Shake It Outby: the real ginger on: November 7, 2008 4:48pm
I know I haven't updated in a few weeks. On top of going to America for my siser's wedding two weeks ago, my computer has also attracted a multitude of nasty viruses in the last month. Uploading programs either don't work or work incredibly slowly, IE won't load (but Firefox will), AIM doesn't work, etc. Basically, my computer has become hellish to use and I've kind of started avoiding it. I would love to just wipe my whole thing down and start from scratch, but I don't have a copy of Windows and the ones here are in Korean (unless I really want to shell out the crazy cash for the English version).
Excuses aside, I haven't really done anything super interesting. I've just been going through my teaching routines and hanging out with friends on the weekends. In terms of work, my JA students performed in the district's English Club Festival yesterday. My co-teachers gave me about two weeks notice to put together a short piece, telling me it could be a play, speech, or song. When I told the nine girls in my after school class about it, they immediately groaned and then all agreed that a song would be the lesser of the three evils. I picked "Breakaway" for them to sing, since it's neither too fast nor too slow, and it's message is age-appropriate. Since we only had four classes in which to practice, I was pretty apprehensive at first. It wasn't as if I got to pick who sang and who didn't--good or bad, they would be performing with the group. Even though I'm sometimes shy singing in front of people other than my friends, I quickly got over that issue and tried to help them with the notes. By the third class, it was apparent that they could sing the main melody just fine, so I asked if they wanted to try two-part harmony, and they jumped on the idea. So we had three altos and six sopranos. I was pretty stoked that they didn't sound terrible.
During our last rehearsal on Wednesday, with only thirty minutes to go before I was supposed to let them go, the Vice Principal, secretary, and two other co-teachers came in to watch them perform. Since the students would be "representing" our school, the VP wanted to make sure it was acceptable. He made them sing it about five times straight and then stopped them. He and the others immediately started saying that they needed to do hand movements and all other sorts of cheesy crap. I mean, you guys know the lyrics to "Breakaway"--it's pretty sappy on its own. Can you imagine the hand movements they wanted to add for parts like "I'll spread my wings and I'll fly away?" Yeah. It was cringe-worthy. Meanwhile, the girls were looking past the other adults' shoulders with these pleading looks. Finally, when there was only fifteen minutes left to go, I had to firmly tell the visitors to leave. I was definitely annoyed and I'm pretty sure that came across. "Well, if you've given me only fifteen minutes of rehearsal left to create a choreography and teach it, you really need to leave." As soon as they left, the girls collapsed into complaints. I knew that they didn't want to do the childish movements and I definitely didn't want to teach them. But we quickly formed some basic movements and called it a day.
On Friday, the JA, a co-teacher, and I left our school a 9 am to go to the festival, which was being held at a school in Yeouido. The festival didn't even start until 2, but the organizers wanted all the schools there early in the morning to practice on stage. When it was our turn to practice, the organizers pushed the girls into using the mics, thus eliminating any of the "choreography" we had arranged. They were all pretty relieved. Even though they just had simple performance to do, the elementary schools were insane. As my co-teacher pointed out, "the elementary school teachers are very competitive with each other." I asked about middle school teachers, to which she smiled and said, "we don't really care." Some of the elementary schools had full animal costumes, face paint, back drops, sets, etc...all for like, a 7-minute performance. The teachers came across as the biggest stage moms--squawking at the kids and being pretty bitchy to each other. Meanwhile, I chilled with my students in the back and on the playground. We started joking that one of the girls should grab the mic at the end of our performance and shout, "I SAY "MOON", YOU SAY "SEONG!" MOON! SEONG! MOON! SEONG!" and then go "peeeeace out." They all have this special handshake now, which they all exchanged with gusto when they were waiting to go on stage.
Their performance went well. A few of the kids were mildly upset that we didn't win a prize, but with 26 schools represented and the fanatical amount of work that went into some of the performances, I wasn't disappointed or surprised. One of the girls kept apologizing to me on the bus ride back. A few of them said that, if only they'd practiced more, they could have won a prize. But I kept pointing out that they are really, really busy students outside of school and that they wouldn't have had time. Besides, I made sure to repeatedly tell them with utter sincerity that I thought they did fantastic and that I really didn't care about prizes. By the time we all got to dinner, the students were so excited to get free food from a teacher that the festival seemed pretty much forgotten. My co-teacher treated all of us to Chinese at this really nice restaurant close to Sillim station.
Basically, I had a great time with my students yesterday. Honestly, I'd rather go to dinner with them than go to dinner with the faculty any day. They are eager to speak English and can be really clever. When I'm at school dinners, I constantly feel a little anxious about doing something wrong or not showing enough respect to certain teachers. I hate feeling on edge at social functions.
In other school news, I finally got to create a fun lesson for my 3rd years. For the last month and a half, I've just had to do book lessons with them...which are insufferably boring. But since their exams are next week and I already finished the lessons, I got the green light to a "fun" activity with them. One of my co-workers suggested a Powerpoint presentation on Thanksgiving, but honestly...Thanksgiving is even a boring holiday for American kids to study. Instead, I leafed through their latest book lesson called "Physical and Mental Differences" and got a fun idea. So on Thursday (my lessons start new on Thursdays rather than Mondays), I divided the class into four teams--2 girls teams and 2 boys teams. The first thing we did was go over what "physical strength" and "mental strength" were. Then, I explained the first game, which was under the "mental" category. They all had about 30 seconds to look at a collage of clothing photos that I put up on the projector. After 30 seconds, I took away the picture and the teams had to write down as many items as they could remember. They only got points if they gave the color and the item. For some reason, the kids LOVED this game and even the bad classes were silent and wide-eyed during the 30 second viewing period. We did 3 pictures and the team with the most answers got one point each.
After, we did the physical part. To make the class more lively, I created a dialogue for arm-wrestling that went something like this: A: I bet I'm stronger than you. B: No way. I'm SO much stronger than you. A: Alright. Let's settle this right now. B: Okay. Let's go. I put a desk in the center of the class and had them come up in pairs, recite the dialogue, then arm-wrestle. The students got huge kicks out of seeing shy girls say the dialogue ("Let...Let us...settle...settle this...RIGHT NOW!") and the competitions were hysterical and unpredictable. One of my best students confidently raised his hand to go for his team, and while he's not small, he's definitely not a big, brawny student. He went against one of my Hagrid-sized students and beat the kid within five seconds. The classroom exploded in cheers and shouts. He smiled, stood up, and went back to his seat looking content. I'll try to take some pictures and videos next week in class--forgot to bring my camera to class last week.
Alright, here's the video of "Breakaway" my students: And now, it's picture time!
For Halloween, I just wore a skeleton t-shirt with cat ears in my classes (I occasionally forgot to take off the ears between classes, earning me some giggles from other teachers in the hallways). When the students said, "Oh, you're a cat!" I had to correct them, "No...I'm a *dead* cat" and point to the skeleton shirt. Anyway, these are pictures my co-teacher, Sunny, took of me when working with 7th period on Friday. They had a Halloween review worksheet.
This is one of the "promo" pictures my co-teacher had to take for the English festival. At the festival, these pictures came up on the projection screen between the performances. I was kind of embarrassed because...why did *I* need to be in these pictures??
On the subway, heading to Yeoinaru.
Goofing off on the playground...
My 4-legged, 4-armed student.
I'm posing, she's hiding.
These two were grabbing at each other's hair all day. On the bus, they were grabbing fistfuls of their hair to stay upright. -_-;
Rehearsal space. This school was REALLY nice. A lot of schools don't have auditoriums like this.
Me and a student. She's so tall that she's bending down so that she seems shorter.
Practicing their harmony.
Our group picture after the festival. You can see Building 63 in the background. This school has such a sweet location.
This title is Shake It Out by Tilly and the Wall
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Comments |
ooooooh~ that "mental and physical differences" lesson sounds really fun.
by: kennesu
Nov 24, 2008 5:58pm
hi ginger,
I've been a reader of your blog for quite a while and I should have posted earlier to thank you for your informative posts on teaching in Korea, but I procrastinated ~_~.. Sorry about that but better late than never, I guess. So, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, especially on SMOE and the interview process. You definitely helped me choose between the pubic and private system and I haven't regretted it once^^
I can definitely relate to the teacher-friend confusion and having people, especially parents, do a double take when they find out I'm a teacher. :) But, I enjoy reading all your posts in general because they are so well written and the pictures are always beautiful.
The Breakaway video and pictures are adorable. I think your girls did a great job, especially since they are just two years older than the sixth graders that I am teaching. And most of my girls are either just painfully shy or extremely quiet when it comes to English classes or just having to stand out. We just had a school concert recently and the sixth graders were performing a dance to Lee Hyori's You Go Girl but they were so shy on stage, everyone was barely moving!
Anyway, I hope your computer problems get fixed and you can post more often. Happy (almost) weekend^^
by: eunjoo
Nov 12, 2008 10:00pm
hi ginger!
I came across your blog while I was looking through the forums. I'm soo excited I found your blog because I just got hired with SMOE and my start date is March 1, 2009! I'm still in the process of gathering my documents together to send off to my recruiter. It's such a tedious process.
Your posts are so informative and fun to read. Thanks for the wonderful pictures and insight on teaching in Korea. How much longer are you going to teach in Korea?
Maybe we'll run into each other someday once I get to Korea =)
by: sally.h
Nov 12, 2008 1:04am
kipling: The girls are amazing. Honestly, I know my teaching experience would be different if I didn't have those students twice a week in my extra class. It's a breath of fresh air. I'm especially grateful for them in moments like this. I just got out of my first period class, where I had asked, "Are there words here you do not know?" Silence. I tried again. Silence. Finally, I asked, "What is a word?" Wrote it on the board. Silence. I got really angry. It's like...I don't expect miracles out of my 7th graders, but geez...if *I* know the Korean word for "word" and I have really random studying habits (AND I've only studied for the past year), then how the f*ck do these kids--who have been taking English for 4 years now--not know the word "word"????? It makes me pretty upset.
A lot of the bad experiences are a mixture of bad luck, the bloggers' failure to research/read the contract clearly, greedy bosses/inept companies, and bloggers' ignorance. Some people come here expecting things to be exactly the same as back home, so you get a lot of, "This country is so backwards!!!! WHY don't they have a Starbucks on every corner?!?!?!?!" kinds of people. Then you have the ones who had great intentions but got caught in a really crappy, seedy work environment. You also have those who are idiots and come here without checking all their facts or actually reading their contracts.
skyscope: I'm not a "cheesy" type of teacher who loves to put on a huge show...I'm more a low-key kind of performance person.
It can be kind of strange to draw the line between "teacher" and "friend", especially in the Korean public school environment. You see a lot of teachers goofing around with the kids--playing soccer with them after school, exchanging cell phone numbers, and even holding hands (a lot of the female teachers will hold hands with the female students while walking to/from class). It's like...I don't want them to think I'm their best buddy, but I want them to feel like they can come to me if they have a problem or want to chat. It's even more blurred, since I can actually converse with them, but I can't converse with 90% of my co-workers. I just say, "hello" and "bye" to them every day. But with my advanced students, I can carry on long conversations. Some of them even have siblings that are my age or even older. So yeah...it's definitely kind of weird sometimes.
ttlsel: Thanks for stopping by and commenting! Glad I could help. If you're getting a degree in education, that's going to be some definite help. I studied Literature, so...coming to Korea to teach was like a whole new world for me.
by: the real ginger
Nov 11, 2008 5:06pm
I stumbled across your blog, and it's amazing! It's been especially
helpful with all the details of your teaching experience in Korea, I've
been contemplating for some time whether I should teach overseas, and
your blog has definitely made me want to try it out!(I'm currently
studying for a degree in primary education, but teaching english to
high schoolers sounds fun). So this is just my post saying I appreciate
all the time and effort you spend on your blog! Thanks and I hope you
keep blogging =)
by: ttlsel
Nov 11, 2008 1:54am
Oh gosh, I can remember having to do the cheesy hand movements thing in school performances too. There was also this awful scarf-waving routine when we sang Edelweiss for our 'Sound of Music' musical in primary school, lol. Luckily your girls escaped it.
I love hearing about your teaching ideas! I really loved doing that sort of thing in language class, it really made it so much more enjoyable. You would never have the opportunity to do that sort of thing in Maths.
Your students are adorable; it looks like it would be hard to maintain the boundary between 'students' and 'friends'.
by: skyscope
Nov 11, 2008 1:52am
From these photos, it looks like anyone can have a great time with these girls. That arm-wrestling story was very cute too.
I was actually looking through some ESL teaching websites and ran into some awful stories, making me terrified of even thinking about studying abroad in Asia, specifically Korea, since my uni's got a deal with one in Busan. But then I read your blog and think that those folks just must be on some extreme badluck. *shudders* Meh... still not so sure.
by: kipling
Nov 10, 2008 1:59pm
lovecubedlee: She is very trendy! She definitely stands out with her boyish haircut and her punkish style.
You know, I never wanted to be a teacher, either. It never crossed my mind, and I know that I could never teach in my home country. But being an ESL teacher is quite different, even though there are some things that are the same. So yeah, I am really happy that I did this...but I could never be a teacher for the rest of my life. What do you mean by "higher level", though? Do you mean the pay scale? Even though you will start with the level that it says you are on the website/contract, most of us at middle/high schools teach after school classes, which can adds about an extra $600-800 a month to our regular pay scale.
If you come...I'd bring one bag with all your clothes/toiletries/shoes, and another empty suitcase. That way, you don't have to scrimp on what you bring and you can still bring lots home.
by: the real ginger
Nov 09, 2008 10:03pm
haha that girl with the puffy vest & hightops is super trendyyyy
they seem like such sweet girls.. i always hear nasty things about korean schoolchildren who like..rip each other apart and even though maybe that does happen, im sure its an extreme generalization
ahh originally i just enjoyed reading your blogs because it was interesting to hear about the culture...but now i'm considering applying for SMOE. i never thought about teaching because i don't plan on doing anything around it, but now i want to... i mean, english is my first (and err...to some extent only >.<) language and it's one of my strongest subjects but i'm not majoring in it (or teaching for that matter)...on the website, the most basic job doesn't require teaching experience or english majors but i'd rather be in a higher level (??) and do something more worthwhile..i dunnooo. we'll see. im planning on studying abroad though..definitely a completely different experience. but at least i'd get the expereince.
AH so many cute clothesss in korea. do you think..if i go...i should not bring many things..and just...go crazy and buy all the cheap/cute clothes?
anywayy..glad to hear you got back to sk safely! hope to read more of your posts in the future =]
by: lovecubedlee
Nov 09, 2008 4:48pm
chunsahpyo: It was really difficult to come up with lessons at first, since there are so many kids in each class and they all have varying levels. I didn't have the timing of the activities down yet (things I thought would take only 10 minutes would take the whole period--others that I thought would be difficult were finished in 15), which was a big thing. I definitely started off on the wrong foot,
Oh haha, my co-teacher who took the pictures said, "OK, SEEEXXXXYYYY POSE!!!" The girl beside me was the only one who chose to do it. The rest of us were like "um....how bout...no."
dalki: Yeah. -_-; When I run into students with their parents out in the city, the parents always gape for a moment. Dean and I were in a Coldstone that was right next to this big intersection, when about five of my students walked by their their mother. I waved and they waved back. I guess one of them told their mom that I was their teacher, because the mom proceeded to double back and just stare--open mouthed--through the glass window RIGHT IN MY FACE for a good five seconds. Finally, I smiled awkwardly and bowed, to which she quickly bowed and ran away.
by: the real ginger
Nov 08, 2008 10:41pm
you really blend in with the students. people could totally mistake you as a mature middle-schooler.
by: dalki
Nov 08, 2008 9:07pm
i thought you were one of your students when i saw that first picture of you with your kitty ears! i love reading about your teaching experiences. i can't wait until i apply for SMOE as well (august feels so far away). you come up with very creative ideas for teaching! i hope i come up with ideas like that if i go teach in korea. also, that student next to you hiking up her skirt in the "promo" picture is too cute.
by: chunsahpyo
Nov 08, 2008 6:13pm