Another Day at School

So now we've started to get a little more comfortable with teaching everyday. Today I had summer intensive classes all day (I am teaching a month long summer class session where the smarter kids are signed up for extra classes in double time blocks...so hour and a half long classes). I am teaching nine and ten year olds the different types of ethics in a debate class. Phew. Today I taught some business ethics, and how companies have to fairly choose who deserves promotions and raises. We watch a scenario and go over it with discussion questions, write out vocabulary words and definitions and then I have the kids choose a side to argue and they give speeches. We will start actually forum (or ping pong) debates on Wednesday of next week. The children are VERY attentive and smart, to be honest these classes are stimulating and really enjoyable to teach. They make me think on my feet. Also, this program has never been done before so they have no worksheets or lesson plans for me, I have to make up my own work for the kids.


All the children are years ahead in their schooling compared to Americans. The pre-kinder kids can read at a first grade level. Nick has pre-kinder and kindergarten kids in the morning, they are some of the most adorable fun little children I have ever been around. Then in the afternoon we both get older kids. I just inherited four Tuesday/Thursday classes from our head teacher, so I will be teaching fourth graders Writing, Grammar, Vocabulary and Listening/Discussion class for the next few weeks until the new semester starts in September and we all get new schedules. I'm looking forward to it, but these classes are for fourth graders who have tested at a second grade English level, so they are actually very behind in the English lessons. Because of this they often are very shy to speak and do not have a lot of confidence when it comes to answering, sometimes it feels like pulling teeth to get the answers out of them. Classes are small (max is 12, most of my classes are 4-6 students at a time).

All of the children are very sweet and seem to like Nick and me a LOT. They draw us pictures all of the time :). Nick gets a lot of "I love you, Mr. B" pictures from the little girls. They are all very enamored with him haha. The children LOVE hearing that we are "to be married" (as they put it). The girls clap and love looking at the ring. The vice director, Sally, thinks that their reaction is very funny. She said that students love hearing about that sort of thing and she thinks it is great that they have opened up to us so easily.


I managed some photos of Nick and my work spaces also...we have a teacher's room where each American teacher gets a desk to do their work in away from the kid's prying eyes, haha. Nick's desk is the one with all the heart pictures, hahahaha. Nick and I got a Costco card (yup, Costco in Korea) for $30 yesterday evening and bought some snacks to keep at work also. We enjoy the work but 10 hour days can be exhausting. Today Nick did level testing all day, we are happy to be home and have a few hours to relax tonight. We had dinner with a few of the other American teachers, it's been nice making new friends.