A Real Gem of a Story

Today was Lunar New Year and most stores around the city were closed.  It's day 2 of my 3 day vacation (5 days if you count the weekend...and I think I will) and Kim (another one of the English teachers at my school) and I, being two of the newest teachers, did not leave town.  We decided today to visit one of Seoul's many palaces.  It was not like visiting a castle in Europe in that we never did go inside.  Luckily, it wasn't as cold as it was last week.  It was about 35 degrees today.  Anyways, the palace was beautiful, and very spread out.  We took quite a hike touring it.  Our feet were definitely angry at us by the time we hit the subway back home.  Here are some pictures!

As you can see, I was fairly bundled up!  But mostly what I wanted to share with you today was a story that one of my students wrote on the first day of the new school year, which was Tuesday (don't ask me why they begin the new year the day before the holiday!).  On Tuesday the kindergarteners didn't have Music or Science, so I had no classes come to me in the morning.  Instead I worked with Jess, the current Music/Science teacher, in making lesson plans for the next couple of weeks.  I was going to have kids come in for afternoon classes but I hadn't yet been given the textbooks I'd be using for them, nor had it really been explained to me what kids were actually coming in...their ages, levels, anything.  Let's just say that if you're not a go-with-the-flow type of person, don't come teach in Korea.  They tend to be last minute about a lot of things, and then they change their minds a lot too.  Being flexible is key.  Luckily, that's not really a problem for me.

Anyways, at 4:20 my afternoon class began.  Tuesdays and Thursdays I will start afternoon class at 4:20 and will finish teaching at 7:20pm.  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I will have a different set of kids and that starts at 3:00 and ends at 5:50.  Some people have the reverse of that schedule.  I'm glad I only work late 2 days and not on Friday.  I got lucky.  Keep in mind I begin my day at 9:50am and teach kindergarten classes until 2:30, with an hour lunch.  It's a long day, but I get a lot more breaks than I did back home.

My class began with 2 boys, probably around 11 years old.  I think I will have 1 or 2 more kids after the break.  A lot of the kids are on break from Korean school so they are on vacation.  Having just been given their books, I went through the beginning pages with them.  I wanted to see how much English they knew.  See, some kids start going to English school in kindergarten.  This, however, was my ESL class, meaning they started later than that.  One boy in the class only started a year ago.  The other couldn't remember when he started but my guess is it was a couple of years ago.  For having only studied a year or two of English, theirs was pretty darn good.  One boy had an Korean-English dictionary to help him out.  The kids are not allowed to converse with each other in Korean at school but it is okay for them to use Korean to help each other figure out what a word is.  Mostly, though, we used the white board.  When one of the boys didn't know a word and couldn't sufficiently describe it in English, he would just draw a picture on the white board.  It worked out very well.  I would teach them the word and spell it for them too.  One thing I had the boys do was to write me a story--about anything.  It was my way of both assessing their level of English, as well as killing some time without a prior lesson plan!  Here is one boy's story he wrote for me, word for word.  I'm going to keep the spelling the same too.  Keep in mind he's only studied English a couple of years or so.  I taught him "drain," "rollercoaster," "upside down," and "loop-de-loop."

"The man walk the road, but he falls down the drain, but rollercoaster in the drain.  He take rollercoaster. Rollercoaster is up and up and up down Ooooooh Noooo! He don't sit belt.  He is fall down.  But he fall down in the rollercoaster.  So he do sit belt.  Rollercoaster upside down.  So hands are down.  But under is fire so he hands up, but rollercoaster is down and loop-de-loop and finishe.  So man think don't give money and take rollercoaster."

I don't know about you...but this is like, the greatest thing I've ever read somehow!  I think this teaching thing is gonna be fun, after all!  The kids will keep it interesting...that I'm sure of!