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Hey everyone,
So I have done two weeks of teaching now. It's still a steep learning curve but 1 of my middle school lessons on Friday worked very well. YAY!
Last Saturday I visited the Seoknamsa (or is it Seongnamsa?) temple and the Bodeoksa temple. They were only a short bus ride away but were in the mountains in very beautiful natural surroundings. They are Buddhist temples where nun's are living. The temple is also next to the main entrance of a hiking trail up to Gajisan mountain so I'm going to need to go there again to some hiking. Hiking is a major national past-time here with many Koreans going hiking on the weekend.
Later that evening I went to a Jimjilbang (a Korean sauna). That is an interesting experience due to the fact that you are not allowed to wear anything. It's lovely and relaxing though. It is only two minutes walk from my flat, but is quite small so it just has the sauna's, hot tubs and cold tubs. There are bigger ones in the city with co-ed areas (where you do wear clothes), massages, spa's, games rooms, restaurants and you can even sleep in some of them overnight.
Sunday I spent pretty much the entire day planning lessons. Monday I was teaching at middle school and it was a bit of a disaster as the lessons didn't go well, the students seemed bored and they wouldn't behave. I need to find ways to make it more interesting for them.
Tuesday I was back at the elementary school and things went better. In the evening I met up with other foreigners in Eonyang and we went to a restaurant to eat a meal of grilled meat and vegetables which you wrap in lettuce leaves. Afterwards I went shopping to an "Asia Mart" which had foreign ingredients like herbs, spices, lentils, coconut milk powder e.t.c. I also found out where to buy honey so I can start making some mead soon :).
Wednesday's lessons were ok. I tried to teach the grade 3 and 4 students about superhero's as they are really into them but the language was still way over their heads so definitely need a big rethink on how I'm going to teach them. The class with grade 5/6 went quite well as I used an animation video and they really engaged with it. In a phonics class on Thursday with grade 3 and 4 students, I used a similar game to "snap" and that also seemed to work so that's given me a few more ideas. In the evening I met up with another friend living here, Kevin, and he kindly showed me all around the town, including a dolmen and a castle.
Friday's lessons I was back at the middle school. The lessons went ok apart from I need to work on timings a little better as the introduction and first activity took up half the class time but on the whole things were better than Monday. I start the lessons now with a PowerPoint asking them a few questions including "what day is it today?," "how's the weather?," "how are you?" and "what did you do at the weekend?" (instead of the rote "how are you?" "I'm fine thanks and you") and then I set them a quiz which is a coded sentence from the previous lesson's material which they have to decipher. It took a little explaining but once they got the hang of it I think it worked well. At the end of the lesson I ask them to write in their notebooks - two things they learned today and 1 thing they didn't understand. I realised though that they don't know the meaning of the word "learned" so I need to make sure they understand that next time.
The behaviour of the oldest students I teach was quite bad still so I'm going to do seating arrangements for them from Monday. The added structure will hopefully also improve things. The after school lessons went quite well with one lesson going very well. I decided that this term the curriculum for after school classes for my middle school students will be "the science of happiness" following the insights of the positive psychology movement (NOT "positive thinking"). I'm using the materials on the website http://www.eltandhappiness.com/ to make my lessons and basically teaching them what scientists have discovered really works in improving people's levels of happiness. Boy do the Korean students need it. Most of them spend 12 hours or more a day in school and I can't imagine how they must cope with the stress. In fact, Arirang (one of Korea's English channels) had a news report earlier this week saying Korean students stress levels were among the highest in the world.
Friday also brought another Korean Surprise. Lunchtime on Friday my co-teacher announced I had to do an English club at 8.30-9.00am every Monday morning starting this Monday. This wasn't too much of a big deal until I discovered that the students were three different levels (though more advanced than their peers) and it had to be based around reading books. Of course, the school doesn't have six of the same book so they will all have to have different books, yet must do co-operative group activities and produce tangible things not just talk about the books... plus they will write diaries which I have to grade each week. I have a few ideas on how I might meet the requirements but it wont be easy. SURPRISE **imagines confetti falling**.
Still, what I have to do there is nothing compared to what one of my friends here has been asked to do - her school told her on Thursday to do 80 x 4 page lesson plans by this Monday......humanly impossible!
Saturday was another relaxing day as I went to down town Ulsan for the first time. It was surprisingly easy to get to (and the buses here are so cheap). I met up with some friends and we went out to Cima Bar which was holding a St Patrick's Day event. We got a T-shirt, "Irish breakfast" (a full English) and took part in a scavenger hunt around town. This was quite fun and ranged from finding hidden shamrocks to trying to convince a Korean to read an Irish limerick and river dance on camera. Afterwards we went shopping, got some food and came home.
Today I started learning some Korean using a new book I bought and registered at the free Quick Korean website which has a course developed and recognised by a Korean university. It looks like it will be a brilliant course and I hope to complete most of it within 6 months. I can understand most of the Korean characters now so that's a good start. My vocabulary so far is probably about 20 Korean words (mainly food ones). I'm also going to start going to Taekwondo from tomorrow. Apparently you can get a black belt within a year (assuming you go most days of the week) which would be great. This afternoon I went exploring on the other side of the river and then went hiking for half hour up a mountain. Now it's back to lesson planning for the week ahead.
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