August

Wow, it's been a long time since I last blogged.  August was pretty nuts.  The last week of June and the first week of August I was teaching a summer English camp at my school.  I taught it with my co-worker, Mr. Kim, whom I really do not get along with.  I'd known that I would have to teach this camp before I even got this job - it's standard for public school jobs.  I'd known since the beginning of June when the summer camp would be.  But until the week before it started, that's all the information I had.  Around that Wednesday, I found out I would be teaching 5 levels of classes.  Five!  A bit later I found out I would teach the 3 upper levels 3 times a week, and the 2 lower levels twice a week.  The classes would be 40 minutes long.  The format of the camp was such that my Mr. KIm would teach for 40 minutes, then I would teach the same kids for 40 minutes.  That Thursday, my co-worker gave me a brief outline of topics for each class.  Most of them were standard: feelings, daily activities, dates, etc.  He also tells me that he wants to make the Level 4 class a class on fairy tales and the level 5 class a journal writing class.  I try to make his fairy tales work (they're from a Korean website, they're very long, and the English in them was terrible), but on Friday he lets me know that I can choose my own if I want to.  I spend most of Thursday and all of Friday (and some of the weekend) stressing out about how to get the Level 5 students to actually write a journal entry.  I'm able to map out a decent plan for each class that should have them writing paragraphs by the end of the second week.  Over the weekend, I go to a bookstore and pick out two books for the Level 4 class.  I plan on doing one book each week.  (I told my Mr. Kim that by the end of the week I wanted my students to be able to read the book back to me or describe what happened in their own words.  He laughed and said they might be able to do that in Korean.)

The first day of camp, my Level 3 class went pretty smoothly.  During the Level 4 class, my students read the book aloud to me about halfway through the class.  They had learned the target language, went through the game I had prepared, and were able to use the target language in context.  Shoot.  What was I going to do for the rest of the week?  I was very curious to watch my co-teacher's Level 5 class.  I really wanted to know how the students would react to having to write so much.  He lectured them for about 15 minutes on the importance of keeping a diary, taught them some key words, played a game with the words, and towards the end of the class had them copy the words three times each in their notebooks.  Shoot.  They are going to be so mad when I have them create their own full sentences!  The first class went ok - they were definitely a handful, but I did get them each to write 3 sentences.  (I had originally aimed for 6-7 longer sentences.)

The rest of the camp continued in a similar fashion.  The lower level kids were cute, but sometimes hard to control.  My co-teacher always played a game at the end of his class, always let them be rowdy, and always ran over his class time.  Instead of a 10 minute break, the kids usually only got a few minutes, and it was so hard to get them to sit down again.  I got them to do more than parroting a few times, but mostly it was singing songs and coloring.  My Level 3 class was a joy.  Level 4 was a constant source of stress - they finished the second book I picked out in one class also, so the first week I was always trying to plan a last-minute lesson for them.  The second week I chose Green Eggs and Ham, and managed to stretch it out all week.  They loved it!  Level 5 was rough the whole time.  They played a game right before my class, and were not pleased about getting back to work.  I did adjust my plans, but still made them create at least three sentences every class.  They were annoyed, but I knew they were capable of it and a couple of them actually had fun with it.  I ended up bargaining with videos - if they would write 5 sentences in 10 minutes, we could watch Mr. Bean.

The afternoons during summer camp were the worst.  (All the classes were in the morning.)  I don't get along with my co-worker.  His habits annoy me, I don't like conversation with him, and he's generally a very awkward person who makes a lot of unnecessary noise.  Really, this man drives me up the wall.  It might just be because I literally stare at the top of his head every day (we sit across from each other), but after summer camp, I do my best to avoid interaction with him.  (Since there's only one other teacher in the department, and she sites on the other side of the classroom around a corner (lucky), I really don't talk to anyone all day at work.  So if you talk to me online during the day, that's why I word vomit all over you.)

The last two days of camp the AC was broken.  It wasn't terribly hot, but they let me go home after classes on Friday anyway.  I about ran out of there.  I was free of my co-worker and on vacation!!!

Since I just got here and August is the most expensive month to travel in Korea, I had decided not to leave the country this vacation.  I made plans with a friend who lives nearby to explore our area and Seoul, and to go camping on some islands off the west coast.  Then it rained.  Every day.  We were troopers for the first couple of days, then gave up and started looking for indoor activities/ staying home all day watching TV on our laptops.  I'm actually glad I got a lot of down-time then, because the second part of my vacation was exhausting.  I had accepted an offer from my neighbors to go on a 5 day trip with them.  It was....exhausting.  And definitely needs its own blog post (or five).