Today is graduation day at my school. Last year I dressed up and came prepared to participate in the ceremony. As I sat at my desk it waiting, it eventually became clear they had started without me. I went down to the cafeteria to take a peek, and I immediately understood that I hadn't been snubbed, there was simply no room for any extra spectators. See, my school doesn’t have an auditorium, so between the students, parents and teachers, the cafeteria was packed tight. I even think only the homeroom teachers attended the ceremony.
Today I wore jeans and a polo.
After today the kids will go away for three more weeks, but I will have yet another class to teach. This time I’ll have one class for students and one for adults. Right now I’m trying to put together some activities for the classes and I’m having a harder time than you might think. While there is a temptation to photocopy any old worksheets I find and recycle activities I’ve used a hundred times before–indeed, that seems to be exactly what my superiors want from me–my training and instinct as a teacher tell me I should try to put my lessons into some kind of meaningful context. Fortunately I guess, there is no time for philosophical dilemmas such as these. I’m under a deadline. (Thanks Mr. Vice Principal. No, really.) As a sort of compromise I’m trying my best to choose worksheets, warmers and games that cover similar content areas.
I was going to give an example of a lesson I’m planning for next week, but that sounds incredibly boring. There is however, one activity I’m going to try that I want to mention. I think the official name is Number Battle, but I call it Math Hands. It’s sort of like a rock, scissor, paper game, but with numbers. The complete instructions are here.
Labels: EFL teaching, Korean middle school.
A blogger at rest tends to stay at rest
0 Comments Published by Brian on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 1:04 PM.
Ironically, when I had classes to teach and lessons to prepare, I actually felt better than on the days when I was keeping a chair warm while the students prepared for and took their final exams. Now that finals are over I'm back in the classroom, and I'm doing much better now.
In the meantime when I haven't been slumping, I've been putting together a plan for my contractually obligated winter camp. The "camp" is not really a camp at all. It's just an extra class held at my school during the winter break. Last year my partner teacher and I put together a well-rounded, logical, coherent program. We made nearly 100 percent of the materials ourselves. I was really proud of the work we did. There'll be none of that this year. This year I have to teach the class alone, and it will only be students from my own school. My basic plan is to do a hodge-podge of activities. We'll do a song each day, a "game-of-the-day," and a worksheet from an activity book I like plus a follow-up activity. On top of that we'll watch a movie in bits during the week and do one or two other things.
The only thing I'm worried about is that all my activities are heavily centered on input, without much opportunity for production. That is, it's all listening and reading without much speaking or writing. At the level my students are at, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to give them lots and lots of controlled exposure to English usage. Still, I can't help feeling a little guilty that my plan isn't a little more balanced. Then again, at the end of the day my program will be enjoyable (I think) for the students, and the parents will be satisfied that their kids have spent time with a
Labels: EFL teaching, The life of Brian
For the sake of tying off loose ends, I did not in fact write a novel last month. I got as far as 14,000 words and stopped. Oh well. I'll try again next year. It's too bad really. My story was finally starting to go somewhere, but by that time it was too late to get to the finish, and I had mentally moved on to other things. I guess I wrote about that already.
The seventh and eighth graders in my school started their final exams yesterday. They will continue through next Wednesday. For the ninth graders I've been showing Mr. Bean videos and playing word Bingo. Hey, at least I bother showing up for class. Yesterday I passed by one classroom where Misery was playing on the wide-screen TV, virtually every kid in class was either sleeping or playing with their mobile, and the teacher was nowhere to be found. Now there's some quality education.
After finals are done, virtually no learning will take place in the whole school for the rest of the semester. They will most likely shorten classes to 40 minutes, and in nearly every class the teacher will show videos or just let the kids do whatever. At the end of Last semester I noticed one teacher had made three large Sudoku puzzles on the blackboard. That's fine. At least it uses your brain a little. The only thing is, it was an art class. Oh well.
Labels: EFL teaching, life in Korea
If I lived in Korea until my retirement, I would never understand why they have final exams, and then continue to have classes for more than a month before the semester ends. A teacher explained once that it's because they need time for the students to lodge any protests (which there are always are) in their attempts to eke out an extra percentage point or two. I get that ninth grade final are pretty important, and that Korean teacher are also overworked and might need some extra time to fend off the gang of angry zombie teenagers. But six weeks? This is a time when I have to step back and say, "You know what? Not my country. Also, not my problem, and not my job to worry about it."
The only reason I mention this at all is that, once their finals are over, the third graders are impossible. They know that nothing counts for the rest of the semester. They are literally too cool for school. On the other hand, it is one of the very few breaks these kids will ever get in their young lives, so I can put up with it I guess.
If you're reading this on the day of posting, you can see my word count badge hasn't moved in a couple of days. Yeah, don't know what to say about that. I'm out of excuses. I'm just not writing is all, and maybe I've decided not to care...again, and maybe I won't be able to do that...again. The problem is nothing is happening. If you played The Sims for a few hours, and then wrote down everything your virtual people did, you'd have something close to the first 12 pages of my nano-novel. "I woke up. I went to the kitchen. I ate breakfast. I went to the bathroom. I took a..." You get the idea. God, how boring. In fact, I bet if I did exactly that, my story would probably end up a damn sight more interesting than it is now. Sigh! Wake me up when November ends.
Oh, by the way. Democracy is alive after all. Yay!
Labels: EFL teaching, life in Korea, Nanowrimo
...and then there are the good days.
0 Comments Published by Brian on Friday, November 03, 2006 at 1:19 PM.
But then something happens like yesterday when a girl came to the front of my classroom after I'd dismissed class with a friend for moral support. She read haltingly from notes she had written on a piece of paper, "Have you ever been to Los Angeles?" I said I had, and held a miniature conversation on the subject of Los Angeles and Disneyland. When the two girls left to go to lunch, the one who had spoken to me was so proud of herself she was literally jumping. I was proud of her too. Hardly anyone in my school attempts even the most basic of sentences like that.
Today another student caught me in the hallway and announced she'd been accepted into a foreign language high school. I don't pretend I had anything to do with that, but I was touched that she felt it was important enough to tell me about.
So maybe my efforts around here don't go completely unnoticed. That's something I guess.
***
I'm off to a slow start on the novel thing. In fact I almost gave up yesterday. I had written about 300 words, and I hated every single one of them. Fiction is hard. These self-indulgent musing about my own life come much easier.
Despite my misgivings, I plowed on ahead last night, and it did get easier. Word wars are the key. That's how I got my novel written last year and it looks like it will be the same story this time too. I just need something to make me write like hell without thinking too much. Maybe I'll even get caught up before the weekend is over.
Labels: EFL teaching, life in Korea, Nanowrimo
Greg of Not Another EFL Blog recently posted an essay on what events led him to live and work in Thailand. Today is the anniversary of an important event in my life’s journey, so if Greg will pardon me for borrowing his idea, I thought it would be a good time to tell my own story.
Five years ago today, October 10, 2001, my life took a dramatic turn. Events were set into motion that brought me to where I am right now. Five years ago today I was fired from my job.
It was my first day back to work after a short vacation. When I entered the office building in downtown Portland where I worked, I found the call center manager and the human resources director sitting in the coffee shop downstairs, which seemed unusual. I had been friends with the manager and I made a joke about how she had resorted to hanging out with the HR guy in my absence. They didn’t laugh.
Losing your job sucks. It sucks anytime, but things were especially uncertain around this time. The American economy was in a deep freeze, and it was extremely difficult to find work. More importantly though, I was no longer interested in doing the kind of work I had been doing. My liberal arts degree wasn’t serving me so well. French majors aren’t so much in demand, especially ones that weren’t that good. With few exceptions, the only jobs I had ever done were customer service related. Nearly all my jobs since college were in call centers, the Mcjobs of the new economy.
For the next nine months I collected unemployment from the state of Oregon, worked temp jobs here and there, watched TV, ate too much, drank my 401k, and generally wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life.
Along the way I hatched numerous plots and schemes, looking for a way out of my funk. For a short time I considered working as a professional French to English translator, until I discovered most people who do that sort of thing are native bilinguals, or at the very least better French speakers than I was. An addiction to late-night re-runs of ER got me thinking about going to nursing school. That fantasy ended when a friend who was an actual nurse asked me whether I’d be able to catheterize an elderly female patient. A passing obsession with baking bread had me considering baking as a vocation. Deciding that more education was the answer, I applied to Oregon State, where I intended to get a second bachelors degree (political science this time) and go on to law school, the idea being fueled by West Wing this time, if I remember correctly. It turned out I was maxed out on my student loans, so there was no way I could get any funding to go back to college. I did however get my acceptance letter after I’d been in Korea for a month already.
In June of 2002 I went to a bridal shower. Yes, you read that right. I went to a bridal shower for my friend Cyndy, the same friend whose wedding I performed the day before I left for Korea later that summer.
At the shower, I asked Christine, one of Cyndy’s roommates, about some other friends of theirs who had recently left for Korea. They were doing fine, she said, having a good time and saving their money. She then suggested that maybe I should think about doing the Korea thing as well. Although teaching in Korea had been suggested to me before, I had never seriously considered. I assumed you had to be a qualified to get a job. Silly me. She assured me it was amazingly easy to get employment in Korea, with all kinds of perks like an apartment, airfare, and bonuses that I have now come to take for granted as part of a standard contract, but which seemed pretty cool at the time. She said if I wanted to know more I should look at a certain website. (If you know anything at all about EFL, then you know which site I’m talking about.)
Even then I didn’t think I was serious about it. It was just a new idea to entertain, like any of the other hundred other career paths I considered. I knew how these things worked. I’d toy with the idea, maybe even get mildly obsessed with it for a time, then eventually lose interest and move on to something else.
Later that night though, as I looked over the ruins of the past several months, and faced the bleak prospects of the months ahead, I reached a mental breaking point. It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to look into the black abyss that is your life and think, “well, anything has got to be better than this.”
Can I just stop here to editorialize for a minute? Many in the EFL community are very sensitive about dispelling the notion that English teachers in Asia are losers who came here as a last resort because they were unable to find work in their own countries. I would totally be sensitive about that too, except that when I came here I was a loser who couldn’t find a job in my own country. English teaching was a last resort for me, at the time, and I’m not ashamed of that. EFL gave me a second chance to do something useful with my life, as I hope you’ll see. Anyway, on with our story…
Around 2am I fired up the computer, typed in the address Christine had given me, and began browsing for jobs. I applied for four jobs I found in the listings, and within a day had received offers for three of them. Few questions were asked. None of them wanted to interview me. The most pressing question on their minds seemed to be, “How soon can you get here?”
I didn’t jump at any of those first offers, but continued to apply for positions for the next few weeks. Then one day a job in the town of Gimcheon that offered a motorcycle as part of the package caught my eye. Though I had never once ridden a motorcycle in my life to that point, the offer seemed just kooky enough to suit my style. I first arrived in Korea on August 12, 2002.
As a teacher that first year, I sucked. I had no idea what I was doing, but gradually, I began to realize the hogwon was also clueless. As far as they were concerned, I was doing a great job. To them, I was fulfilling my main contractual obligations, which seemed to be show up, be foreign (read: white), and speak English. My role as a teacher and they way I’m perceived by my employers and students is an issue I continue to struggle with, even now. Back then though, I just knew that I was dissatisfied. My job was extremely frustrating at times, but I really enjoyed the relationship I was developing with my students, and liked teaching just enough to know that I wanted to be better at it.
It was not romance but economics that led me to take my CELTA course in Bangkok. The course is simply cheaper there than in other places where it is offered. The others in the group may not know this, but I was scared to death for most of the course. Ok so it wasn’t a semester at MIT. It was still one of the most intense things I’d ever done to that point in my life. We had a really good group though. We pulled together and got each other through it. That isn’t to say we were the best CELTA group ever or anything, but I’ve since heard stories of training groups that broke out in fistfights and stuff like that, so I think were did pretty well over all.
Since that time I returned to Korea for another year, then fled to Russia, where at least my training would be appreciated. It was. I’m a much better teacher for having taught in Moscow, but at the end of the contract I finally decided to return to Korea yet again.
Now I’m in a public middle school in Seoul. Some things in my life could be better, but over all it’s going quite well. A lot of other things have happened along the way that have gotten me to this point, but I do believe the fundamental shift that put me on this path happened five years ago today in that coffee shop in Portland.
Labels: EFL teaching, life in Korea, personal history
My new vertical blinds will be installed this Saturday. The guy came the other day to measure and show me some samples. If you’re really into beige, then Korea is your kind of country.
I’m using a Mr. Bean video in my lessons this week. The kids love it. I’m doing a couple of different activities with it and most of them are good, but I made a short worksheet to use for the second viewing (CELTA veterans will know this as the Minimal Response Task or MRT). My MRT is way too hard.
My usual lesson planning pattern seems to be plan the lesson I want to do, then make it easier, then make it easier again. Debut the lesson on Monday, decide it’s still too hard, then modify it yet again. That’s not an exaggeration.
It’s now 39 days since my last cigarette. Today I used the last of my “step 2” 14mg nicotine patches so that means tomorrow I start using the “step 3” 7mg ones. I’m a little worried about that. At least I don’t have any classes tomorrow, so my students won’t have to feel the wrath of my disease. On the other hand, I’ll be sitting around in the teachers’ room all day, and that might not be the best thing. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Because of my foot thing I skipped going to the gym on Monday, but I’ll hit it tonight. I’ll spend a few minutes on the cross-trainer, and maybe [grumble, grumble] walk on the treadmill for a while.
There’s more to my disastrous workout last Saturday that I haven’t even mentioned. Besides rendering myself incapable of walking for a day, it looks like I may have toasted my iPod. Maybe “drowned” is a better word. See, I have this headphone-lanyard thing that holds the iPod around my neck, and it’s the neatest thing ever, except on Saturday it was kind of hot in the gym and of course I was exercising, so I worked up quite a sweat. This next part is kind of gross, but what happened I guess is the sweat ran from my neck down the lanyard and directly into the ipod. Oops. About 15 minutes into my workout the sound started cutting out. I looked down at the iPod and saw the battery indicator flashing back and forth between fully charged and nearly empty.
Of course I immediately removed the soaking wet iPod and tried to shut it down. As soon as I let go of the button it sprang back to life and resumed its manic rapid cycling. Crap! Over the next few days I let it dry out completely and did all four R’s of trouble shooting. Even a complete restoration didn’t fix the problem. It operates perfectly now, except that it won’t turn off, so the battery runs down. Now it constantly shows that little plug symbol whether it’s on the charger or not. This does not please me, as you might imagine. This gym thing is turning into a costly venture.
Labels: EFL teaching, iPod, life in Korea, quitting smoking
What I did today
This morning was my bi-weekly Saturday Business English lesson. I prepared for all of like 15 minutes late last night, and it showed. Luckily this is a good group so we basically just talked about stuff. Either I'm getting good, or I'm getting lazy. Either way, my lack of preparedness sort of forces the students to do more work, so I guess it's a good thing.
Last night, when I should have been preparing my lesson, I worked on my application for the Seoul teaching position. During the day I asked my old boss in Korea to send a reference letter, and he responded within like two hours. Chances are he copied at least part of the letter from something he had written previously, but I'm sure part was really about me as well. He said some really nice things about me, so I really appreciated it. Now if I could only get my current boss to complete the letter I asked her to write...
I'm up to Unit one, lesson six in my Korean studies, though to be fair, all of lesson five and half of lesson six was all about numbers, and I already know those. Tonight I'm going through the lessons again to try and catch some things I might have missed, or have forgotten already. So far I've learned, to walk, to run, to jump, to dance, to run away, to race (I think) to swim and to read. I've learned the prepositions on, under and inside, plus a whole bunch of nouns. I suppose I could write this whole list with the Korean translations, but remember what I said above about being lazy?
My apartment is disgusting. Most of the week I kept it orderly, but it always falls apart toward Thursday or Friday.
Bright ideas I've had
Should I try to go to St. Peterburg next weekend? Should I try to go to Tallin or Helsinki at all? What do you think?
Labels: EFL teaching, The life of Brian
McGuffin - A plot device that holds no meaning or purpose of its own except to motivate the characters and advance the story. -
This would be yet another word I learned from the TWOP forums. In case you haven't been following it, on 24 this season Jack & Cie. spent the first several hours searching for this override thingy that the baddies were using to try and melt down a bunch of nuclear reactors. In the recaps the device was nicknamed the McGuffin. I didn't think much about it since the thing had the initials MF on the side. I guess I assumed McGuffin was just the recapper's snarky nickname for it. Well, it was in fact, but it also happens to be a real thing, or I mean, an un-real thing.
Yeah yeah, say what you want about me only seeming to learn new stuff from a particular website, but honestly, where else am I gonna learn new words and stuff? My students? I think not.
What I did today
Lazed around a good part of the day. See I'm off the sugar (mostly) and I'm having some pretty freaky withdrawls. Headache, lethargy, moodiness. I decided to treat today as a sick day a la Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting. No babies crawling on the ceilling thanfully. Work was fine, though I wasn't nearly prepared enough for my teenaged group. The adults were better. When I told them my proposal for the end of the course I was afraid they would throw rocks at me. It's like this: They are unhappy they won't be able to finish the course with me. They want me to work all kinds of extra classes to spare them the untold horror of finishing the book with a Russian teacher. I considered it (I really honestly did), but finally decided it wasn't going to happen, mainly because finishing is a practical impossibility, and if they can do one unit with a Russian teacher, they can golly well do two. As a sort of compromise, I will work this Friday and next, and then on June 1st, one day after the technical end of my contract.
Bright ideas I've had
How much does it cost to fly to Helsinki from Moscow?
Labels: EFL teaching, Life in Moscow
