First Week of Teaching, More Korean Culture, and War.

Hey Peeps!

So, I survived my first week of teaching. In my 45-minute class, I first established some classroom rules, then I showed them where Rochester was on the map. When asked where I was from, I responded 'New York' and they all went "ooooooo New York!" because of course, they think I mean NYC. On my powerpoint I used a map of the US where the states where marked and labeled. I found pictures of popular city landmarks like the Hollywood sign, the Golden Gate bridge, and the Statue of Liberty and put them on the same slide with arrows to where they were located. Then I put a picture of a cartoon house where Rochester is with the city marked. I showed them how NY is not only a city but also a state, and I am from NY state. I showed them on the Powerpoint pictures of Rochester (the Erie Canal, the skyline, and snow). Then I showed on the Ppt 3 facts about me. I told them that 1) Korea was the first foreign country I had visited, 2) I had 3 sisters and 0 brothers and 3) I liked to dance. Obviously #1 is false so then I told them that one was not true and had them guess which one. The next slides showed them the answers: a slide with a picture of me dancing and other dance pictures like tap shoes and Jeanine from SYTYCD, a picture of my with Andrea, Al, and Maren at the post-Baccalaureate party at 'Berg, and finally pictures from Venice, Cape Town, Zambia, and Israel. Then I asked them to write down 3 things about themselves, 2 true and one false. I collected the papers and read them later, trying to guess which ones were false.

The end of the lesson focused on the U.S. I asked them what they thought of when they thought of America. I heard responses like fat people, junk food, rich country, money, Obama, famous, baseball, New York City, the Statue of Liberty, tall buildings, etc. That was what I expecting to hear, so with visual aids on my slideshow I explained how many Koreans perceive America to be all like NYC or Beverly Hills, but in fact what makes America so wonderful and interesting is its diversity. I ended the class with that lesson, praying that they actually got the message because I thought it was really important to help change people's skewed perception of what the USA is like. It was a fun lesson for me to teach. Next week I am explaining to the students how each table is a team who can earn or lose points depending on their behavior or participation. The team with the most points at the end of each class gets candy and the class with the most cumulative points at the end of the semester earn a pizza party. It's nice that the students are still young enough that that sort of bribary....er....motivation still works!


The students talk. A lot. Even if I shout sternly "Be quiet!" or "stop talking!" they don't stop. What's worse is that the English room echos so even when 5 students are talking it sounds like 15. Now, corporal punishment is still around here in Korea. Meaning if a student misbehaves, he or she comes to the teacher's office after class and gets hit, usually with a hollow plastic tube or sometimes with bare hands. This was really shocking for me to witness at first, even though I was expecting it. Sometimes the students get punished in class by having to stay in a "plank" position (like the position you're in when you do push-ups) or have to kneel on the floor and face the wall. Since the students are used to physical punishment, yelling does not scare them. It makes sense, you know? That is why I created the points and teams system, since Koreans in general are very competitive and very proud, especially when it comes to education, so the students are sensitive to points, especially if I display each team's points on the board during class. I hope that will act as motivation for them to behave.

Also, the English level of the students is MUCH lower than I expected. If you can imagine, I ..... literally ...... speak...... at..... this...... pace.......often.........repeating........myself.......or........saying.......something..........in another...........way.......,in a different...........way ....... and 80% of the students don't understand me. Sometimes the Korean co-teacher translates or says it in English to be sure they understand but I'm not really sure how I can get through anything if I have to talk at a baby snail's pace. Also, most of the students still don't understand basic grammar structures. For example, on their 3-things-about-me sheet I got things from 98% of the students "I like dog" or "I am boy" "I like play soccer" "I am Sannam Middle School" or "I love lamp." Just kidding on the last one :-P. But seriously, those are the kinds things I'm seeing from a very large percentage of students. So I have to modify my plans for the next few classes and incorporate a basic grammar lesson so they can at least know that. I decided to use next week to really drill that by having each team create a fun team name and then create a grammatically correct introduction for their team. I'm having them fill in the blanks of "Our team name is __________. We are going to win because we like ___(noun)__________. We are better than the other teams because we are ___(adjective)_____________. We are going to beat the other teams because we like ___verb______. I'm giving them a color-coded word bank to use when creating it. For review the next week I'll probably have them correct bad sentences and make it competitive somehow with teams.

So, that's that. I also am in charge of teaching an essay class every Wednesday to advanced students and every other Saturday I teach a "Class with Foreign Teacher" class where I can teach whatever I want. This week in the Saturday class we played Trainwreck (ice breaker game) and the I taught them some line dances (The Electric Slide and The Cupid Shuffle) along with basic dance vocab like front and forwards, back and backwards, side and sideways, right, left, step, kick, heel, turn. Koreans don't like dancing, as I found out from warnings from my colleagues and me asking my students in class "does anyone else like to dance?" and seeing a total of 2 hands among my 500-something students. Greeeattt. I think I'll do different things each class, perhaps using an American movie to fuel a discussion about something or American culture.

I also had this really cool idea to do a class about Baseball. You're probably shocked to hear this because you all know how much sports, baseball especially, bore me to death. However after one of Val's soccer games the Ajou University baseball team started practicing on the field and he asked me to explain the rules because he'd never really seen it before. I was like, uhhhhhh, hmm. Someone's asking me to explain the rules of a sport?! So I told him the basics and realized that many phrases in the English language that are based on baseball that those who don't know the game probably don't understand. So I thought even for my regular classes I could do a class on baseball idioms in English because there are a ton! Covering all your bases, in the home stretch, getting to 1st, 2nd, or 3rd base, being way out in the outfield, he's up to bat. Can you think of others? I think it would be an interesting vocabulary and culture lesson for the students.


On another note, I am officially at war with a particular kind of Korean. They majorly annoy me and come to me uninvited and always overstay their welcome. And it has become my goal to murder as many of them as I come across. Yes, I am talking about the Korean mosquito. Somehow, these mosquitos, which are bigger than the ones in Rochester (not those little brown ones like in NY but those huge black ones) find their way into my apartment and feast on me while I get my beauty sleep. Many of you know that I have a really strong reaction to mosquito bites and even without scratching them they blow up to sometimes to be 7 or 8 inches in diameter. So I wake up looking like I have the mutated chicken pox and they bite me in the most inconvenient places, such as my toes, my face, and my top lip. Afterall, those are often the exposed skin when I'm sleeping. 2 weeks ago I had absolutely had it with the huge bites on my legs that burned that I went to the pharmacy and got some medicated cream and some pills. I don't take the pills because I don't know exactly what they are but the cream helps especially if I apply it right after the bite. I searched for repellent at HomePlus but couldn't find it but I know it's there because my neighbor has some and she got it there. Last night I was awake for almost 2 hours using myself as bait, turning the light on and off trying to catch the mosquitos buzzing around my ear and biting me. I ended up killing 2 but found 4 others this morning. Yep, that's 6 mosquitos in my tiny apartment in one night. I swear, they tell their mosquito friends "hey! come to this room! she tastes yummy!". Argh. So yeah, I'm going to HomePlus today and not leaving without that repellant. If i'm going to be at war with these suckers (literally!) I need to step up my game and get a proper weapon.

Before I end this long-winded post, I thought of another Korean culture thing you might find entertaining. Koreans love little dogs. I have yet to see a dog bigger than a schnauzer. And people dress their little dogs in little outfits. I HATE when people do that! and I swear to you, a few weeks ago when V & I were walking to get some dinner at a local restaurant we saw a tiny dog, being walked by a 30-ish year old man, wearing a little jacket and SNEAKERS on its paws. Seriously. 4 Mini sneakers on its tiny little paws. Val & I couldn't help ourselves bursting into laughter and doing some major eye-rolling. That is a typical site here. It's like the Hollywood fashion trend of tiny dogs has become the trend in all of Korea. Oy. Those poor dogs.

Thanks for reading!

Love,
Mel