Travel Log Korea from the begining and onward
Currently in South Korea.... Join the list by mailing korea@saradevil.com .
| It seems that Mr. Kim's dream of opening a St. Paul franchise will in fact be realized, which may mean that I will have allot more work to do, but one can never tell. Yesterday one of my younger students showed up with her mother around 3:00. This student, Suzy from my POB primary class, is very energetic and really has made excellent progress with English since I started working with her in September. She's very enthusiastic about communicating to me and to others in English, and can be quite a bit of energy when she wants. She obviously feels very comfortable here at school as she always comes in and seeks me out, which includes occasionally walking into my 6:00 class to announce to me and the other students that she has arrived. I find this all amazing considering that at the end of September she had to have eye surgery and has since then been wearing an eye patch. This has not made her any less chatty or social, which makes me very happy. Actually, the day she returned to class I fashioned eye patches for all the students so that we could all be like Suzy. Mom was very worried about Suzy being in school that day, but when she came to pick Suzy up, Mr. Kim opened the class door to show her five students in eye patches and one teacher also with patch, and after that she has always been very happy to see me, and very kind. Suzy's Mom is instrumental in the new school as she has several times brought in parents to meet Mr. Kim, and yesterday she came in with two Mom's and five children who I ended up more or less babysitting for an hour while they talked to Mr. Kim. Either way I expect I will be quite busy over the next month as Mr. Kim is quite sure that everything is a go. In the meantime I'm trying to get all the work done and all the bugs worked out of the program that he wants to use as his franchise, while at the same time trying to redesign the curriculum for upper level classes where student English is poor to middling at best. Mr. Kim says the future of the market is students with middling English skills who are primarily studying to do well on Korean exams and to get into good Korean high schools and I've been charged with the task of figuring out the best method to improve the English of these students. Anyone who wants to suggest anything should feel free to put in some input. Mr. Kim wants them to memorize allot of vocabulary, do allot of writing, and allot of reading, and work less on listening and speaking. I don't know really, but I'm doing what I can with the materials I have, and I suppose I will find out if it is working over the next few weeks. All in all the winter session has begun without much stress for me. My class schedule stayed the same, and I'm not complaining as I have more than enough work to do anyway. Yesterday one of my older more advanced classes figured out how to get an uncooked egg from the top of the school to the street and back again (without breaking or cracking it) using only five pieces of copy paper and tape, and only being able to talk about a solution in English. I was rather pleased with the results and the students had a very good time. Not much else to report. The weather is much, much, colder, and the political climate is still quite cold as well. Most of my students, regardless of their English level, if they are older than twelve will talk about "Bushy". They don't like our president, and are often more than a little surprised when I agree with them. |