Friday, June 6, 2008
Hello Everyone!!
Well not much is that new these days and I feel like I would be boring you if I wrote the same stuff over and over again. We have a three day weekend this weekend. We didn't work yesterday, Friday, so we are happy about that. We have already had three long weekends since we have been here. It's been really nice. It's also really hard to believe that we have been here for over a month already. We were thinking about it and realized how fast that first month really went. I hope the rest is just as good as the first.
Thursday classes were good. My 1-A class, as always, was a lot of fun. I have had some changes in that class recently. I have two new students, but I also lost one student as the school decided that she was too young to be attending this particular Hogwan. It was really sad because she was my favourite student. 1-B was difficult on Wednesday so I ended up assigning them homework and they just checked over their homework as a class for the whole Thursday session. In 2-A I have also gotten two new students. This has been a great help since the original two were so shy that I couldn't get them to talk at all. Max, one of the new students in that class, is a little rambunctious though, so I will have to figure out a way to help him channel that excess energy into what we are doing, as of right now, it is "a little" distracting to the other students. 2-B was great on Thursday, since we finished our textbook on Wednesday, we had a snack party and played games on Thursday. It was a very easy, but very loud, class.
I am a little frustrated with the textbook situation with that class though. We finished a book, which our school makes and it is called a dialogue book and we should be getting a new one, but the school decided that since the previous teacher went through the book really quickly with them, that I should redo the whole book again. This is like your typical textbook. It is just a bunch of random typed up dialogues that are completely incorrect in grammar and spelling and we need to teach them one dialogue per week. This is hard considering the dialogues are no more than 5 lines each. The students in my class have every dialogue memorized and they know all the grammar points (since they are basically the same in all of them) and all the vocab. I am going to have to figure something out. I am pretty sure the school only uses those textbooks because they make them on the computer and print them, so therefore they are free. It's really annoying and extremely difficult to teach from, especially the second time through.
3-A was difficult as per usual. The girls spent the whole class mocking Billy again. I just don't know what to do with them anymore. They are always whispering about him, so I say no whispering and then they just do it when I turn my back, which they know I can still hear them and I have to tell them again. They call him fat and stupid and they swear at him all the time. I try to explain how they shouldn't say those things because it hurts his feelings and they wouldn't like it if someone said those things about them, but that doesn't seem to work. It has gotten so bad with them picking on Billy that he has resorted to only coming once or twice a week. I don't blame him really, but I have no idea what else I can do. I have the administration speak with the girls and I give them homework when they do it, but still they continue. The newest rule in that class is that you cannot speak Korean if you cannot translate it into English for me to know what you said. I hate that it has come to that, but it has. Also, anytime the name Billy comes out of their mouth they have to tell me exactly what they said.
3-C and 4-A are good as well. I have 3-A only twice a week and I have 4-A only once. They are not too difficult. Well, 3-C is great, but 4-A is the class of teenagers who are forced to be there by their parents and they just sit there and watch the clock the whole time. Frustrating, but at least I am doing my job. We have to bribe that class a lot with either candy or a game.
So, yes, things are going well. We really miss our friends and family at this point. We have been thinking a lot about what we are going to do when we get home and where we are going to go and we are finally figuring stuff out, as long as it works out on that end. We will see what happens.
Kyle says that his classes are going well and that he misses everyone and wishes that he could be at home as well. We are excited that we will come back with no debt though and that is what is keeping us going. Also, we are excited for about 6 more prov people who are heading out this way over the next two months!!!
1 comments:
In regards to the girls picking on the one kid, Billy, I'd show no mercy. Are you speaking Korean well enough to lecture them? What punishments can you hand out? Would you get in trouble for simply yelling at them very loudly that they're being bad?
Haha, heck I might even lie to them, tell them you're going to fail them if they continue to pick on him? Then again this is why I don't teach english. Is there something wrong about Billy aside from the fact that he might be bigger?
Heck you could even bring in a photo of me, and be like this is my friend David, who's one of the most loveable people you'll ever meet. He was picked on by people like you all his life, and when he got to college he was friends with almost everyone, and by that time anyone who made fun of him for things like that, nobody liked them. So I'll give you a warning, if you keep picking on Billy I promise you when you all grow up, nobody's going to look back on you and think anything nice. Nobody will like you.
I mean, I don't know how you'd translate that into Korean or something like that. But just like let them know, that when they grow up, they're going to feel bad about what they did in your class. They're going to know that they were bad people, and if they don't change they'll be bad people for the rest of their life. Again, not sure how you'd translate that for Korean kids. Not sure if there's any cultural things.
But I'd try and not tell them that it hurts his feelings, you probably end up embarrassing him when you say that. Let them know that people don't like people who pick on other people.
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