And that’s about that. I feel like I haven’t written much, and when someone tells me they enjoy reading my blog, well, I get all warm and fuzzy inside and think ‘hey! maybe I can be funny and clever!’ That’s only half true though. I know I’m funny and clever.
But, to be serious, I simply haven’t had that much to write about (from my perspective anyway). We had our Open Classes yesterday- about which I actually got like 2 weeks of warning. I’ll admit, at first I thought it must bit a translation error, and the classes were really the next day. But nope, two full weeks. I was to teach only two- first grade middle school, and first grade high school.
Now, as I’ve recently said, I’ve been having better luck with that 1-1 HS class, who previously were second-worst scourge of my teaching life. Plus, this was actually going to be a ‘co’ class- I was going to teach with my co-teacher (imagine that!) However…. the students’ overall attitudes apparently cannot change that much that quickly, and nothing can make up for the simple lack of English that half the class has. Her portion of the class was taught entirely in Korean, and I was to prepare a game/activity. Since the story they were reading discussed identity, and their vocab was all personality characteristics, I went with the ‘Who am I?’ game. I even made a whole list of questions and traits in English and Korean as a cheat sheet for them. But, apparently, that was still far too difficult, and explaining the rules in Korean (‘wait your turn.’ is that so hard??) didn’t cut it either. In the end, I was happy no parents showed up.
My 1-1 middle school class, in a stark difference, are one of the joys of my teaching life. I could ask them to write lines, and they’d say ‘ok teacher!!’ smile bigger than their own heads, and then search frantically for a pencil and piece of paper. Brief back note: probably the average number of parents to show up to any given class is 3-5. I got to their classroom, however, to see ~15+ mothers (and a veeeery little brother or sister, who caused us some amusement later on). The computer wasn’t turned on, my flash drive didn’t work. Bad start, but I got class rolling eventually to my bunch of jazzed up energetic…. what? Why are you guys DEAD? This is practically the same lesson we did last class, on Monday. You KNOW this stuff. You… you’re always so perky, and… and… WHERE DID YOUR SOULS GO????
I did my best to animate the silent and stiff students (woah, alliteration sneak!), but they were just too dead on our activity, so I said ‘finished!’ and whipped out the taboo for the last 7 minutes. Taboo is almost ALWAYS a win.
Which brings me to what’s really on my mind right now. Being dead tired of constantly attempting to create my own curriculum, and teach it to students who couldn’t care about the one they ARE graded for. This morning, I’m tired, sore, and not really feeling ‘Korea’. I came in fully intending to continue the lesson I’d been working on. But due to the being abnormally sore from yesterday (perhaps on top of previous days), and just plain not-really-caring, I’ve made two decisions.
1) Today, in each of my 3 high school classes (have I ever mentioned that Fridays for me SUCK?), we will be playing taboo. I will not give them any candy, but they can have a stamp if they have their name cards. We will not study, we will play taboo, (at least every student will go once though- they still must practice English *shakefist*), and we will end early, so that I can just chill they can study.
2) Starting next week (what better way to start a week than a Monday?), I will be ‘coolmessenger’ing my high school co-teacher. Every. Single. Moday. Morning. I will MAKE her tell me what lesson they’re on, the topic, and what the vocab is. I’ve only recently (ie last week) acquired the first grade text book for high school, so I have that at my disposal if I can know where they are in it. But NO LONGER will I just flail about in these eastern winds. Nope. She’s giving me lesson content, whether she likes it or not. She already told me this week that her Monday mornings are slow. She definitely has time to chuck the books over to my desk so I can skim through the current chapter.
Whelp, bell’s about to ring to start my day. Now that I got all this distraction out of the way, I can get down to business later and sort my middle school lessons for next week. Cheers, dear reader! (I mean, you must be at least a little bored too if you’re reading the off-hand, mostly irrelevant musings of a foreign English teacher in Korea…)
Journal of a trotamundos 