It's getting personal

So I've been at my new schedule for two weeks, and let me just say I am busy, busy, busy, especially compared to how things used to be. Long story short (and trust me, it's a loooong story involving much frustration), the extra third grade class was cancelled, so I'm steady on with 33 hours a week. When I initially signed my contract to work in Korea, I didn't understand how I could work only 30 hours a week - this sounded like quite a deal to me. However, after teaching for almost seven months, I realize how much 30 hours a week teaching is. Teaching itself isn't the hard part, though it's certainly not easy to simultaneously control, entertain, and educate a roomful of faux-jaded 13-year-olds, it's the planning that gets you. Good lessons don't materialize out of thin air, especially my after-school classes. I find curriculum classes to be much easier because you have a book you follow that comes complete with visuals, CDs, exercises, and games, whereas my after-school classes are just whatever I decide is worthwhile to teach - anything ranging from phonics to songs to verb charts to red light, green light if the little ones are being good. I have to think up a topic, then try and somehow complete the trifecta of fun, educational, and useful.

It's definitely getting easier as time goes on, though. I'm learning more and more what works and what doesn't, I have lesson plans from last semester that I can fall back on, and my new main school coteacher is much more strict with the students, so I don't spend as much time (fruitlessly) trying to discipline them. She also speaks quite a lot of English and is very intent on increasing the students' English levels. We have eight classes on Monday and Tuesday, so four in the morning and four in the afternoon. A lot of my in-between class time is used checking students' homework (my coteacher assigns noisy students English dialogues they have to write), or more often than not class runs over into the 10 minute break time. Sometimes I don't even have time to run to the bathroom! Honestly though, I really am taking more pride in my work - I feel like a real teacher, and I'm pleased to see the students doing what they're supposed to. The longer I'm at my schools the more connected I feel to my students, and especially my main school students, the troublemaker school. My coteacher confirmed that lots of my students don't have parents, and most are very poor. I kind of figured this because the town I teach in is mostly a farming town that looks pretty rundown. However, it hit me pretty hard today. I had typed up listen and repeat dialogues for the students to see on the projector, and several complained they couldn't see it. Later my coteacher told me she asked the kids why not, and one of my fourth-grade boys said that he had bad eyesight, so she asked why don't his parents take him to the eye doctor, and he said they have no time because they have to work so much. How sad is that? A little boy's parents don't even have time to take him to get an eye exam because they have to work so much. One of my sixth grade girls apparently cursed at my coteacher because my coteacher assigned her homework for not paying attention in class, and my coteacher said she spoke to the girl's homeroom teacher, who told my coteacher that this girl has problems at home, namely an alcoholic father. Really makes me re-think my own problems.

Now that I can talk more with my coteacher, I'm learning more and more disheartening news about my students' education levels. In my remedial classes, the sixth grade homeroom teacher sent me six students who failed their beginning of the year English exam. My coteacher said the kids need a 40 out of 100 to pass and get into middle school. I have four sixth graders who only got 40s, so they got sent to my remedial class as well. This means I'm now up to 14 students, which is too many for this kind of class, so I'll have to speak to my coteacher about it. I feel bad because I don't want to kick out my students who really want to learn more, but I need to devote my time to those kids who really need it to pass their test. In my remedial class today, I learned that five of my sixth graders don't remember the alphabet. I was really perplexed by this as a few of them weren't actually remedial students; in fact, they can read! How do you not know the alphabet but can read? I'm so baffled by this.

Earthquake

Last Friday was the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan. I don't know too much about the nuclear reactor problems and how serious they might be, but I just wanted to say that even though South Korea is incredibly close to Japan, it hasn't been directly affected by the quake. Personally, I live on the west side of Korea, so anything that would come to Korea from Japan would have to cross the entire country before it could get to me (as Japan is east of Korea). Also the earthquake was on the northeast side of Japan, so it was on the wrong side as far as affecting Korea. Obviously there could be far-reaching effects when it comes to the nuclear reactor, but I don't know anything more about it. For now everything is fine. Please keep Japan in your prayers.

Turns out I'm a karaoke natural

We all have our callings in life, and I think I've found mine - professional karaoke-er. Not singer, mind you - I'm a terrible singer. HOWEVER. Fortunately for me, the Korean karaoke machine doesn't bother with silly things like "talent." Instead, I think it judges you on a combination of 1) Volume 2) Enthusiasm 3) Lyric knowledge. Luckily, I happen to excel at all three categories! Suffice it to say, as one of my Buyeo friends recently said, I'm basically the queen of the noraebang (karaoke). I rack up the hundos like it's my job. I went to the noraebang last night and last week, and I'm just saying that I got 100 on Destiny Child's Survivor, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rihanna's Umbrella, and a Kpop song (my Korean friend Boyoung did the Korean parts and I filled in on the English parts). Anyway, the noraebang is tremendously fun.

Recently my English friend Celina here in Buyeo has been pretty homesick, especially for all these English things I'm not familiar with. Her dad also had to go into the hospital the other week, so it's been a tough time for her. I decided in order to cheer her up I would try my hand at making an English dessert - banoffee pie. Apparently it's a banana-toffee pie that doesn't require an oven, so that was all I needed to hear. I enlisted the help of another Brit, my friend Chris, who claimed to make a mean banoffee pie. We schemed to go to Costco (two weeks ago) to pick up the ingredients: sugar, cookies, butter, cream, and sweetened condensed milk. Alas, Koreans don't really do sweetened condensed milk, and I thought the plan would come to naught. Luckily, an American friend of mine told me that you can get sweetened condensed milk at a special market in Daejeon. Chris goes to Daejeon fairly often, so he volunteered to stop by this market and try to find milk. He was successful, so this weekend he came to Buyeo for Operation: Banoffee Pie. We were slightly out of our depth with this because unsurprisingly, it's pretty hard to make things when your only cooking tools are a wok, frying pan, chopsticks, spatula, and a subpar can opener. But it was okay - REAL cooks don't need measuring cups! After some guesstimation, we melted butter then mixed with with crushed cookies for the base. Then we melted more butter, poured in some sugar, stir stir stir, then add the sweetened condensed milk and stirred some more. We sliced bananas to put in the pie then poured the toffee into the prepared crusts and let it sit.

Then came the real challenge: whisking cream sans whisk. Instead, we used forks to whip the cream. After awhile Chris got the idea to get two forks and rub them between our palms to mimic an electric mixer. Let's just say that if either of us are ever to be stranded on a desert island and need to rub sticks together to create a fire, we've got loads of practice now. After a full hour (no joke) of whisking, we had to call it quits as we were supposed to meet some people "out on the town" of Buyeo (see: noraebang, above). We Tupperwared the cream for Round 2 at a later time.

The next day I went to the dollar store and bought a whisk, and we actually managed to create "soft peaks" in the cream, which was a sign that it was finally ready. I told Chris next time we were going to go American-style and just get some Kool-Whip or something. ("But it's an English dessert! I don't even know what Kool-Whip is!")

We made a pie for Celina and then we had enough left over for four other little pies, so naturally we ate one. It was really good! It was ridiculously sugary though. Sadly, Celina is out of town this weekend and won't be back until late today, so I have to postpone giving her the pie until tomorrow. I think she's going to be really pleased though!

Boyoung, Jake, Chris, Carl, Misa - this is us in Seoul for a going-away party. There's too many people leaving! The new school year means that a lot of people's contracts are finishing so there's been a lot of changes.

My coteacher, his wife, and Kevin. I finally took them out in Buyeo last Friday. That toxic-looking green stuff is kiwi soju cocktails.

Noraebang last night. This is us singing Backstreet Boys' "Backstreet's Back (All Right)." Sadly I think this performance only garnered like a 93 or so.

Banoffee pie! It's got chocolate shavings on top.

Chris, my sous-chef. Well actually he was probably the head chef what with being my resident English dessert expert.

The times, they are a changin'

To reiterate what I was saying awhile ago about how I can always count on things to change, this new semester has brought some tumultous times with it. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that all my students have gone up a grade, and consequently I'm having trouble planning their lessons because I'm so used to the fourth grade being 10 students and knowing that the fifth grade are the troublemakers, etc etc and now I need to learn two new schedules and figure out new classroom arrangements and such.

I am SO not a fan of my new schedules. I miss the old setup so much - this semester has shifted classes more towards the morning so as to make time for "sports" in the afternoon, apparently. This means I teach four classes each morning with ten minute breaks in between each when I used to do two, then a 30 minute break, and then one or two more. At my second school I used to have first period free, and now I don't have that on Fridays. No more kindergarten at my second school either - I used to teach 1st/2nd together, but this semester those classes are separated into 1st and 2nd.

Working with my new coteacher is also a major change. It's good because she speaks good English, but by the same token, this means she actually wants to talk to me all the time. I'm very used to sitting down at lunch and just focusing on eating my food without accidentally consuming any fish bones or whatever, but now we talk during lunch. Also whenever I ask her questions about stuff she has a tendency to go on for awhile when really I just wanted a quick answer so I can go back to my work. A very nice lady though, and she's very gung-ho about English education.

Speaking of English education, here's the biggest change to my schedule: overtime classes. I work 18 hours at Seokyang, my main school, and 12 at Seokseong, my second school. Two of my 18 hours used to be teachers training, where I taught English to various Korean teachers from both my schools. However, this semester they are too busy to take the class, so my principal and coteacher were looking for other ways to fill this time. The principal suggested kindergarten/1st/2nd, but I had what I thought was a better idea.

My main school classes are fairly large (25-29 students), and their English abilities are really varying in each class. It makes it hard to teach everyone because some students can't even write while others look bored senseless. Anyway, so this was my thinking - I had three classes to fill, so why not make review classes for my students who were struggling? This was the perfect opportunity - I would only accept certain students, so there would be less students per class in addition to giving the kids more time to learn the material. I thought this was a better use of my time rather than teaching kindergarten, which I think is kind of a waste of time. I know that learning languages is much easier when you're younger, so I can see the thought process behind having me teach kindergarteners to give them a bit of a head start on their English education, but let's be honest - how much do you really think that one 40 minute class per week is going to teach them? Having taught one kindergarten class last semester, I'll tell you how much. Almost nothing. They pick up vocabulary like you wouldn't believe, but if you want to teach them vocab you don't really need me. I thought that spending an extra 40 minutes with my older students would be much more beneficial.

My coteacher was a big fan of this idea, so she approached the principal. Long story short, he liked it too (all the teachers thought it was a good idea), but he still wanted the kindy/1/2 classes. New proposal? I teach four extra classes. I was pretty leery of this idea because it means that I'll be teaching 34 hours per week. This means that out of a 40 hour work week, 34 of those hours will be spent actively teaching. That means I'm down to six prep hours per week, and if you've never planned lessons, it's hard to understand the work that goes into it. In my opinion the actual teaching is easy; like most things, it's the prep work that's where the real work lies.

Either way my coteacher was definitely pressuring me to take the classes, and to be honest I really wanted to make them happen. For one, they won't require any extra planning because I just want the students to show up with the material we're working on at the time and then just go over it again. Another thing is that I'm liking the idea of overtime pay. And finally, I'm really excited to get a chance to really help out my students that I know have simply fallen behind and never caught up. It's hard because I see them in class, not participating, but now I know that it's not stubbornness or a refusal to learn, it's more that some of them just can't keep up, so they can't participate because they just don't know the answers.

The new schedule starts this week, and I can't lie - I'm pretty nervous. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. Wish me luck!