So we've finally reached the end of the semester. I still don't really understand the Korean school calendar. I tried researching it, and turns out Koreans go to school about 100 days more per year than Americans. However, I have found that some of these days appear to be both bizarre and utterly pointless. Take, for example, the past few days I've been back in school. The kids came back last Wednesday, Feb. 9th. However, the textbooks and final exams are all finished, so what did we do? Just random, busy work-type things. I went to my second school Thursday-Friday and taught about five classes (normally I have 12). Additionally, no one was able to tell me what the schedule was going to be like, so I was underprepared for one class and overprepared for another (i.e. they just didn't show and I had a lesson planned). I discussed this with my Korean teacher, and she said that they'll be changing this system next year because apparently no one knows why it's like this.
I went to both of my schools' graduations, Wednesday and Thursday. They were decently long (an hour and a half or so), and once we got past the accepting of diplomas I was kind of bored. It was cute to see them go up on stage to get their certificate because they had a picture of each kid with what they wanted to be when they grow up. Naturally it was in Korean, but during rehearsal the special ed teacher translated some for me. I now know that I had many future makeup artists, a soccer player, two comedians (boy and girl), a scientist, a doctor, and an interpreter in my class. There was also a slideshow of pictures going back to kindergarten or so, which was nice. But I lost interest during the (many) speeches that were made, seeing as how I could only pick out about three words per speech, and they were typically useless like, "and," "thank you," and "congratulations."
I made cards and stuffed the envelopes with candy for the kids. They were all in English, of course, and I don't imagine most of the kids would know the pre-written well wishes, but I wrote "Congratulations! Good luck next year!" on all of them, as well as a few more personal notes on the ones for the kids I knew better. My future interpreter, Sang-Deok, was my only student for two lessons every afternoon during my first winter camp, so I wrote him a note thanking him for all his hard work.
One of my girls at my second school gave me the rose she got for graduation. It was very sweet. I felt kind of bad taking it, but I don't want to reject stuff the kids give me because I don't want them to think I don't like it or whatever. I've noticed that the students are extremely giving when it comes to sharing things with their teachers. Anything they have, especially food, is almost always offered to me. I got several chocolate bars and some candy from my main school kids on Valentine's Day, as well as a Korean pancake with a fortune in it (Mr. Kim translated it as, "Take a sweet rest!" or something along those lines as Jinkyeong was only able to tell me, "Eat, eat! [the pancake]" and threw up her hands in frustration when she tried to read me the fortune).
I think the kids are becoming more comfortable with me. My second school fifth graders, my class with the biggest "personalities," are always trying to talk to me. I knew I was in trouble when I rocked up to school Thursday morning to find a crowd of fifth grade boys with snowballs in hand... I told them, "Don't even think about it!" But I definitely took a couple to the shoulder when I blocked my face. Then after graduation I was challenged to a few arm-wrestling competitions with two fifth grade boys and one girl... Yeah, I won. Decisively.
No comments:
Post a Comment