school life
I've been taking my camera to work lately, and I've fond that the kids are much less interested in smiling for it when I'm taking the pictures, but much more interested in smiling when they have control. So I handed the camera off to them with a stern warning to be careful with it, and then let them have all the fun they wanted. These are only some of my english classes, as I didn't get a chance to bring my camera to others. I deleted most of the photos, because they were blurry or otherwise not good at all, and here are the ones I kept. Enjoy:
This is one of my grade six blue classes. Each full room is split into three groups for english time, red (best), yellow, and blue (there are three 6th grade homerooms, so 9 different english groups altogether). Usually the blue groups are badly behaved as well as bad at english. Interestingly, the red groups are also badly behaved, mainly because they've been studying so hard on the side that the texts are dead easy and not worth their attention.
These are my grade four students. A great bunch all in all.
They absolutely love to play hangman. The best part is, the person up at the board never really gets to 'win,' he just adds more and more body parts until the others guess the right word. I once used the word 'axe' at the board, and it literally took the class all 26 possible guesses before they got the answer. The hung man had fingers, toes, even a hat and tie.
Speaking of hats... Silly hats are all the rage in Korea. Everybody seems to have one.
The fourth floor hallway, where most of my teaching rooms are (all the grade 6 rooms.)
The viewlooking out the window of the main building. You can see constuction in the bottom left. This is where they are building even more exclusively english classrooms, to go with the five they already have in the school.
One of the smartest kids I know, english name Brian and nicknamed 'brain' by his friends. We've played chess once or twice.
John, aka 'Tuna,' because one day when we were working on verb applications, he pointed out that one can eat, have, own, sell, buy, and even collect tuna, if one really wanted to.
Jenny, Ally, and Mina, the three girls in my 6-1 blue class. They're nice enough, but it's hard to get them to pay attention to anything.
6-1 blue, by a good stretch the worst class I have in terms of english skill. Ally speaks well enough, and she serves as my translator in exchange for good grades on her report card. The rest can barely muster up a basic greeting, let alone follow the grade 6 textbook lessons. Tom, the boy on the right, spends most of the class (and the day) drawing on his desk. The varnish on the desk's wood has actully been erased off from so many hundreds of drawings and erasings.
This is not an english game, but they love it. Basically you throw magnets at the bulls-eye on the board.
6-1 Yellow, the worst behaved class in the school, by my account and everybody elses. I'm their main english teacher. They're nice, albeit loud, as long as they don't have to do anything resembling work. But once the work starts, they kick and scream the whole way through.
My only grade 3 group, very nice kids.
Here you can see two of my older evening students, a couple of high school girls by the names of Kate and Lina (english nicknames, which almost all ESL students have). We leave the stuffy classroom periodically to have coffee or ice cream. Normally this group is 6 or 7 people, but only the two girls showed up on christmas eve when I took this photo.
My personal favorite photo, taken by a student:
Though christmas here is not white (instead briskly cold and sunny), it snowed a week or two ago, which was nice enough. I hope everyone bas home is having a nice holiday season! Merry christmas and a happy new year. Has anyone got any resulations to share? Lord knows I could stand to come up with a few, though finding a good relationship for once needn't be among them anymore.
This is one of my grade six blue classes. Each full room is split into three groups for english time, red (best), yellow, and blue (there are three 6th grade homerooms, so 9 different english groups altogether). Usually the blue groups are badly behaved as well as bad at english. Interestingly, the red groups are also badly behaved, mainly because they've been studying so hard on the side that the texts are dead easy and not worth their attention.
These are my grade four students. A great bunch all in all.
They absolutely love to play hangman. The best part is, the person up at the board never really gets to 'win,' he just adds more and more body parts until the others guess the right word. I once used the word 'axe' at the board, and it literally took the class all 26 possible guesses before they got the answer. The hung man had fingers, toes, even a hat and tie.
Speaking of hats... Silly hats are all the rage in Korea. Everybody seems to have one.
The fourth floor hallway, where most of my teaching rooms are (all the grade 6 rooms.)
The viewlooking out the window of the main building. You can see constuction in the bottom left. This is where they are building even more exclusively english classrooms, to go with the five they already have in the school.
One of the smartest kids I know, english name Brian and nicknamed 'brain' by his friends. We've played chess once or twice.
John, aka 'Tuna,' because one day when we were working on verb applications, he pointed out that one can eat, have, own, sell, buy, and even collect tuna, if one really wanted to.
Jenny, Ally, and Mina, the three girls in my 6-1 blue class. They're nice enough, but it's hard to get them to pay attention to anything.
6-1 blue, by a good stretch the worst class I have in terms of english skill. Ally speaks well enough, and she serves as my translator in exchange for good grades on her report card. The rest can barely muster up a basic greeting, let alone follow the grade 6 textbook lessons. Tom, the boy on the right, spends most of the class (and the day) drawing on his desk. The varnish on the desk's wood has actully been erased off from so many hundreds of drawings and erasings.
This is not an english game, but they love it. Basically you throw magnets at the bulls-eye on the board.
6-1 Yellow, the worst behaved class in the school, by my account and everybody elses. I'm their main english teacher. They're nice, albeit loud, as long as they don't have to do anything resembling work. But once the work starts, they kick and scream the whole way through.
My only grade 3 group, very nice kids.
Here you can see two of my older evening students, a couple of high school girls by the names of Kate and Lina (english nicknames, which almost all ESL students have). We leave the stuffy classroom periodically to have coffee or ice cream. Normally this group is 6 or 7 people, but only the two girls showed up on christmas eve when I took this photo.
My personal favorite photo, taken by a student:
Though christmas here is not white (instead briskly cold and sunny), it snowed a week or two ago, which was nice enough. I hope everyone bas home is having a nice holiday season! Merry christmas and a happy new year. Has anyone got any resulations to share? Lord knows I could stand to come up with a few, though finding a good relationship for once needn't be among them anymore.
Comments
Your absence is felt here. :)
Yea I agree on both counts Colin. I do look out of place a bit. But I'm a decent enough teacher and the kids seem to like me. For the record though, I look awkward in just about every picture I've ever been in. I'm not normally one to express my personality in front of the camera, so a subdued smile is about all I can muster.
A Korean teacher told me that the 'peace' signs aren't peace signs, but that they signify 'victory' or 'good outcomes'... or someting along that line.