Sweet Potato Cake??

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Teaching went well yesterday. It was my long day. I started at 3:30pm with my favourite class, 1-A, with the cutest little girl. Her name is Yuna. When we first started she barely knew the alphabet. Now she only struggles with a couple letters. She used to just repeat everything that I said, so when I would say "Hello, my name is Amy" and try and get her to say "Hello, my name is Yuna" she would just keep saying "Hello, my name is Amy". It was really cute. Now she knows and say hello and good-bye to me whenever she sees me. I thought the beginner class would be the one that would take the longest and it may be the one I have the most trouble planning for, but I love that class.

My next class was 1-B, just one level above the previous class. I have a brother and sister in this class and they are always disruptive. Yesterday they were colouring on each other, tearing up worksheets, throwing things, hitting each other, screaming, running around, knocking down chairs, etc. Today, if they do the same thing I will make them sit apart because when they get like this they make everyone else act up. They also never pay attention to anything that I say, so I am always choosing them for readings to make sure that they are listening.

Break time, if only for 10 minutes, was much needed at this point. I ran away to the teacher's lounge and just sat with the door shut and had a cookie and a juice box!

2-A is a class of just two people. Angela, who is too shy to speak and Jason, who all the other teacher's do not like his English name because it reminds them of Friday the 13th and the serial killer. They would have preferred the name Harry. For some reason, I just could not bring myself to call this kid Harry. That class drags on a little bit, but it isn't bad once they start participating.

2-B was loud yesterday, but I had a lot of fun with them. In this class I have 9 students; Gloria (the very loud girl who is always waving hi right in my face), Rora, Julia, Cindy (very shy girl, but very sweet), Sarah, Louis, John, David, and Tom. The boys in this class are bad too. They are always mocking me. Whenever I say "Okay!! Everybody listening!!" they say it back in a mocking tone. I guess this isn't too far from normal. I know I have it a lot easier than the female teachers at Kyle's school. They get called fat and ugly all the time. I just cannot imagine this happening at home. We played a really fun vocabulary game in this class and the boys were winning 8-2 but then the girls had a huge comeback and ended up winning the whole thing. It was really fun to watch.

Another break... very much needed. I made sure to have a coffee.

3-A was my next class, 3 students; Billy, Nick, Hillary, Hannah, Helen. The girls in this class are very talkative and all they want to talk about is their favourite boy band, Korea's infamous Big Bang! I came into class one day and they had posters of Big Bang posted all around my classroom. Whenever I need to get their attention I just say "Big Bang" and they are quiet waiting to hear what I have to say about them. The boys are very quiet, but I think that is mostly because the girls do not give them a chance to talk and when they do talk the girls make fun of them. I am trying to get this teasing to stop, but it is proving very difficult. When I talk to John, he says that similar things are always happening in his classes too with his students. He is always counting down every single day!!

3-B is a fun class. The boys again are difficult and always try and make the girls laugh. A couple of the students have crushes on each other, so it makes for some interesting times in the classroom when I pair people together. Yesterday we read a dialogue in the text book and then did some class discussion questions. I didn't really feel like going on in the text book, so we just talked and had class discussion on many things for the whole 40 minutes. That is fine though because it is a conversation class and everyone who spoke had to give their input in English.

Then I was a given a cake by one of my student's parents because today is Teacher's Day. Supposedly we will get a bunch of stuff today. I was so excited to get the cake because it was my long night, so we shared it in the teacher's lounge. As if it wasn't bad enough to try and eat cake with chopsticks when you are starving, but then when I finally got a bite of the cake, it was a sweet potato cake. Ew!! I then pretended I was full and made the other teachers eat it all.

My last class was very long... I only teach this class 4-A once a week, on Wednesdays, and it was definitely a long class. This is the class where the students do not want to be there and they are only there because their parents literally pushed them through the school doors and watched them walk into their classroom. They are so quiet so I just make them read everything and write everything in the textbook that it says to do. So hard to get them to participate when the boy sits there hitting his head on the table and writing as lightly as possible in his book so you cannot see what he is writing, but he is at least getting the work done and the girls just look at the clock and their watches and have friends yelling from outside the window to them.

I was happy to get home last night. I had some rice and noodles and an ice cream. Watched Medium and went to bed. Woke up around 9:45am. I think I am finally over my jetlag. YAY!!

Tonight, we are going to watch Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at the theatre. They play it in English with Korean subtitles, like all English TV here, so I have become accustomed to it.

I need to go prepare for tonight and eat something. Ciao for now.