Archive for the ‘2.4’ Category
Teacher’s Day
Monday, May 14th, 2012Today is Teacher’s Day, which means that unlike childrens’ day (where children don’t have to go to school) we go to school and do our thing as per usual. However, since I arrived this morning there have been random bursts of song coming from various classrooms, cakes produced out of thin air, and flowers arriving in the teacher’s office. Probably the cutest thing I’ve seen today was when a bunch of male third grade students came back into the second grade building to give their old homeroom teacher a present.
First period I taught 2.2, and they were very sad because they had bought their homeroom teacher a cake, but though he was very flattered he wanted them to eat and enjoy it and so wouldn’t touch any of it. They then asked me if I wanted some, and I tried to give them the same reasoning that their homeroom teacher gave them, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we finished class 10 minutes early and ate cake. Then fourth period I taught 2.4 who told me it was Teacher’s Day (but didn’t wish me a happy Teacher’s Day) and when I asked if they got something for their homeroom teacher they responded “no,” so it’s not all cuteness and cake over here.
Neither American nor Korean education is perfect, but in my opinion if there’s one thing that Korea does unequivocally better it’s acknowledging and respecting teachers. From my experience this is shown internally (how students and teachers interact, how the administration deals with teachers) and on a broader scale (in terms of salary and prestige being a teacher is a highly sought-after job).
So, to all my fellow teachers out there, happy Teachers Day!
Vocabulary
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011What do the following words (or phrases or names) have in common?
Nosedive
Counterfeiter
Fascism
Edgar Hillaire Degas
Philadelphia
Haptics
Intertia
Egoism
Euphemism
Knowledge
Saladin
Galaxy
Eucalyptus
Mosquito
Rhinoceros (rhino)
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Ministry of Employment and Labor
Planner
Euthanasia
Obsession
Mill “On Liberty”
Korean Red Ginseng
Nitrogen
Butcher
Gustav Klimt
Hypothesis
Rawls
Magna Carta
Miracle
and Superstition
They’re all words that my 2.4 class wrote down as a part of Bowl of Nouns (a game similar to taboo, but the students make the words).
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any of these words in Korean, and I only know some of them in ASL, a language I claim to be fluent in. With some notable exceptions (Ministry of Employment and Labor – taken from a poster on the wall) the students took these words either from their vocabulary lists, their textbooks, or their memories.
Monday
Sunday, June 19th, 2011It’s Monday. My feet are blistered from walking around Seoul this weekend. I’m drinking instant packet coffee-sugar. I think the first graders have a recorder test, because even just sitting in the teacher’s office far away from the homerooms I can hear strains of recorder floating through the windows, all conflicting with each other like some sort of gaggle of weird atonal plastic geese.
Mondays are weird. I only have two classes on Mondays and they’re 1st and 2nd period back-to-back. Today’s a giggly sort of day. In my first class (2.4, 2nd grade lower-level boys) the students had written on the board “Welcom Emily! Today let’s party!” I told them that, alas and alack, if only we could, but we had to study instead. However we could have an ENGLISH party. Crickets.
We studied “future tense” and I taught them how to make cootie-catchers (which I called fortune-tellers for the purpose of the lesson). I had the students write four sentences in English (today you will _____, tomorrow you will ____, next week and next month). It was super cute, because though my students honestly could not give a rat’s ass about English future tense, once they realized that we actually would be putting the sentences inside the fortune tellers, they worked their little butts off and finished their sentences!
In case you’ve never played with a fortune teller/cootie-catcher (sad, deprived little childhood) basically it’s a fun little origami thingamajig that tells your future. In Korea they call them 동 성 남 북 (North South East West) and instead of putting four colors on the outside flap they put the points of the compass. The students loved learning the American version, and then spent the rest of the class asking me how to spell certain colors so that they could do the fortune teller correctly [“TEACHER! HOW YOU SPELL PURPLE? P-u-r-p-l-e. AHHH thank you!], and without prompting went around to other students and told their fortunes entirely in English! I also had multiple boys call me over so that they could tell me my future. Apparently tomorrow I will accident, and next week I will die. Hmmm.
Also apparently one student is keeping a countdown of when I will leave. “Teacher, only 3 more classes yes?” “Yes I’m sorry” “Oh. Very sad.”
I had another class immediately afterwards, so I went over to 1.4 (1st grade co-ed intermediate, one of the two classes I’m doing my pen pal project with) a bit early because many of them like to chat before class. They didn’t see me come in so I snuck into the back where two boys were arm-wrestling and surrounded by a cheering mob. They got super excited and insisted on showing me their left-handed arm wrestling skills.
Creeper award of the day: one of my first grade advanced students bursts into 1.4’s homeroom right after the bell rings screaming
“teacher hiiiii!”
“Hi! How are you?”
“I’mfinethankyouandyou?”
“I’m also fine, thank you.”
He then, with absolutely no segue shouts out the name of my apartment complex and giggles
“uhhh how do you know that?” I then pretend to look freaked out, though I’m really not. Since there are so few foreigners in Yesan, almost everyone knows where I live (and I do mean everyone – the kids at my hapkido studio all know where I live too) because they’ve seen me walk in or out of my apartment complex.
“I am stalker.”
At least he’s honest?