Moving and Tears

I move to my new apartment on Saturday, which I'm sure I've mentioned like 600 times.

Tomorrow is my last day to come to Shinheung Girls Middle School. Next week I have an English camp at another nearby middle school.

Today I have to move a bunch of my boxes and stuff from my office.

Yesterday I had my last dinner with two of my co-teachers (the two I am by far the closest to)

We went to the same place where we had our first teacher dinner, mostly just by coincidence.

It was fun and talk-filled, but seriously, it was so so so so sad. Seriously. I cried like a baby. We took some polaroids and ate and chatted, and we all cried. And they gave me this beautiful pair of earrings from J.Estina and I just can't tell you how thankful I am to them.

They have helped me when I didn't know enough Korean, or when I didn't know where to look for something, or when I needed to sneak out early to go to the post office or bank, or when I just wanted help with anything. They have so much stress as homeroom teachers and with paperwork and discipline and extra classes I never could understand how they managed it, but they always did everything they possible could to make my life that much easier.

It's not like I'll never see them again, but I won't see them in the same capacity, and it's just so crazy.

A huge chapter of my life is closing. And a new chapter is opening. It's exciting, but bittersweet.

I'm no longer in the beginning of my Korean life.

A smorgasbord of things

1. Smorgasbord: I had never known how to spell this word. Thank you google for clarifying with your 'define:' search function. I also learned the correct spelling is: Smörgåsbord and that it is Sweedish, and that in Norway they actually say: koldtbord. Also, this is the title of a children's entertainment album.

A smorgasbord of children's musical fun!

2. Kitty cupcake and cake: On my 100 day anniversary with my boo, as I mentioned in a loving earlier blogpost, I got a really dope Hello Kitty cake. I ate it yesterday with him, his brother, and his brother's equally kitty loving girlfriend (저는 윤경언니같이 키티를 좋하해요! I learned this 같이 phrase yesterday while I was studying! YEAH) at the library where we were studying. It was strawberry flavored and freaking delicious. There was a big hello kitty cookie on top and it's adorable, and I simply cannot eat it, it's too cute. Half the cake still remains in my apartment fridge and must be eaten soon. Also, on the cupcakes take the cake blog, there was a featured Hello Kitty cupcake. Now, Cupcakes Takes the Cake frequently features Hello Kitty cupcakes, but usually they are particularly horrifying or just plain ugly. But these are the best ones I've seen perhaps ever on the site. They aren't perfect, but they are darn cute. Plus she's made of edible fondant. Makes me want to hop on over to etsy and snatch a dozen right on up!

vs.

No contest.

3. Pictures. I will be posting a picture a day hopefully from my school's festival and sports day. I will be using my android blogger app to post them, so hopefully there won't be any crazy mess-ups.


4. Schedule Changes. Jesus Christ, can they just tell me when a schedule changes? I mean, perhaps they try to, but I'm not sure I buy it. Granted, my CoolMessenger (the school-wide instant messenger service that is a Korean-based program) is totally broken on my computer. 50% of the time I can't even log in, and the other 50%, I log in and it registers my newest messages as being from this past April or July. Yeah, it's really helpful for me to know that last April there was some 떡 in the 교무실 that we should help ourselves to, or that there is a time change and all afternoon classes will be cancelled on July 23rd. Completely freaking ridiculous. Today, I lucked out in that my schedule change positively effects me. But, it'd be nice to know, you know, in advance, that I have my most horrid class of the day cancelled. Instead, I had to go downstairs to the 교무실 (the teacher's office) and ask, hey, guys, what's the deal? Was there a schedule change? I was just lucky that an English teacher was there for me to ask.


5. Speaking exams. My grade three students (equal to grade 8 or 9 students stateside) are doing speaking tests with me now. All students must prepare a topic and write about it on a paper and then they memorize the entire thing and recite it to me. It's not exactly the way I'd like a real speaking test to go, but memorization is the norm here. The students were given three topics and they had to choose one. The topics are: 1. What do you think is the most important job and why? 2. If you could meet anyone from the past, who would you meet and what would you ask them? and 3. If you had 1,000,000 won what would you buy and why? The selection has been pretty evenly spread across the three topics, which reassures me that the topics I selected are fair and mostly equal. The 1000000 won question seems the most popular, but only slightly (maybe just about 40% of the students have chosen this topic) but also the most troublesome as 50 percent of the students don't know how to say 1,000,000 in english. Instead, they just say 1 billion, or 1 hundred thousand. I feel like they should figure out how to say, you know, the central words of their speech at least. But oh well. Teacher is the overwhelmingly most popular choice for most important job (followed closely by doctor). Also, three students (the first three students to do their speeches) selected King Sejong to be the person they'd most like to meet.

That's all for now folks


xoxo
A

Wacky Week and Shanghai

After having an incredibly wacky week last week, I'm very much looking forward to the very very relaxed upcoming week I have ahead.

Last week, my schedule was thrown curveball upon curveball at my school. Monday morning, my co-teacher tells me, hey Wally, "tomorrow's classes are all going to be 70 minutes long instead of the standard 45 minutes. There are listening tests, so there had to be a schedule change."

my typical class schedule

Oh, okay, cool, 70 minute long classes. Not that I'm prepared to teach for a 70 minute time block, but sure, no problem. Luckily, I discovered that my activity in class took much longer to do than I had slated, and the students didn't get to finish the backs of their worksheets. Problem solved.

Well, later that day I'm informed that due to the 70 minute classes, 5th and 6th periods were cancelled on Tuesday and students were released slightly early. Oh, great, cool, I get a whole extra afternoon free as a result.

Well, still later, my co-teacher hands me a copy of the weeks schedule which is as follows:
Monday: regular classes.
Tuesday: periods 1-4, 70 minutes, period 5-6 cancelled
Wednesday: periods 1-4, normal times, periods 5-6 cancelled.
Thursday: all classes cancelled, Monday classes periods 1-3, Tuesday periods 5-6 during periods 4&5, Wednesday periods 5&6 during Thursday periods 6&7 (on Thursdays only this semester, classes start 40 minutes early and we have an extra period)
Friday: normal classes

An exact copy of the schedule change my co-teacher gave me on Monday around noon.

wtf? So now, as a result, two of my four monday classes are a week ahead, and my two thursday classes are a week behind. My school claims that this is to enable the classes to make up for missed days, but I was able to condense or expand my lessons to keep everything on track, and now my school does THIS. bla&*!sdlk%#roa#@itg;kfja! Anyways, my Monday classes will be corrected next week because there is a holiday. However, my Thursday class (as well as my Wednesday classes due to Election day, a holiday here in Korea) will be a full week behind. Thanks a whole effing lot.

Anyways, on the brighter side, I have no school on Wednesday because of Election Day. My co-teachers were shocked and appalled to discover that in the States people have to work on election day. they also admitted that even with a full day off work, none of them ever vote. wtf? I voted even when I didn't have a day off. How can that even be?

Plus, my Korean class got cancelled because we were supposed to have a week of vacation during the six months, but our teacher never did it, so here we are, two weeks left in the semester, and the second to last one she has to use for vacay. Unfortunately she gave us a crapton of homework that I can't do because it's too difficult.

PLUS, Friday afternoon, I'm flying to Shanghai, China, to compete with KUPA at a frisbee tournament. I'm really looking forward to it, and I think our team has a shot at doing pretty well. Keep your fingers crossed for us this weekened! We play Saturday and Sunday and then I leave Monday afternoon. I'm hoping to at least have time to see SOMETHING in Shanghai at least early in the morning before I have to run off to the airport.

This is the riverside promenade. This is my Shanghai goal. Even if I have to wake up at freaking 6 a.m. I'm going to see something in Shanghai.

xoxo,
A

Struggling

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.

Please pardon my word vomit here.

xoxo,
A

My Students

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.

Wow. Just, wow.

So I figured it would come. I thought it would come sooner, but I knew it would come regardless. No, I don't miss home yet. Not exactly. I'm actually just really really frustrated with my job. Bear with me as I explain why.

1. I feel ineffective.
a)My classes have 40 students. In any given class the only thing the students have in common, level-wise, is that they are in the same grade. Aside from that, there are some students who understand literally NOTHING I say the entire class. By that I mean, they don't know what is your name, they don't know how old are you, nada. zip. zilch. zero. Then, there are some students who understand everything I say, and do the activities perfectly and speedily, and dear god I can hardly keep up. And then there is the other 70% of the class who are somewhere in the middle, wading amongst English words they recognize but can't use and understand but can't recreate on their own.
b) I see each student only once/week. I see each class only once/week. This means that I see all 630 students every week, but only one time/week. So, I can't remember anyone's name. Additionally, the students get only the most minimal practice of any of the work I do in our class. They have my class for 45 minutes once a week. 45 minutes is not nearly enough time to learn anything. Imagine if we had taken a Spanish class in high school for 45 minutes 1x per week. Now imagine if we had taken that class at age 13. Now imagine if we had taken that class at 13, with a teacher who literally speaks no more than 50 words of English. Most people learn nothing in their high school Spanish classes, so just imagine if this were the situation. This is precisely the situation in my classroom.
c) I have no idea how to discipline the students. Aside from stern looks, I don't discipline. I had assumed my co-teachers would handle the discipline section of the class (I was under the impresion that's how it was done at all the schools with native english teachers). Unfortunately my teachers don't really do much punishing. As such, my students have nearly free reign. I can give minus points, but I'm fairly hesitant to do that, because minus points directly factor into students grades. It's interesting because outside of school I'm a hardass, but in the classroom I can't figure out the appropriate way to handle discipline situations, and so I just don't do anything. It's beginning to get out of hand.

2. My co-teachers don't help me.
a) Upon arrival, I was told that I will not be using the books that the students use during the rest of their English classes. As such, I have to create my own lessons from scratch that probably has nothing to do with their lessons in their other classes. This is particuarly difficult and frustrating because they are learning multiple English lessons in a single week. 4 days/week they have English with their native Korean teacher, plus once/week English class with me, and most of them 2-5 times/week have English classes at hagwons, or private academies the girls attend after school. As such, they are learning up to three entirely different grammar points or ideas simultaneously. Now, which grammar point do you think they are least likely to remember? The one they receive 4x/week, the one they receive up to 5x/week or the one they get once/week? Obviously, mine.
b) Co-teaching supposedly implies some sort of teamwork or partnered approach to teaching in the classroom. Typically, in my classroom the only teamwork we do is her being present. I have 4 co-teachers, and typically none of them do much of anything. My primary co-teacher usually spends the majority of her time reading a book, and occasionally looking up to tell the students to pipe down or maybe, when times get desperate, translate something I say. The other ones will walk around and occasionally prompt students for answers, but that's about it. I should have been more assertive when I came here, but I just wasn't. I simply did not lay down the ground rules, I did not encourage more participation from the co-teachers, so now here I am.
c) I don't get any feedback on my lessons. The teachers usually don't talk to me about how a week is going in terms of lessons. I usually can tell when something sucks and I try to alter it, but really, I wish they would let me know. Unfortunately this is not the Korean way.

3. My students clearly do not fully respect me as their teacher. Generally they are relatively good, with few behavior problems. However, I've seen them with other teachers, and I have seen them with their homeroom teachers. There is no talking while the teacher is speaking. There is no note passing. Or not nearly as much anyways. Instead, I can consistently count on 2-4 girls holding their own conversations apart from the class, anywhere between 2 and 10 girls asleep, and another 10 passing notes. Gah. I want to rip my hair out.

It's a drag.

There are some really disappointing things about my job.

Other days it's wonderful. Today was a really good day. It was apple day (a day where you give an apple [korean: sagwa] to say you are sorry [korean: sagwa, you see the reason?] to someone. The students all received an apple and wrote notes to other teachers. I don't really understand everything that happened (no English, you see), but I saw that girls were posting notes on this board, and one of the notes said, "allison, I love you!" and it made me so happy I thought I might cry. Seriously.Me posing with some apples next to the board with my note! *^.^*