (I graded over 600 papers for student because I see them all in a week), I checked grade 2-6, and discovered that they did literally nothing. I assigned them work to do, basically just pair work where they ask their partner questions about a calendar schedule they received. Then, they had to write their sentences down to get credit. Of the 36 students, 8 did work. The other 28, NOTHING. This, in spite of me going from student to student and specifically, individually, explaining the activity and forcing them to speak. They wrote literally nothing. 28 students. As a result, today in class, I am going to make them miserable. I don't even effing care, I'm so pissed. This class is consistently bad, ignoring instructions, talking over me, sleeping, distracting each other and making mean jokes. At least 20 papers had only doodles. Gaaaah. So mad.
On a lighter note...
2. Just now at lunch time, my grade 3 students were preparing for their class picture for the yearbook, which I guess is a big deal or something. They were all huddled in the girls bathroom (I always brush my teeth after lunch and saw them there) hiding and using a hair straightener. I thought it was completely ridiculous that they were all crammed into one tiny bathroom stall, so I told them to move to my office to prepare. They were so shocked that I didn't mind them using hair straighteners in school, and they all rushed over like kisd in a candy store. Also, some girls were putting on make-up (eye liner, concealer, the works) and such. They are 15 years-old for goodness sakes. They should be wearing that much make-up. Then I saw the kicker. One student pulled out a glue stick (literally a classroom glue stick) and applied GLUE TO HER EYELID, in order to create the coveted double eyelid. Completely effing ridiculous. I about lost it just then. I was like, are you crazy? Glue is not for your eyes! But my co-teacher in my office said, "oh, lots of korean people put glue on their eyes."
I think my eyeballs about fell out of their sockets and my jaw basically unhinged and bounced to the floor. Effing Korea.
For those of you that don't know (all you Euro-trashers out there reading my blog), the before is regular asian eye, and the after is the double eyelid, which many many many women undeergo cosmetic surgery to create.
This is not make-up. It should not be near your eyes.
So, I'm trying to prepare some stuff for the impending start of the new school year. For those of you who don't live in Korea and already know this, March marks the start of a new school year, so I will be getting new 1st graders starting March 2nd, and my 1st and 2nd graders will now be 2nd and 3rd graders. I am really looking forward to the new semester, mostly because after having been here for 6 months I am starting to figure out what kinds of things work well with my students, and what kinds of things simply do not work at all. Mostly, though, I just really like teaching, and I really like learning how to be better at teaching.
Unfortunately, my school gives me virtually no guidance regarding the information I should be teaching. Additionally, I don't really know what kinds of things my students are learning in their other English classes. Moreover, there are no universal requirements across middle school education in our district or whatever, so I can't even look at a master list and say, hey, I need to cover simple and continuous present past and future, adverbs and prepositions of movement. Instead, I'm left to my own devices to decide what the students should learn. This is frustrating and difficult.
I spent much of last semester attempting to create basic conversational lessons (talking about weather, making plans, etc.) but found that students had often learned a different (and often equally appropriate OR wildly incorrect) way of responding. As such, my one day lesson only served to confuse them further.
So, I've decided to thoroughly change my approach. I'm considering spend about 3-5 weeks (depending on student interest, difficulty of grammar, variety of applications) on a single grammatical construction such as the past tense (simple and continuous) or questions (yes/no and w-questions) and extending the lesson on said grammar rule to various applications. I'd also try to maintain a primary and auxiliary grammar focus. For example, I would spend the first week introducing vocabulary that will be used in the upcoming lessons, and discussing the basic grammar rules. I would probably include some sort of basic vocabularly reinforcement game like bingo/word search/crosswords/jumbles/etc this week. The following week, I would introduce the grammar (simple present) and discuss how to make it, blah blah blah, then do some sort of activity for the majority of the class. The following week I'd add the auxiliary topic (adjectives or frequency words, or transition words) and do another speaking activity. The last week, which would be optional, depending on interest, would be some sort of fun review game or something.
I just feel like the students need more time with each grammar topic than my once/week lesson can provide. My biggest concerns are as follows:
1. How do I make week one, which is mostly vocabulary and review and introduction, more fun?
2. What kinds of topics do I prioritize?
3. How do I analyze the efficacy of my lessons in this way? How much is too much of the same topic, and how little is too little?
4. How the hell will I find ways to teach the progressive tense in a practical/useful/fun manner?
Since I learned this stupid language from birth, the progressive tense was just meta-cognitively added to my grammatical repertoire, and so teaching it seems so exceptionally difficult.
God, I need to somehow learn how to actually teach English.
I think I am in heaven. The last week and a half I have been working with ten students at a winter camp. I themed the Winter Camp "The English Camp Olympics" (because the winter olympics are coming up), and I taught them about the olympics, and each day we cover a different English speaking country that participates in the Olympics. Also, we play at least one game/day and I award gold/silver/bronze medals to the first/second/third place teams. Each team works together for the whole two weeks as a "country." On the first day, each team had to create a country, and a flag that represented their country. My four countries are: Yu Island, JaeSoHye, Kite (both of the girls in this team have "yeon" in their name, and yeon is korean for the word kite), and Big Bang & the Chocolate Factory. The girls had to create governments and a capital city, a motto, and tell how many people lived there.
My 10 winter camp students are easily the most wonderful and easy to work with students in the WHOLE WORLD. Today, instead of playing the games I had planned, or doing the lesson on New Zealand that I had planned, one student, Yujin said to me, "Allison, today, can we just talk. I like talking with you. It's very fun."
So we talked. For two hours. Me and 10 of my students spent the whole morning just talking. It was amazing. If only all my days could be like this I think I'd never leave this country ever. These girls actually want to learn English. They really really want to learn. It blows my mind.
Then, at the end of class, Yujin said to me, "Teacher, when you go home, we walk together. Come get me at library." So when I was ready to go home, I walked downstairs to the library and got Yujin and Hee-Jin, and we walked together down the street, and they told me about the people that are on the won bills.
I love these ten girls more than I think most of you can understand. They make me so incredibly happy, and all I can ever hope for them is the most success in the world. I will take pictures of my class tomorrow or Friday and I will post them. I think I will cry when I leave or when they graduate, whichever comes first.
I love being a teacher. I love it so so very much.
Today has been a combination of awesome and awful. I'll spare the gruesome details, but will share this:
1. I broke a girls' spirit while playing review Jeopardy. She almost cried. She is the best student in that particular class. I was emotionally distraught
2. I was only emotionally distraught until I started filling in birthdays and American holidays on my new 2010 HELLO KITTY calendar. Oh. My. God. It is so cute.
3. My coteacher informed me there was a three day training thing going on in the middle of the time Thomas is coming to visit. I wanted to cry. Luckily, they are working it out for me.
4. After lunch, I have just one class. It is grade 1, class 1. I HATE THAT CLASS.
5. One girl in grade 1-1 made me cry today. She was incredibly disrespectful, and I had no co-teacher to monitor the situation. I almost lost it and swore and screamed, but I held it in. It was heartbreaking though. There are some really really good students in the class, and I feel incredibly bad for them because they want to learn, and there are about 5 girls who blatantly interrupt their ability to learn by being talkative, disruptive or rude for no real reason, except that they are poorly behaved and mean-spirited.
6. One student brought me a BigBang/2ne1 poster! SO HAPPY.
7. I am finally learning names. Lots of them. There is: Chrissy, Scarlett, Amy and Audrey, plus Jeong Yeon, Ha Eun, Eun Yeong, Jin Ha, Minji (times 3), Ara, Jinsu (times 2), Areum, Saerom, Hyeju, So-Yeon, Hyeon-bin (who has a pet goldfish named poo-poo. seriously, I can't make that shit up), Sara, So-un, Eun-bin, Da-eun, Da-un, Hee-Jin(school president) and some others than I'm forgetting at the moment but legitimately know. It's so hard.
8. My Korean teacher said that for the next term I should go to the intermediate class. HOORAY!
9. Delicious dwaeji-kalbi (bbq pork) for dinner.
It sounds like on the whole, the positives outweigh the negatives, but that one girl in my grade 1, class 1 really irritated me to the point that I questioned whether or not I can handle being in Korea for another year. I am over it now (sort of), but I think that now I will have this awful bias against this one girl.
On a lighter note, Christmas is in full swing here. Hooray! Pictures from Christmas in Korea:
At Myeong-Dong, the busy shopping area in Seoul. I wish I had taken a picture of the obscene crowds. At Christmastime, there are easily THOUSANDS of people crowded in this 5 block x 5 block shopping district. It's intense.
This is Etude House, a make-up/beauty store in Korea. It is very famous and popular amongst younger girls. It is adorable for Christmas, I think.
Also, I went to Lotte World (but only the ice skating rink, not the whole theme park)on Saturday with Ara. We had coffee and chatted (and met with Guenwoo, another former ELI student) and that was quite fun. Then we went ice skating which was AMAZING. There are some good pics Ara took up on facebook, including my new Korea-tastic profile picture. I was terrified at first (it's been almost 10 years since I've ice skated), but I got back into it in no time. However, my ankles were beat by the end. Afterwards, we went to Omuto Tomato, which is an omurice place. Here are pictures (AND VIDEOS) of that.
This band came on the ice and played instruments, while these two weird Disney-esque rip-off characters ice-skated around and sort of danced in a poorly choreographed manner.
It seemed to me like they were only concerned with actually choreographing only the band's movements and tiny portions of the characters ice dance, as much of the "dance" included off beat head bopping and knee bending, and occasional sidelong glances at each other in an obvious attempt to figure out what the other was doing and then mimicking it lamely. But the band was pretty good.
Today was Peppero Day. You see, in Korea, every month has a special love holiday, plus November has TWO. Here are the holidays:
January 14: Diary Day- couples exchange diaries or planners with all the important days (anniversaries, love holidays, 100 day celebrations, etc)
February 14: Valentine's Day- The girl buys the boy gifts
March 14: White Day- The boy buys girls gifts that are white in color. Gifts range from mints and candy to stuffed animals and underwear
April 14: Black Day- This is the day where single people go out to eat alone to mourn their singledom. Also, they eat delicious jjajjangmyeon
May 14: Yellow Day/Rose Day- couples wear yellow and exchange yellow roses. Single people go out together and eat curry
June 14: Kiss Day- self-explanatory
July 14: Silver Day- couples exchange gifts made of silver and announce their relationship to their friends
August 14: Green Day- couples wear green, go for a walk in a park or wooded area and drink soju (which comes in a green bottle); single people also drink soju this day
Sept 14: Photo&Music Day- no one celebrates this, but pics together then Noraebang!
October 24: Apple Day- I described this already. Saying SORRY!
Nov 11: Peppero Day
Nov 14: movie day- less important than and overshadowed by Peppero Day
Dec 14: Hug Day- Couples hug to stay warm during cold winters
Anyways, so today was Peppero Day, which is like valentines day but better because you don't have to give anything to anyone if you don't want to and teachers rake it in. On Peppero Day, friends give friends, and lovers give each other, boxes of Peppero to show affection and as a symbol for wishes that your friends grow tall and thin, like sticks of Peppero (which are the same as Pocky but not strawberry flavored). 11/11 was the date chosen because it looks like 4 peppero sticks lined up.
Anyways, so for Peppero Day, I got 4 boxes of peppero, one big peppero stick (I don't know how to explain except to say it was a supersized peppero) and a bag of homemade peppero. I also got two notes from two of my *favorite* students, Yu Eun-Bin and Lee Jae-Yeon (English Name: AMY!!) The notes are quite possibly the sweetest things I've ever seen. Handwritten beautiful with so much effort. I can't help but smile every time I see them. I responded to each of the notes this evening and told the girls to come to my office to get their response notes tomorrow morning.
This acted as a reminder that I love my job, and my students, and my school.
I am done planning for the month of November, by the way. I have two powerpoints to make, and I am DONE DONE DONE with November. Then I have December, and a WHOLE MONTH OFFFFFFF!
It's been a while since I've posted (over a week). For some of my blogging friends, that's nothing, but for me, that a long time. So, here's what I've been up to.
1. English Festival.
All our practicing and snacking paid off as seven of my students and I hit the stage for the Incheon Middle School English Festival. I had a freakin' blast hanging out with 8 students (7 dancing, and one in charge of the ppt) for two straight days. I don't think I can explain to you how completely I love my job. There are times I get frustrated, sure. There are times when I feel like no one has any idea what the hell is going on in my classroom, including myself. Yes, sometimes I just want to grab a student around the neck and say, "SHUT UP" but honestly, I have got it made here. The students really aren't that bad. My co-workers are friendly and nice. The food at my school is known to be amongst the best in Incheon. I only teach for 18-20 hours/week. I choose to stay later than I need to in order to talk to each of my students and do whatever I can. And I get to sing and dance and look completely foolish in front of 200 people at English Festivals. I mean, really, can it get better than that? I DON'T THINK SO. There isn't much to say about the festival. There were about 30 schools represented, and they did everything from skits to game shows to dances to re-enacting Harry Potter scenes (completely with British accents hahahahah). I was the only teacher who did more than just recite some lines or introduce the group. My students also fell in love with one of the other native english teachers who was there. His name is Mike; he's from England. He's really tall and terribly skinny. He is also in my Korean class. I'm completely uninterested, but my students are OBSESSED. Picture to the right. They followed him around everywhere (including to the arcade down the street on our break) and would say hello and then just giggled awkwardly while I had to make uncomfortable but hilarious conversation. He does have a fabulously British accent, but I can't emphasize enough how very skinny he was. Anyhow, here's the video of Shinheung Girls Middle School students and Native English Teacher Allison performing School's out from Disney's High School Musical 2 for your viewing pleasure:
2. Planning Lessons
So I'm not very good about this. It's hard because I am in Seoul every weekend preparing to go to Manila for the Asia-Oceania Ultimate Club Championships and Worlds Qualifier. That sounds so official. Basically, I spend every weekend in Seoul doing only three things: playing ultimate frisbee, drinking A LOT, and sleeping on the floor at disc hotel (a.k.a. Bekah/Beth/Dave's place a.k.a home away from home away from home). As such, all my work must be done at school or at home after I get off work. The problem comes into play when I have other errands to run or things to coordinate, including but not limited to, English Festival practices, going to the bank (which is a 10 minute bus ride/walk depending where I go) to pay bills, going grocery shopping (at least 20 minutes each way via bus or foot depending on the weather), taking Korean classes (twice a week, an hour each day, plus a 2 hours round-trip commute, which I am questioning the worth of), and trying to eat, sleep and stay sane. So basically, I have the time I am at work plus Sunday nights after I get back from frisbee. Most of my free time during the week (non-teaching time) is early in the week, which is difficult because I am usually trying to work the kinks out of the lesson I am teaching that week and haven't even begun to think about the next week's lesson. I should be planning more than a week in advance but it's been hard because it was a catch-up game from square one. Luckily, it's only Monday and I have a good idea of what I am going to do next week (follow-up for this week).
3. Frisbee
Two weekends ago was the League finals and league party. You all probably saw facebook pictures of the disaster than ensued (it got its own photo album because it was that ridiculous). I don't have time or energy to upload photos here which is okay because facebook contains every picture that I or anyone else took on my camera from that evening. This past weekend was a hat tournament down in Daejeon. Let me tell you what, ladies and gentlemen of Ultimate, this was an impeccably well run tournament. I don't know if it's luck or what or Korea being awesome as usual, but there was free food and candy and water and vita500 (an orange flavored vitamin c drink) and two parties with drink specials and free pizza and great prizes. I think it helped that it was a fairly small tournament, with just 4 teams. My team went 0-3 in round robin, but kicked it up for play-offs, winning in semis and taking home second place with a 1-4 record. Also, I was awarded the female mvp of the tournament award (Tweezy took home the male mvp award... haha). for winning we got little necklace thingys that are of no value, water bottles and a bottle of soju each. Upon receiving our soju bottles, everyone started cheering one shot, one shot, which is the korean version of chug chug chug chug. Keep in mind, friends that soju is typical 25% alcohol by volume and is sold in bottles roughly the size of beer bottles which are a mere 4-7% abv. I promptly said no, but Tweezy, being the gangsta he is, popped his top open and promptly chugged one half of the soju and handed it to Woody, the TD, who then passed it right along to me. At this point, I threw my hands in the air and said what the hell, and proceeded to finish off the bottle, washing it down with a little Cass beer. Needless to say in about 20 minutes I was wasted as can be. And it was 5:30 p.m. BUT, I was the MVP. We managed to stumble to the love motel (we being 6 of us or) which is the cheapest way to board in Korea besides jimjilbangs, or public saunas. Changed into halloween costumes (was a cowgirl, with the save from ben's cowboy hat!!!!!) and rolled over to BonBon for the party. Had some pizza, drank some beer, danced, flip-cupped, went back to the love motel, slept, played ultimate sunday afternoon.
No pictures. Sorry. I didn't take any.
So yeah, I've been busy busy busy with school and work and frisbee. It's been intense.
Did I mention that my students now swarm my desk and office before and after each class to talk to me and earn stamps to win a prize at the end of the semester? So, I spend probably an hour or more talking to my students and stamping their pairs in an assembly line style. It's good in the sense that more of my students are speaking English, but bad in the sense that the students who really want to learn english and came to my office to talk to me anyways no longer can do that. Instead, they are forced to wait in line and be rushed through. I feel bad for Sara and So-un and Audrey and Scarlett because I know they want to talk to me and they hardly get to at all. :-/ so it goes.
I hope I will be able to post soon about real things, not just the shallow day to day of my life.
xoxo,
A
p.s. I am going to Manila, the Philippines this weekend! OMG SO EXCITED. Keep your fingers crossed for the Korean Ultimate National Team (check the acronym), and hope hope hope that we get a bid to 2010 WORLDS in Prague. Seriously, that would be SO kick-ass.
