So far my life in Korea has been characterized by a whirlwind of activities, events, and experiences. If I'm not working, I'm traveling. If I'm not traveling, I'm seeing other teachers around town. If I'm not with other foreigners, I'm at home working on lessons. If I'm not working on lessons, I'm planning on traveling. And somewhere in there I fit in sleep, food, and the occasional contact with the motherland. Almost every waking moment is crammed with some sort of activity, seeing someone, going somewhere, doing something.
With few exceptions, this week being one of those exceptions. This week my obligations have suddenly dissipated, leaving me with an exceptional amount of free time. I was informed by my co-teacher that this week is Mid-Terms for the entire school. So all my regular Middle School classes are being handled by him. I only have to teach two after school classes during Monday and Tuesday. I'll still have a full set of classes at my Elementary Schools later this week. But I suddenly have a good eight hours of nothing but office time for three days straight. Not only that, but with lessons already prepared for this week, I don't even need to prepare for Middle School classes that are after Chuseok!
So am I getting ahead on planning?
No, I'm blogging,
But who can blame me? All work and no write makes Mg a rather pathetic excuse for a blogger.
Anyway, it comes to characterize something I've discovered about my life in Korea. Namely that as an expat I'm either doing a million things at once, or next to nothing. It feels like I'm in a stop and go traffic jam, only I go from 0 to 60 and back to 0 almost often enough to make me sick! It's hard to establish rhythm in Korea, a blessing and a curse. There are moments of spectacular fun and activity, where I couldn't enjoy myself more. And there are sleepy Sundays where there is nowhere to go and nothing to do, days that are lonely and long with plenty of procrastination.
I sincerely believe every person needs a certain amount of time to fritter away. It's kind of like meditation, an act with essentially no purpose, yet people derive great benefit from it. I am a champion of wasting time (just look at how many pages I've written in my novel since I got here: 0) but I am unaccustomed to having opportunities to waste at such odd and irregular times. But I guess that characterizes a lot of expat experiences in Korea, which is why they warn teachers to be flexible. Things change on a whim around here (or at least it seems that way when you have no idea what half your coworkers say)
But that's what life feels like right now in Korea, 0 to 60 then 0 again. A stutter-step, stop-go experience with only a few random moments to breathe.
But man is it fun....
Monday, September 24, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
When meaning is lost BECAUSE of translation
I must confess, my "Advanced" English class is a bit of a farce. I am beyond certain that they are there because they have no choice, especially because at least 6 of the 13 girls I teach for two hours every two weeks haven't the faintest idea what I'm saying when I speak.
It doesn't help that I have NO CLUE what to do with these girls. As much as I appreciate my posh position in my Middle School, I must admit I have been thrown into a school system mid-semester without any plan or advice about how to proceed. All I have been told to do is get these girls to speak English when I'm with them... easier said than done.
In this, my fantastically equipped English lab has come to be a bane to any effective form of communication. I swear keeping these kids' attention is like herding a crap-load of kittens on a caffeine high! My lab is equipped with a plethora of computers, most of which emerge from the students' desks. Sadly the interactive white board that the lab also possesses does not work, and without a projector, I am deprived of one of the only teaching tools I was actually taught how to use! (said tool is MS PowerPoint by the way)
So, and "Advanced" class that can't use slide shows, videos, or visuals of any kind. Plus, most of them have little to listening ability. At least 3 look at me blankly when I ask them to say a single word.
And again, giving Middle School girls computers is a TERRIBLE idea if you want them to listen to you at all. Leave them to themselves, they flop down on their desks and idly click away or they play games, almost oblivious to the world around them. It takes them about a minute and a half to find the working computers once entering a room. It's remarkable really, I unplugged most of the computers in the room and it still took them no time to find the working computers! They even got wise that a few were unplugged and got them working again.... I feel the only way to get them offline is to collect all of the ethernet cables from around the room and hide them. I'd say this is a ridiculous situation, but to be perfectly frank I wasn't too different as a Middle Schooler. I mean I plowed through all my work to find time for myself and what I wanted to do rather than invest myself in the classroom experience. I honestly can't blame these girls for writing me off, especially when they don't understand me.
Anyway, this post is not about the work ethic of my 'Advanced' students, this is a story that caught me off guard. Today's task was to "make a movie pitch." The goal was to get them to come up with a story for a movie, providing details about characters, places, etc. After 20 minutes I was able to express that story = scenario and that characters were people. 8 minutes later they return to say they don't understand. So I broke down and told them to write down details in Korean first, then translate in English. I allowed them to look up words with Google (not that I was fooled for one second that's what they were using the computer for, but we were all that age once).
So after another 30 minutes I went around and looked at what my students had come up with. One had thought of a fairly serious story of an aspiring young singer, poor, who rises up to compete with other musical students. She does well, but is in competition with another singer in her class. In the end she tragically dies after a slew of "harsh comments." Since it was a story I rolled with it, told them good work and moved on.
My other group of girls had a story about an egg. An egg that dreams that it rides a spaceship to the moon where it meets and alien. The egg goes "Ahh!" waking itself up from the dream, and the egg's mother asks her why she screamed. End story.
Needless to say, I laughed with them, smiled and moved to my last group.
Perhaps my most stubborn group, this last group of four girls had scribbled some words on the worksheet and explained in broken English their story.
"Girl is addicted to computer games" they said.
"Ok, that's a story...." I moved on the list and saw their characters had no names, the location of their story was SCHOOL, the time NOW. I blinked and looked at the mishmash of English and Hanguel letters on bottom of the page where I asked "What is the ending of the story? Is there a surprise?"
This is what I get for offering a 'creative' assignment:
Their response read something like, "girl kills mother, she transgender and had both father mother was other girl's dad so she gets slapped."
I blinked a few times at reading that and looked suspiciously at their computer, set to Google translate.
"Uhhhh," I said, searching for words. "I'm not sure if that's what you meant to say."
The four girls look at me for a moment before emphatically gesturing to the computer. The next 8 minutes were spent typing and retyping their story's surprise ending, trying to understand what they were getting at....
Needless to say we didn't get very far, I had a hard time deciding how to approach the transgender part of their surprise ending. Not because it was an unusual choice in plot twists, but I wasn't sure how to have them understand the difference between gender and sex. (Yes, I confess. Making that distinction was more important to me than actually getting them to use English correctly). Needless to say they still don't know, and I still am not sure how to explain to a 15 year old Korean girl what transgender actually means. I sincerely hope I don't have to, but I have become a bit wiser about setting a bunch of Middle School kids loose on the internet, even if it is only to translate words into English....
It doesn't help that I have NO CLUE what to do with these girls. As much as I appreciate my posh position in my Middle School, I must admit I have been thrown into a school system mid-semester without any plan or advice about how to proceed. All I have been told to do is get these girls to speak English when I'm with them... easier said than done.
In this, my fantastically equipped English lab has come to be a bane to any effective form of communication. I swear keeping these kids' attention is like herding a crap-load of kittens on a caffeine high! My lab is equipped with a plethora of computers, most of which emerge from the students' desks. Sadly the interactive white board that the lab also possesses does not work, and without a projector, I am deprived of one of the only teaching tools I was actually taught how to use! (said tool is MS PowerPoint by the way)
So, and "Advanced" class that can't use slide shows, videos, or visuals of any kind. Plus, most of them have little to listening ability. At least 3 look at me blankly when I ask them to say a single word.
And again, giving Middle School girls computers is a TERRIBLE idea if you want them to listen to you at all. Leave them to themselves, they flop down on their desks and idly click away or they play games, almost oblivious to the world around them. It takes them about a minute and a half to find the working computers once entering a room. It's remarkable really, I unplugged most of the computers in the room and it still took them no time to find the working computers! They even got wise that a few were unplugged and got them working again.... I feel the only way to get them offline is to collect all of the ethernet cables from around the room and hide them. I'd say this is a ridiculous situation, but to be perfectly frank I wasn't too different as a Middle Schooler. I mean I plowed through all my work to find time for myself and what I wanted to do rather than invest myself in the classroom experience. I honestly can't blame these girls for writing me off, especially when they don't understand me.
Anyway, this post is not about the work ethic of my 'Advanced' students, this is a story that caught me off guard. Today's task was to "make a movie pitch." The goal was to get them to come up with a story for a movie, providing details about characters, places, etc. After 20 minutes I was able to express that story = scenario and that characters were people. 8 minutes later they return to say they don't understand. So I broke down and told them to write down details in Korean first, then translate in English. I allowed them to look up words with Google (not that I was fooled for one second that's what they were using the computer for, but we were all that age once).
So after another 30 minutes I went around and looked at what my students had come up with. One had thought of a fairly serious story of an aspiring young singer, poor, who rises up to compete with other musical students. She does well, but is in competition with another singer in her class. In the end she tragically dies after a slew of "harsh comments." Since it was a story I rolled with it, told them good work and moved on.
My other group of girls had a story about an egg. An egg that dreams that it rides a spaceship to the moon where it meets and alien. The egg goes "Ahh!" waking itself up from the dream, and the egg's mother asks her why she screamed. End story.
Needless to say, I laughed with them, smiled and moved to my last group.
Perhaps my most stubborn group, this last group of four girls had scribbled some words on the worksheet and explained in broken English their story.
"Girl is addicted to computer games" they said.
"Ok, that's a story...." I moved on the list and saw their characters had no names, the location of their story was SCHOOL, the time NOW. I blinked and looked at the mishmash of English and Hanguel letters on bottom of the page where I asked "What is the ending of the story? Is there a surprise?"
This is what I get for offering a 'creative' assignment:
Their response read something like, "girl kills mother, she transgender and had both father mother was other girl's dad so she gets slapped."
I blinked a few times at reading that and looked suspiciously at their computer, set to Google translate.
"Uhhhh," I said, searching for words. "I'm not sure if that's what you meant to say."
The four girls look at me for a moment before emphatically gesturing to the computer. The next 8 minutes were spent typing and retyping their story's surprise ending, trying to understand what they were getting at....
Needless to say we didn't get very far, I had a hard time deciding how to approach the transgender part of their surprise ending. Not because it was an unusual choice in plot twists, but I wasn't sure how to have them understand the difference between gender and sex. (Yes, I confess. Making that distinction was more important to me than actually getting them to use English correctly). Needless to say they still don't know, and I still am not sure how to explain to a 15 year old Korean girl what transgender actually means. I sincerely hope I don't have to, but I have become a bit wiser about setting a bunch of Middle School kids loose on the internet, even if it is only to translate words into English....
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Some pictures of my school
For the visual learner (which according to some theorists is everyone with operating ocular organs) here are some pictures of where I spend three days of my work week. This school is actually a combination of both Middle and High Schools. The Middle School is the visible portion in these pictures (stage right), and the High School is to the larger portion of the facility left of the tall connecting structure. I have been informed that the High School also contains dormitories for its students, however all of mine return home each day. It is a good school, the students are nice, I just need more to connect wit them... but that's another blog post entirely. Enjoy the pictures!
 |
| Hey kids! It's a School! |
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| More importantly, the view behind the school! |
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| Definitely not in Kansas anymore... |
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| I mean seriously, who wants Kansas when you have this kind of awesome? |
Well that's all the photos for now! Back to Korean adventures (also known as sleep)....
On the other side of the After School Experience....
I admit, I've always wondered what it would be like being the teacher
in an after school program. In my academic career I've always enjoyed
my extracurricular activities, from Jr. High Speech Team to the IUPUI
Religious Studies Student Association. These after school events have
always been a boon to me, plus a great time to hang out with friends.
It's always been something I've done voluntarily and for my own
betterment in my own manner. Kind of a personal development inside a
social life, though that may be overplaying the existential quality of
extracurricular activities...
In any case,
Now that it's my turn as the sponsor for an after school program, I admit, it's not what I expected. Needless to say, I never dreamed about doing ESL until about a year ago, and even then I didn't really consider what after school classes would be like.
So far, I only teach after school classes twice a week for my middle school. One of these classes, is just a regular English class (only I don't have my co-teacher backing me up). The second type of after school class I do is the advanced English students, or so I was told. More on that later
My first experience was with the second of my third year middle school classes.
(note: In Korea, they restart counting the grades in each new educational institution. So, there are grades 1st-6th in elementary, but grades 1-3 in middle school, high school also starts out at 1st year, etc) Needless to say, I had only planned on playing games with them, maybe coaxing some excitement out of them. Who knows? Maybe they'd take to learning English?
Oh naivete thy name is ... well... naivete... or Clarence, depends on who you ask. But I failed to realize the major issue with any language learning experience: understanding instructions. The first game I played, failed miserably. Needless to say, the number of students who can understand English well enough to listen are few, and the number who care to listen is even fewer. Thankfully I was able to rope them back in with the promise of a new game! Again the instructions failed me. I was attempting to teach them "A ship comes loaded." It's a type of telephone game where a student says "A ship comes loaded..." and the next student replies "with what?" the initial student then says any item that starts with a certain letter, say A. So a student would say, "with apples." The student who asked "with what?" then turns and says to the next student "a ship comes loaded..." the dialog is the same only the student says the ship comes loaded "with apples and (insert noun)"
Basically the game builds on itself teams being awarded points for remembering things in the right order.
I tried for 10 minutes to get them to respond to "a ship comes loaded..." Eventually they caught on that I wanted them to say a word starting with a certain letter. So I let them just pass along lists of words, they rarely kept it in the right order, but they were speaking English (and cheating like crazy, but who didn't at that age). But they were playing the game and happily competing. One team got wise about the instructions (or lack thereof, as I'd scrapped all instruction in order to get a reaction) and asked for the letter E. To which the first student said "Eighty!" as his word, his partner cried out "Eighty, Eighty-one!"
I'd have to say it's my first experience of being proud of my students. They not only knew their numbers, but were clever enough to cheat as a team! Crafty little kids, I was a little sad to cut them off at Eighty-three, unfair advantage in my opinion.
This game managed to salvage what time I had left in my last class. Not sure what I accomplished, but they seemed to have fun. It made me curious for my next, more advanced class, would go.
My advanced class, as I was told, consists of 13 students. Well, 13 girls that is. For an advanced class I must admit that there is about the same proportion of students who could and could not communicate in English as any other class I've taught. Even still, I did the usual so far. Introduced myself, let them ask questions about me, gave the usual answers. (Korean kids tend to ask the following questions in approximately the following order: Where you from? How old are you? How tall are you? Do you have girlfriend/wife? Do you want a girlfriend? You like singer? Do you speak Korean? etc. etc.) It is almost impressive how consistently students ask me these questions.
I have issues with this class, not just the usual lack of initiative and communication, but that it was my first time teaching in the English classroom.
Note: The English classroom in my middle school is far and away one of the best equipped classrooms I've ever seen. It contains a smart board (currently broken :( computers with every two seats, plus additional computers along the wall, and an additional room with materials for class. If there was any doubt in my mind that Korean schools were willing to funnel outrageous amounts of money into English education, this has dispelled all doubts.
Not only does this classroom have computers, but the computer monitors slide down into the desks themselves, so half of my class had the screens slightly visible and were clicking away during the whole period. One girl even walked in and announced, "a computer! Teacher I love you!" I admit, that certainly did not bode well in my mind as a good way to start the class. Even still, my students paid a little attention enough to ask a few questions and play Pictionary at the front of the class. Like most classes so far only half could successfully participate and only a few were actually interested. However, I asked them what they wanted to work on and eventually pried a "make a movie!" out of a few of them, so I think I'll try to structure some film making classes and maybe get some participation out of them... we'll see.
So there you have it, my first time on the other side of after school activities. Granted, I realize my after school work here in Korea is of a wholly different mentality than in the States. Back home, student opted to do extracurricular activities on their own initiative. Whereas here, it is another part of the mandatory school day. Even still, I hope I can create a rewarding experience for these students, and perhaps get some satisfactory teaching experience out of it myself.
In any case,
Now that it's my turn as the sponsor for an after school program, I admit, it's not what I expected. Needless to say, I never dreamed about doing ESL until about a year ago, and even then I didn't really consider what after school classes would be like.
So far, I only teach after school classes twice a week for my middle school. One of these classes, is just a regular English class (only I don't have my co-teacher backing me up). The second type of after school class I do is the advanced English students, or so I was told. More on that later
My first experience was with the second of my third year middle school classes.
(note: In Korea, they restart counting the grades in each new educational institution. So, there are grades 1st-6th in elementary, but grades 1-3 in middle school, high school also starts out at 1st year, etc) Needless to say, I had only planned on playing games with them, maybe coaxing some excitement out of them. Who knows? Maybe they'd take to learning English?
Oh naivete thy name is ... well... naivete... or Clarence, depends on who you ask. But I failed to realize the major issue with any language learning experience: understanding instructions. The first game I played, failed miserably. Needless to say, the number of students who can understand English well enough to listen are few, and the number who care to listen is even fewer. Thankfully I was able to rope them back in with the promise of a new game! Again the instructions failed me. I was attempting to teach them "A ship comes loaded." It's a type of telephone game where a student says "A ship comes loaded..." and the next student replies "with what?" the initial student then says any item that starts with a certain letter, say A. So a student would say, "with apples." The student who asked "with what?" then turns and says to the next student "a ship comes loaded..." the dialog is the same only the student says the ship comes loaded "with apples and (insert noun)"
Basically the game builds on itself teams being awarded points for remembering things in the right order.
I tried for 10 minutes to get them to respond to "a ship comes loaded..." Eventually they caught on that I wanted them to say a word starting with a certain letter. So I let them just pass along lists of words, they rarely kept it in the right order, but they were speaking English (and cheating like crazy, but who didn't at that age). But they were playing the game and happily competing. One team got wise about the instructions (or lack thereof, as I'd scrapped all instruction in order to get a reaction) and asked for the letter E. To which the first student said "Eighty!" as his word, his partner cried out "Eighty, Eighty-one!"
I'd have to say it's my first experience of being proud of my students. They not only knew their numbers, but were clever enough to cheat as a team! Crafty little kids, I was a little sad to cut them off at Eighty-three, unfair advantage in my opinion.
This game managed to salvage what time I had left in my last class. Not sure what I accomplished, but they seemed to have fun. It made me curious for my next, more advanced class, would go.
My advanced class, as I was told, consists of 13 students. Well, 13 girls that is. For an advanced class I must admit that there is about the same proportion of students who could and could not communicate in English as any other class I've taught. Even still, I did the usual so far. Introduced myself, let them ask questions about me, gave the usual answers. (Korean kids tend to ask the following questions in approximately the following order: Where you from? How old are you? How tall are you? Do you have girlfriend/wife? Do you want a girlfriend? You like singer? Do you speak Korean? etc. etc.) It is almost impressive how consistently students ask me these questions.
I have issues with this class, not just the usual lack of initiative and communication, but that it was my first time teaching in the English classroom.
Note: The English classroom in my middle school is far and away one of the best equipped classrooms I've ever seen. It contains a smart board (currently broken :( computers with every two seats, plus additional computers along the wall, and an additional room with materials for class. If there was any doubt in my mind that Korean schools were willing to funnel outrageous amounts of money into English education, this has dispelled all doubts.
Not only does this classroom have computers, but the computer monitors slide down into the desks themselves, so half of my class had the screens slightly visible and were clicking away during the whole period. One girl even walked in and announced, "a computer! Teacher I love you!" I admit, that certainly did not bode well in my mind as a good way to start the class. Even still, my students paid a little attention enough to ask a few questions and play Pictionary at the front of the class. Like most classes so far only half could successfully participate and only a few were actually interested. However, I asked them what they wanted to work on and eventually pried a "make a movie!" out of a few of them, so I think I'll try to structure some film making classes and maybe get some participation out of them... we'll see.
So there you have it, my first time on the other side of after school activities. Granted, I realize my after school work here in Korea is of a wholly different mentality than in the States. Back home, student opted to do extracurricular activities on their own initiative. Whereas here, it is another part of the mandatory school day. Even still, I hope I can create a rewarding experience for these students, and perhaps get some satisfactory teaching experience out of it myself.
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