Sam's Five Things: What a Monday

Ok, I know, long time no update :) Well, I will try to fix that!

Right, starting from Thursday. It was a great day! I taught the same lesson five times, and every time it worked like a dream! We were making 3D snowflakes to hang in the classroom. I had an example on to show the kids before we started, and every time they were like "Oh, teacher, that is too hard!", but by the end, everyone had made a snowflake :) The English component of the lessons was very light, which is why I think it worked so well. It didn't work well as an actual English lesson, only a a fun fill in time before Christmas lesson. Mr Beak said it was a great lesson, which leads me to question how great of a teacher he is. Sure, everyone participated, and everyone learned to make a craft project, but no one learned English. It was a crap lesson from that point of view. But it was fun, and now the classroom is pretty too :)

After school on Thursday I got off the bus really early and took a short and freezing walk by the Osan river. The I went to city hall to investigate rumours of an ice-skating rink, which turned out to be true! I am totally going skating one of these days. Then, in honour of it being really very cold, I had an ice cream in Baskin Robbins. I had Caramel Praline Cheesecake flavour, and it was delicious. Marscapone tasting ice cream with a caramel swirl and lumps of praline covered toasted walnut. Pretty great!

The Osan river

Friday was a long day. I only had one class to teach, as it was the last day of school. I just showed Mr Bean's Christmas, as I didn't hold out much hope for getting any actual work done. They did have to answer some questions after the episode, which went well. Then, Mr Beak made me move all my stuff into the teachers room for the afternoon. I'm not sure why, because normally I have to stay in the English classroom. It was a bit annoying because it meant I couldn't play my game! So, I tried to look busy for 6 hours. I managed to spend over an hour cutting out parts of an animal board game for winter camp (Which the thought of using now makes me want to jump off a bridge... see below and imagine that with heaps of small bits of paper they've been instructed not to lose). Then I did all my winter camp day 1 photocopying, and made a powerpoint game I have no intention of really using. Then I ran out of busy work and just read Alice in Wonderland on my computer for the last few hours. Finally it was home time!!

Now, Friday night was like a day all of its own. An awesome, day of epic awesomeness. I got together with Jen, Courtney and Nyasha at 10pm, and we got some snakcs from E-mart and then headed to Courtney's house to eat them. While trying to catch a taxi, it started to snow pretty hard, and it was pretty and cool! We ate and hung out at Courtney's place, and played a hilarious game of monopoly for a few hours. I guess monopoly isn't usually hilarious, but Jen is really hardcore and kept giving everyone (probably very good) advice, which everyone refused to take, and it was all just pretty funny. At some point someone looked out the window, and it was still snowing! I had snowed for maybe four hours, and was a good 4 inches deep! So, we did what any self-respecting 20-somthing yeard olds would do: went out and played in it like children. There was snow kicked, thrown, licked, and fallen in. It was the most snow I've ever seen (not counting on mountains), and I was really excited! There really was a lot of snow!

By this point it was about 3am, and we decided that it was still a good idea to go to norebang (private karaoke). We eventually found one (they are everywhere here. if you wanted long enough, you will find one), and spent a couple of hours singing our hearts out. Nayasha actually almost lost her voice :) I started to get pretty tired about 4am, but we kept singing, and left the norebang about 5am. A very slow taxi back home (the roads hadn't been cleared of snow yet) and I got to bed at about 5.30. I slept for about an hour and a half, then got up and had my Saturday!

All the snow hung around on Saturday and I went for a big walk in it, for about an hour. It started to melt though, and got all slushy and slipper, and my shoes and jeans got soaked. It was fun, though. The rest of the day I just napped, played to computer, and made a really nice pot of vegetable soup.

And then it was Sunday - Christmas! And the weirdest Christmas I've ever had :) I got up at 7am to Skype mum and dad, which was really nice. I had a good chat to both of them, and even a word to Matt. Then, I played the Sims 3 pets expansion, watched some TV, and had some cheese on toast (with real NZ vintage cheese which Courtney gave to me because she thought it was mouldy, but actually it just had those crystals in it that 'vintage' cheese gets that make it tastier... score for me!!). The Jen messaged me to say I should come round to her place to play some board games, so I hopped in a taxi and sped over to her place and spent a pretty funny afternoon/evening with her, Nayasha, and some of their co-workers playing an incredible long and complicated story board game called 'Arabian Nights', which I'm convinced it is actually all but impossible to win. We ate fried chicken and pizza and I had a great time :) Jen played Christmas carols in the background to make it seem more like Christmas, but it really didn't :-D

I left about 9pm so that I could get some sleep before starting to teach winter camp in the morning. I was excited about all the teaching I'd get to do and all the fun stuff I had planned. Joke's on me for that :(

Well, I had my first 'English Camp' class this morning. Four hours of English for kids who are used to 45 mins a day at the most was pretty intense for them. I assume it was anyway, since most of the class completely ignored me the majority of the time. The class was awful. I have never had a lesson go so badly. They wouldn't listen, they wouldn't respond, and they literally tore it to shreds. Like, they scribbled and ripped up the handouts and work sheets. These are 13 and 14 year olds, and they acted like 5 year olds. I had such grand plans - I had a reward a discipline schedule all laid out, lessons planned out in detail, and they just destroyed everything. More than once I'd go up to a kid, be kneeling right in front of them to explain what they were supposed to be doing (because they weren't doing it) only to have them refuse to even look at me.

It was a disaster right from the ice-breakers. I was told I'd have a class of 12-14 students, so that's all the materials I prepared. Well, turns out it's actually a class of 20. Yeah, 20. So, ok, I improvise until I can copy some more sheets. Luckily, the first period I wanted them to make a poster to introduce themselves. I had all the language on the board, they just has to substitute words in the right places "I like ____", "I am ______", and so on. I wanted to put them up on the wall to make the classroom more 'student centred'. Well, the scribbled, ripped holes in the paper, wrote only in Korean, or did absolutely nothing. What got handed in at the end of the lesson was an embarrassment. I didn't know what to do! I ended up telling them it wasn't good enough, and they all had to do it again. It went a little better the second time around, but only just.

To make matters worse, the nice Korean lady, who I'm beginning to think is actually a spy, sat through a random selection of the four periods I was teaching. No one said anything about her being there, or what she was doing. She just sat at one of the tables and helped the student at that table.

All in all, the lessons totally sucked, and I never want to teach them again. But I have to for the next four days :( I really don't know what to do with them. Half of me wants to abandon my careful plan and teach them a random selection of lessons that mostly involve doing no work and playing games where they learning focus is really light. But then, I want to also see if perseverance will pay off. If I keep punishing them in the same way, will they realise that behaviour is unacceptable and stop? Or will they continue to have no respect and treat me like crap? I just don't know. I'm pretty unhappy right now though. Perhaps this afternoon is a good time to have the banana split I didn't have on Christmas :( I am so disappointed and frustrated I want to cry.

Note to self: No matter how tempting it seems, DO NOT TAKE A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHING JOB EVER AGAIN. And maybe stick with adults.

Anywho, the principal bought everyone lunch at school, too. Which was nice of him. He skimped a bit though... it was fried rice with an egg, and a super spicy soup with one prawn in it. Better than nothing, though - and free food :)

*Sigh* I am over my little pity party now. This morning sucked donkey balls, though. I think I'll spend the afternoon researching ways of getting students to listen to me, without having to yell. I hate getting angry in class.. I feel like a pretty crappy, ineffective teacher today.

Also, I discovered after it was already too late that the American way of pronouncing 'zebra' (zee-bra) sounds an awful lot like the Korean word for 'shit' :( Fail, Sam.

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Ok, I'm home now, and am going out to a late dinner with 'the girls'. I did some reading into some classroom management techniques, and am now feeling much more positive about tomorrow :)

And, here's a selection of the kids' letters to Santa (some of them are sideways - has something to do with Blogger and Conon cameras - I can't fix it, sorry):