My ~20min walk to work leaves me in near sweats by the time I sit down at my desk! Ok, 'near' is a lie. I AM sweating! The temperature is in the 80-90s and the humdity is murderous! Forget makeup! Forget jeans! Hell, forget clothes if you could!! It's HOT here!!! Hell-o summer!!
But where do I head every weekday? To school. To teach kids, who probably don't even want to be at school in the first place, English.
With EPIK (English Program in Korean - the program I'm apart of) all GETs (Guest English Teachers) are required to do summer and winter camps. They're suppose to be a fun, enjoyable, playful couple of weeks for students. My friend Kev did a pirate day, his students got to make flags, Wanted signs, and do pirate-y things. My friend Beth is having her students make a movie. Other teachers are doing Harry Potter camps, Disney camps, Comic book camps, fun camp, fun camp, fun camp.
Me? Fun camp?
Is an educational program, developed by the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education, that is similar to a regular school term lesson, but with a few added animations fun? Then yyyyyyessss.. NO.
It's fun when there's projects. Although they don't really allow my students to use much English, but they seem to have fun and enjoy them.
When we aren't doing projects, I think we all suffer a little. Students AND teacher. My students just sit there and watch, repeat a few words and do a 2-4 question listening activity. I just push the Play buttom. Sometimes the Pause button when we sing songs. It can get challenging. Trained professionals only please!
Today, luckily, was a project day!
This is Yellow class. They're in 1st and 2nd grade. Their English level is LOW! but we managed to do this project (In My Bag - the lesson was school supplies) without the help of my Co-teacher.
And very successfully I might add!
The good news about camp is, they're are only half days. Once lessons are over and lunch is eaten, I'm out the door and on my way to the beach!! You can't beat that!! Hello summer! I do enjoy you!
DOUBLE DUTY
My first week of camp I was pulling double duty and presenting at a teacher's training camp for Korean teachers in additional to the camp at Dae pyung.
I was asked to present on Content Based Instruction (CBI). I teach CBI for 10weeks each term so I used old lessons to make my presentation. Easy enough.
The only problem was that the BMOE didn't tell me anything about how they wanted me to actually do this. So myself, along with three other GETs showed up to the teacher's camp all a bit scared we were going to make fools of ourselves.
Fortunately for them, I was the only one who tanked the first day.
Although the information we were provided with was limited, we were told we were suppose to present for 2 hours, for 4 days.
What did I do the first day? Presented for 1 hour and had nothing left to save me for the remaining hour and ended up sending them out early. Which you would think teachers who were forced/made/strongly encouraged to attend this camp, would be thankful for. No! I got told on!!! Korean rats!
After a major redesign of my presentation and "little talk" from the camp director I managed to come back the next day and present for the full 2 hours! I shouldn't say "redesign", I had it all there the first time. I just didn't want to talk down to teachers who have more training and experience than I do in the educational profession.
The first day I just told them about my lesson. Told them about a 4 lesson unit in 1 hour. Big fail. So to enhance the lesson and make it go the full time (get my money's worth and theirs) I asked them to pretend to be 6th graders and told them that I was going to teach them. It worked. I "taught" for 2 hours and got a 'Thank You' from the director. A bit sad, but I'm new at this! ;)
I'm still waiting on my money by the way. That's some won I could really use before China.
No comments:
Post a Comment