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.