Monday May 27th
The day was good. No problems in France. No tears. Everything went well. We had show and tell today, and everyone brought something except for Sharon. This of course had the potential for waterworks. Luckily it was avoided because her mom brought her show and tell just in the nick of time.
Emily in Australia cried today and it was my fault. Whenever I catch a student with their shoes of in my class and I can pick up the shoe I make a deal out of it. Sometimes hooding the shoe or doing something silly with it. For repeat offenders I walk the class through the hall but do not allow the shoeless person to wear the shore. Will it was Emily's first time so I was just having fun... She was not feeling it and she cried. People always think it is funny when someone else is going through it... But when they do is different. During lunch I saw her with her shoe off again. I told her to put out back on... It was on faster than I had seen a shoe go on before.
One of my previous afternoon kids was at ecc studying or something. So I talked to her. I saw her on the street last week with a friend. She does not strike me as the person that would be popular in school. Physical traits and personality ones. Almost an outcast type. So... I take a few minutes to bond with her. She shows me something that she made for a class. So instead of just saying "that's nice" I go further. She starts taping to me about anime and Japanese music and pop. I of course know nothing about jpop. But she is really into the convo. She starts talking to me about a singer she likes. So I tell her I will listen. I leave. I come back several minutes later with this singer she likes up on YouTube. She gets a huge smile on her face and starts teaching me and telling me all about the music. The singers are in the same style as Gorrilaz. Aka animated singers. But she was having such a good time. Shine I know nothing of that music I open a webpage about Gorrilaz. She knows of them but is excited that I am going further with her and sharing what I know.
Sometimes taking that extra minute to talk to someone is important. I do not know if it really affected her but it taught me a lesson... Just that excitement she had. Even if it only lasted 5 minutes with her... I know those 5 minutes she was happy.
I went to emart. I do not know if I have typed about this. I am going to build a faux stage for my kids. We do drama presentations and cartoon network presentations. I am going to make a curtain stage so the kids feel like they are really acting! The materials are 70000 for the structure, and I am not sure how much the Fabric will cost. I am hoping not too much. Not only will the kids like it (I have seen kids drawing their princesses on a stage with curtains), I will like it because I like building and making things. It is filling a void that I have... It will also make my school look good, which as cheesy as it seems, is really important to me.
The day was good. No problems in France. No tears. Everything went well. We had show and tell today, and everyone brought something except for Sharon. This of course had the potential for waterworks. Luckily it was avoided because her mom brought her show and tell just in the nick of time.
Emily in Australia cried today and it was my fault. Whenever I catch a student with their shoes of in my class and I can pick up the shoe I make a deal out of it. Sometimes hooding the shoe or doing something silly with it. For repeat offenders I walk the class through the hall but do not allow the shoeless person to wear the shore. Will it was Emily's first time so I was just having fun... She was not feeling it and she cried. People always think it is funny when someone else is going through it... But when they do is different. During lunch I saw her with her shoe off again. I told her to put out back on... It was on faster than I had seen a shoe go on before.
One of my previous afternoon kids was at ecc studying or something. So I talked to her. I saw her on the street last week with a friend. She does not strike me as the person that would be popular in school. Physical traits and personality ones. Almost an outcast type. So... I take a few minutes to bond with her. She shows me something that she made for a class. So instead of just saying "that's nice" I go further. She starts taping to me about anime and Japanese music and pop. I of course know nothing about jpop. But she is really into the convo. She starts talking to me about a singer she likes. So I tell her I will listen. I leave. I come back several minutes later with this singer she likes up on YouTube. She gets a huge smile on her face and starts teaching me and telling me all about the music. The singers are in the same style as Gorrilaz. Aka animated singers. But she was having such a good time. Shine I know nothing of that music I open a webpage about Gorrilaz. She knows of them but is excited that I am going further with her and sharing what I know.
Sometimes taking that extra minute to talk to someone is important. I do not know if it really affected her but it taught me a lesson... Just that excitement she had. Even if it only lasted 5 minutes with her... I know those 5 minutes she was happy.
I went to emart. I do not know if I have typed about this. I am going to build a faux stage for my kids. We do drama presentations and cartoon network presentations. I am going to make a curtain stage so the kids feel like they are really acting! The materials are 70000 for the structure, and I am not sure how much the Fabric will cost. I am hoping not too much. Not only will the kids like it (I have seen kids drawing their princesses on a stage with curtains), I will like it because I like building and making things. It is filling a void that I have... It will also make my school look good, which as cheesy as it seems, is really important to me.
I came home and more or less zoned out until I went to bed. I watched some netflix. I hate being unproductive, but wow... energy is so hard to come by.
Working a desk job is tough. Working a job with all of these kids.... all the while standing and walking all day, and having to keep your energy level really high... it just drains me. Drains me in such a wonderful way.
Working a desk job is tough. Working a job with all of these kids.... all the while standing and walking all day, and having to keep your energy level really high... it just drains me. Drains me in such a wonderful way.
Tuesday May 28th.
No tears today! There were a few instances when I thought someone would cry but I saw that look on their face. I was able to avoid the situation (whichever it was) in order to prevent them from crying!
The day went pretty good. One of my France girls gave me a hello kitty sticker. I do not know if I spoke of this several weeks ago... but Emily in my Australia class gave me a hello kitty sticker on Teachers day, and I put the sticker on the brigde of my glasses. I wore it there. When I cam back after the 4 day weekend we had and I still had it on my glasses, she got so excited! I proceeded to keep it there for the rest of the week. So I did the same thing today with this new hello kitty sticker, but I already know it will not last as long.
I love getting cards from my students. Just simple I love you notes. It really makes me feel happy inside. One of my France girls gave me one today. It said something like I love you, thank you for being nice, you make me feel happy. Last week I got one from one of my Denmark kids. When she writes them, she says I love you 100 times. It is so adorable. I also really love when a student draws a picture and gives it to me. It really just warms the heart. Teachers day was good, and I got a lot of neat stuff... but really if each student just wrote a card for me, I would have been just as happy. I think part of it is just making me feel that I am changing and affecting these kids lives. I know that I am only one of many English teachers they will have and in the long run, there is a good chance I will just be another face in the crowd. But right now... knowing that I am something to them... I love it.
Today was the last day I will be teaching my afternoon Denmark and afternoon Spain (Both Tuesday/Thursday classes). I know the Denmark kids were sad about this. They all really liked me, and I liked them. They are the smartest class in ECC. They all want to be there. They speak good English and try hard. When they found out it was my last day, they wanted to take a picture with me. I definitely did. It was great.
So in this picture there are 3 of them. One has been on vacation for the last month so he was not in it. There is Dan, Sunny, and Torry. These kids had some of the best moments of really 'getting' something. Sunny probably had the most ah-ha moments, but that may be because she was often late to my class and missed the initial teaching. She had to come straight from school which got out at 4:20, which is the same time my class started. These students definitely all had different but developed personalities. Dan was always straight business. He was very serious as a student, though he still liked to have fun. Sunny was definitely one of the happiest students I teach. She almost always had a smile on her face and laughed a lot. Torry was slightly immature, but he got it and always had great answers. It seemed to come very naturally to him. They were excited to learn and were one of the easiest classes for me to teach. I may get re-assigned to them later. Just watching them develop was great. They know what is going on in English, so in my class I was helping them fine tune their skills, and it was amazing to watch.
Today was also my last day with my afternoon Spain class. I think they would have been better if I had better subjects to teach them. I was teaching them vocabulary and read and debate. Vocab is boring and the read and debate class is horrible. The material sucks.
So in this picture we have Sarah, Stella, Amy J, Amy H, Hannah, Charlie, Kevin.
The personalities in the class made it semi cliquish. 3 girls came from another school together (Stella, Hannah, Amy H), so the three of them were always real close. The two boys hung together (Kevin, Charlie). Then there were the 2 other girls. One was an introvert (Amy J) and was fine working and seemed to prefer working alone. The other wanted to be accepted (Sarah) by the 3 that were always together... but was never quite there. So she seemed to end up working with the introvert that seemed like she was more annoyed to be working with someone. The dynamics were slowly starting to shift. Not that the clique was really changing, but it seemed that they were starting to be able able to branch out and connect with others.
After work today, we went out to celebrate the end of open classes (from last week). Ronnie treated all that went out. All that went out, was once again only the foreign teachers. No Korean teachers (except for Stephen, whom is not really a teacher but Ronnies assistant). We went to a chicken place Ronnie likes. Everyone was impressed with how much I could eat... which is definitely a lot. Ronnie kept buying food until I was full. It is great getting to know him outside of school. Same with Stephen. Both have so many interesting stories to tell. We are talking about taking Ronnie out to dinner sometime to treat him. It is against Korean culture (normally the oldest is expected to pay for everyone) but since we are not Korean, we figure that we might as well give it the good old effort. We think he would really like and appreciate it, since it is not something he's used to.
Okay, I have to be up for Wednesday in several hours!!! Thats all for now!
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