School Clubs

Thursdays are a pretty easy day for me.  Very easy actually, but I do slightly more than just deskwarming all day.

In the morning, I'm charged with the duty of saving lives.  Well... not really, but I do have to stand outside and act as a crossing guard while simultaneously greeting the students with an endless stream of "Hello"s and "Good morning"s and maybe once out of every 15 students I can go as far as to ask "How are you?".  

I think my crossing guard duties are more about having a foreigner outside for the world to see, but I don't mind because every Thursday the Kim twins come and talk to me.  

They were in first grade last year and since Korea does not "officially" start English education in public schools until the 3rd grade (in first grade they only learn/practice English once a week - reviewing the alphabet, writing the letters and learning simply songs), this year I am not their teacher.  So the small chats we have each Thursday morning are something I really look forward to!  And aren't they so cute!?!

My only other duty on Thursdays is to run a reading club for 4th graders.  This is also pretty easy thanks to Dr. Seuss and Korea having zero copy-right laws (or at least none that apply to schools for the use of "educational purposes").  

After lunch we read about 10 pages from The Cat in the Hat, we've been at it for a while now (there are 60 pages!); but we have a specific process we follow:

1. the boys read the page and circle words they don't know (I usually have to stress that they have to circle words they don't know the meaning of - they're a pretty clever group of 4th graders and can easily read Dr. Seuss, but it's understanding that we're going for!)


2. one student reads the page aloud


3. words that were circled are translated


4. we go through the page, one line at a time -  I read a line in English, the boys and my co-teacher, Seoyeon, translate it into Korean, I read a line.... and so on

We should finish The Cat in the Hat by the end of June.  Slow and steady said the tortoise. 

However, today (5/31) I did not get to go to reading club.  Instead I had to monitor Kpop dance club.  

Let me just say: I love being a girl, I love girlie things, I even love Kpop.  But I do not love tween girls.  They squawk like chickens and for the most part are boy-crazy-annoyingly-loud-silly people (I admittedly am probably still all of these things, but I'm not a tween.  Sorry to those who knew me when I was).  Needless to say, I prefer Dr. Seuss and my group of boys.  

For an hour I watched as 9 girls practiced the dance to 'The Boys' by Girls' Generation and (sadly) imitated all the hip swings and booty bounces.  

Here's the dance they are learning.  I actually do like the song and Girls' Generation - just not as a tween performance.  Can't kids just be kids?!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YFncRmZdM?wmode=transparent]