daegu kwanchon elementary school - tucked neatly into the suburbs of daegu proper in a little town they call chilgok (the name chilgok means seven valleys, which comes from the seven peaks of nearby palgongsan). the school provides for around 700 students (if my math is right, which it probably isn't) from grades 1st through 6th. english education in the public school system starts at grade 3, which means i only see about 500 of the students. that seems like an absurd number now that i'm looking at it. 500 students each week. but i guess it does feel like it by the time end of day friday hits.
it's been two weeks since i first started teaching and i feel that maybe...maybe i'm starting to get the feel for it. i wouldn't go tossing around the words "pro" or "natural," but the words "failure" and "slouch" don't seem to apply either. teaching english in korea is based on a cooperative teaching method. this means that in every class i teach i work directly with a korean english teacher as well. the amount of control i get over the classroom varies greatly from teacher to teacher and class to class. i have 3 co-teachers in all: miss yun, miss park, and miss kim. miss yun, who teaches 3rd and 5th grades, is my head co-teacher, meaning she is responsible for my well-being, deals with my paperwork, and is more or less a surrogate parent to me. she's married and has a 3 year old son whose name i forget (sorry miss yun!). miss park is a year older than me and is responsible for the 6th grade. she's learning to play the drums and is apparently a really good "rock-style" singer, although i've yet to hear example of this. miss kim is two years older than me and teaches 4th grade students. she's a contract teacher so she splits her time between daegu kwanchon and nearby unam elementary school. her english is probably the best of the three having spent a year studying in canada.
4th and 6th grade english classroom. every classroom comes equipped with a sliding whiteboard that reveals a huge flatscreen tv that they play lessons from a cd that accompany their textbooks. i show a lot of ppt presentations on those screens.
co-teaching has its advantages and disadvantages both. when it works well it makes for a productive classroom - i can use english freely, students know what they are doing, and there are few hang-ups because the korean teacher can translate if need be. however it doesn't always work so fluidly. since i'm the first native english speaking teacher they've worked with, and this is the first time i've taught (anything really), nobody is entirely sure what my role in the classroom should be. sometimes it works out well and i'm involved in the entire lesson, but other times i sort of stand awkwardly to the side while the other teacher goes on for 15 minutes playing things off the cd. (the cd thing is kind of weird too. half of the class focuses on these cd activities - which involve listening to dialogue, repeating key words and phrases, watching video clips, etc. sometimes i wonder if i'm even needed when they have these tools at hand) i think a part of this is because we don't work together on the whole lesson plan. rather, they usually come to me at the end of the day and tell me to figure out an activity for the following days class. i think they also probably don't know how well i work in the classroom so they're trying to ease into it. and like i said, it's only been two weeks, so i'm not expecting everything to be perfect. these are just some initial impressions of my new occupation.
this was a table we set up for the lesson "do you want some more?" while miss yun was going over cd material, i was sitting in back at this table. one group at a time would come back and we would practice an authentic dining experience. i would offer them food, ask if they wanted a particular item, when they finished the snacks i would ask if they wanted more, etc. it was a good activity that i think utilized the whole native teacher aspect well. some students are really shy and its hard to get them to talk, even when addressed, but others get really into the dialogue and ask a lot of questions and try their best. miss yun wants to do more activities like this in the future which i couldn't agree with more. similarly, for my friday 4th grade class i had to come up with dance moves for a song on one of the teaching cd's. for half of the class i taught the song and dance moves and had the students practice singing and doing the movements. then the second half of the class they practiced a role play and i got to pick the top 3 performances. everyone had a lot of fun and i felt really involved in the class.
these are some 5th grade boys. i do not know their names yet. sorry guys.
these are some 6th grade boys.
and this a class of 6th graders. they were the only class that wanted to do a whole class picture. usually the girls were very against it. the kids, as maybe you can gather from the pictures, are all really funny and adorable. the younger ones will walk up to me and the hallway and give me a hug. the older ones prefer high-fives. the girls just wave and giggle and try to push each other into me.in addition to my normal classes, i teach 3 teacher classes each week. at first i was really nervous about teaching teachers. i thought they would come to class and cluck their tongues and shake their heads at what i called "teaching." turns out they're the most fun i have teaching all week. unlike my normal classes, where i don't do much planning, i plan the entire teachers class. this means i get a lot of freedom in what we do. thanks to some advice from miss yun, i've started off mostly with lessons and activities that focus on pronunciation. the teachers really let their hair down. they're all smiles and laughs and we have a good time.
so that's it two weeks in. maybe in another two weeks i'll be singing a different tune, but for now i'm enjoying the new challenges and responsibilities. next week is chuseok, meaning i have most the week off. a group of us are going up to seoraksan national park for some hiking, beaching and, i dont know, probably drinking, too.
0 comments:
Post a Comment