Today I went to Noam Elementary School, where I will be teaching on Tuesdays and Fridays. It is closer to the city, so the class sizes are larger (5 classes of 30 students). My "team-teacher" at this school is also my "co-teacher" (the person that helps me with everything basically). She let me teach the classes on my own and only intervened for any discipline problems or to help students during the study phase. Sometimes she would have to quiet down the class or explain directions, but that happened less throughout the day as I improved. The classes got a real kick out of me juggling 4 pieces of plastic fruit for them, a great ice-breaker. I feel like I am swimming in a sea of wonderful and lively little foreign beings. They giggle when I try my best to pronounce their names; when their friends tell me each others' name, I can only imagine the dirty words I am unwittingly uttering. One kid was shooting paper bullets with a rubber band, a boy and girl started pushing and punching each other, and some kids were running and hiding. My co-teacher uses a points system and group seating to channel their competitive nature, which mostly works. I am trying to get them to raise their hands and not yell all at once, "HAY HAY HAY HAY...." Basically, karma is biting me in the ___. When I want them to fill in the blank I say, "blah blah blah," and they love that. When they were leaving they said goodbye and bowed, while others would hang onto me, play paper-rock-scissors (kouwi, bouie, boo?) high-five me, or say, "you good teacher, you beautiful, you know my teacher, thank you..."
For lunch we ate rice with kimchi soup, kimchi, chicken with some spicy sauce, bean sprouts, and lukewarm barley tea - much more tasty than it may sound. The whole school progressively lined-up and walked past me as I ate, which was fun. In Korea, their are no janitors because the children clean the classrooms and cafeteria by shifts. The food waste is composted and there are no plastics or paper used during lunch - a very green operation. This school is unique because it has a state-of-the-art "English Zone" where I do all of my teaching. It is a colorful and well-labeled classroom equipped with a huge flat-screen monitor, a blue screen wall with a mounted camera, 2 student computers, a puppet booth and lots of video and book teaching materials. These people are dead serious about teaching English, but they are laid back at the same time. On Tuesday, I will team-teach in a Kindergarten class, which is very rare because usually Guest English Teacher conversational classes begin in the 4th grade. So I feel both lucky and honored to have this opportunity.
On my bus ride home, there was an 18 year-old female student just staring at me, trying to think of stuff to say, which was incredibly awkward. I can only think that she thought I was the bees-knees, but I was to tired to really try to interact. Later, I decided to join taekwondo and pay my dues. I didn't know that would include kicking my foot into the wall when I missed the toy soccer ball. Ouch, throb. Being a small city, I met some of my students from two different schools at the dojang (Korean dojo). We were happy to meet again.
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