Weekly round up

Weekly round up

Hey everyone, here’s my weekly round up.

So I was sick on Monday, as in genuine sick at home sick. Not that I know any other type of sick; but I was worried that the teachers at school may have thought that I was not sick, but rather skiving off. So I deliberated taking the day off but in the end my not wanting to pass on the germs and genuine sick feeling won out.

Anyway it was one of those 24hour bugs where you make a miraculous recovery very quickly, so I was back at school on Tuesday.

School has been going very well for me of late. My lessons have been going well and I feel that I am achieving something in class. On Tuesday I helped the students at my rural school prepare for ‘show and tell’ which is taking place this coming Tuesday. I really enjoyed helping them with their pronunciation and correcting their grammar. I didn’t simply correct their speeches/talks that they were preparing, I kind of led them through the problems - you know made them puzzle out the solutions which I felt was helpful to them. I really felt like a proper teacher at the end of the day, rather than someone fumbling about in the class room.

My birthday lesson has been going very well, and it only took me half an hour to dream up - this is how it is meant to be. It’s so simple. First I go through the numbers 1 to 20 with the students, getting them to say ‘first, second, third’ etc. The students already know the language, so it’s more like a refresher which is really what I aim to do in class. I want to refresh and reinforce rather than teach new language.

After this I lead them through the language that I would like them to use. They have to say “That was your X/Y/Zth birthday” when looking at photographs of my birthdays. It’s a simple sentence but the students find it difficult to remember. If the students guess how old I was correctly they win a ticket, so the exercise is also competition which adds an element of excitement. The really cool thing is that as the pictures change every couple of minutes the students don’t get bored. I’m also pleased that as the weaker students hear the same sentence over and over they begin to pluck up the courage to have a bash themselves.

After this exercise I hold up a bag which contains my birthday presents and get the students to guess what gifts I was given. Since the students are warmed up from the previous activity they listen to my clues and make guesses.

The best thing about all of this is that I finally feel that I am engaging the more hyper students, I feel like I am channeling their energy.

The poetry competition has been a great success and lots of students have made submitted poems, + students have been visiting the blog that I created which is fantastic. Of course I am now going to have to mark the poetry and update the blog, but I really don’t mind since the pay off is that I am engaging the students. Of course the students aren’t just writing poetry out of a love for poetry, they want to win tickets for the draw.

The draw is sooo popular, everyone wants to win tickets. The students shake the box (containing the tickets that have already been entered) to mix up the tickets and examine it carefully to see if they can spot names on the tickets.

So I’m a happy but very busy teacher.

Next week Jess and I are going on an EPIK sponsored trip to the DMZ (demilitarized zone) between North and South Korea. The trip starts on Friday, so we get Friday off. Yay!

In terms of other trips our long train trip is slowly beginning to take shape. My friend Guy is set on joining us which I am thrilled about. I’m hoping Clint will join us as well so that we take up a full cabin on the train; but even if it is just Guy and us it will still be great. Clearly Guy doesn’t feel like a spare wheel with us which I would hate. Blech, I really don’t dig couples that make you feel like a spare wheel.

We hope to go to Japan in November. Friends have invited us to watch Sumo wrestling with them. We only intend going for a weekend, but it is going to be awesome.

And finally, last - but far from least - Jess had a piece published in the Korea Times. See: “New Songdo city - How eco-friendly is it?” She worked long and hard on the article, and deserved to have it published.

Stereotypes and food

Last Sunday was Clint’s birthday. So we joined him, and a number of his friends, for a bit a party in Seoul forest (really a large park). We left early as we did not want to risk missing the last bus home. I didn’t want to leave, I always enjoy seeing Clint and his friends, but I’m glad that we did since judging by the photos that have since seen the party went on well into the night.

Teaching with a hangover is no fun. I’ve only taught with a hangover once, it followed a night of drinking with Jessica’s teachers when we first arrived. I remember not wanting to drink as much as we did, but we were new and did not want to offend anyone. These days I simply say ‘no thanks’.

We got such looks from the Koreans as we partied it up in the park while families were on their day out. I felt a little guilty playing the ‘drunk indecent foreigner’ stereotype, but the truth is Koreans (mostly men) drink everywhere and anywhere. At least we didn’t harass anyone, I’ve often been harassed by groups of drunk Koreans. I know they mean well, but I am tired of drunk Koreans telling me they ‘love me’ and trying to get me to drink with them -- I’m also entitled to my space.

Autumn is growing colder here. I’m wearing two jerseys at present. The forests are looking beautiful, unfortunately though each time I see the forests I am reminded of the bitter cold to come. Autumn in Korea is a time of ‘dok’ (rice cake) and dried persimmons. I don’t like either. ‘Dok’ and ‘persimmons’ are the bane of my existence since I am offered them regularly. My polite refusals are often followed by questions about Korean food, and more specifically “What Korean food do you enjoy?”. I get the strong sense many people over here take my dislike of ‘dok’ and persimmons as a sign that I generally don’t enjoy Korean food, which is simply not true. The back and forth about ‘dok’, persimmons and Korean food drives me up the wall.

I enjoy Korean food, there are very few dishes that I don’t enjoy -- why can’t people accept that I can enjoy Korean food and still dislike specific dishes?? My irritation is only worsened by the fact that the teachers at my school have seen me eat, and complete eating, many different Korean meals. How can I break out of the stereotypical ‘foreigner that doesn’t enjoy Korean food’ mold?

This whole back and forth about Korean food reminds me of a meal from last term: Some teachers and myself had ordered Chinese takeaways for lunch. The meal that we ordered was spicy, as in ‘seriously mouth on fire spicy’. I must admit a struggled to eat it. My nose was running, my eyes were watering, I was sniffing.

My colleagues across from me were doing exactly the same, they were also struggling. Only according to them the food was clearly too hot for me, but not too hot for them.

How does that work? I ate the meal, finished it all, and yet it was too hot for me and not for them. I had the strong sense that on this occasion the teachers saw less of Julian managing to eat, and finish, a seriously spicy meal and more of a stereotypical foreigner that cannot manage spicy food.

Serious stereotypes about foreigners exist in Korea. They drive me up the wall, but serve as a valuable lesson to avoid indulging in stereotypical beliefs about others (which I am prone to do).

Motivation

I recently did a bit of free writing - you know, when you just sit and write with no aim and purpose in mind - anyway, I thought I would share a snippet of what I wrote:

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So I’m feeling unmotivated at the moment, on top of which I’m tired. I’m not sure whether I am tired because I’m unmotivated or unmotivated because I’m tired; or whether the two are related at all - although I suspect they are.

What happened? When I arrived back in Korea I felt motivated, I was going to work hard, improve my lessons and become a great teacher.

I guess reality poured cold water on these ideas. My reality is that under the conditions that I teach it can prove difficult to remain motivated.

Each lesson I pack thirty plus, often restless, students into my classroom. There’s little room to move once the class is seated, so the majority must remain in their seats for the duration of the lesson.

No matter where I pitch my lessons they are either too difficult or too easy for number of the students.

At this point I fee like I’m rediscovering how low some of the students are. Some of them are at foundation level, they require special attention which in a class room of thirty or more students is not possible. It’s an indictment on the Korean schooling system that these students are pushed from year to year of English education never having grasped the most basic elements of the language. I feel sorry for them, and wonder how they feel when I occasionally misidentify one of their number as a student that is actually keeping up in class.

I want to apologise when this happens. I want to explain that my intention is not to embarrass them. I want to tell them that I do my best to avoid inadvertently embarrassing them, but that it is hard to keep track of 700 boys English abilities when I only see them once every two weeks. I wish I could quietly pull these students aside and apologise but my Korean is too poor, and this is a failing on my part. I would like to ask my Korean colleague to translate, but I doubt they would understand my sentiment and my own pride would probably leave me feeling awkward and unsatisfied.

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So I have been a little unmotivated, but I do have some good news. Some of my higher level students have taken to the idea of writing for me which I am thrilled about. In the last week I have received a range of poems and short pieces.

The vast majority of my students also like the new reward system that I have implemented. The reward system is really simple: I have created two boxes, one for each of my schools, and the students can win 'tickets' in class, which they fill in with some basic information - their name, their class and the date - and then put into the box. At the end of the school year we are going to have a draw, and one student is going to win a voucher. I have also told them that there will be a small prize for the student with the most tickets in each class. I hope the novelty of this new reward system doesn't wear off. I'll hold an interim draw if the students’ interest begins to wane.

I enjoy teaching, it’s both fascinating and complex; and I can understand how people ‘fall into teaching’ and remain teachers for the rest of their lives, but teaching is not something I wish to do indefinitely. Teaching is an adventure for me, but it’s one that has an end in the relatively near future.

One of the challenges of teaching, for me at least, is to remain motivated. My experience, both from growing up and as teacher, is that adolescents, especially boys, can be difficult to motivate and keep interested. Combining adolescents and unmotivated teachers is a recipe for disaster, and not for the teacher - but rather for the students. I can thank a certain Afrikaans teacher who taught me in my final years of schooling for effectively killing my interest in the language. Only now am I beginning to take an interest in Afrikaans once again.

Despite my current apathy I at least recognise how important it is for teachers to remain motivated; and have so far not let my personal lack of motivation affect my classes. I put in as much enthusiasm as ever when teaching.

This is the box that I created for my second school. I had the students decorate the box.