Birthday at work

Haaaappy Birthday to me.

This was the birthday party my office had for me. They're really sweet. They bought me a cake, and sang to me. The kids heard it was my birthday and they sang to me in my first class as well. People don't age on their birthdays. You age on New Years. So, to them, I'm still 27. That's why there are 2 tall candles and 7 short candles.

And on top of my cake,

there were oranges, cherries, grapes, mellon...
and tomatoes!

The P.E. Teacher, aka "Mr Funny Guy #1" (I never found out his real name), wanted to put icing on my nose. I kept resisting, and he thought it was because

I was afraid of the cream... I was trying to get him to use a different finger. I explained after.

Open Class

Songwoo Joong Hakyo Open Class

How would you like to see exactly how I *never* actually teach? OK not exactly *never*. But usually I have 20 kids, not 40. But the most important part is that I never have a co teacher. I do everything myself. In this lesson, we try to make it look like we teach side by side on a regular basis. We don't. I see her once every week or two, in one or two classes, where she does discipline. Mostly we split the classes in to two groups, which works out well for both of us.

"You cannot (objectively) observe something without changing it in the process." Even more so when there are 30 people observing it, and there's a video camera. At first the kids are petrified, but eventually forget about it and enjoy the game. These are the highest level kids in the school.

The schools in Korea host these "open classes" where teachers from around their district come and observe a class, and then give feedback. Everyone really loved our class, and the principal and VP were glowing with pride at their trained monkeys (Wendy and I). This is the "Open Class" my co-teacher and I did for Song-woo Middle School. I had to cut it in to 6 pieces to be able to upload it, because the file was too large.

1) Introduction: Asking about the date, and which holiday it was, and if they can guess what we'll talk about.

2) My presentation: What is thanksgiving? What do we eat? What do we do? Crossword Puzzle.

3) Wendy's Presentation: What is Chuseok?

4) Comparing Thanksgiving and Chuseok: We spent about 3 minutes walking around talking to the kids, and making sure they were actually writing things down. Mostly the kids had no idea how to spell "August" or "Thursday" or "November.

5) Quiz Show: We quizzed them about the vocabulary and different traditions. This wasn't my idea, this was all Wendy's idea. It went over really well.

6) Summary: What did we learn today? What will we do next class?

And that's all folks!!!

This is a lesson I did on road signs.

First we talked about the difference between "You may" and "You must", then went on to "You must not" and "no..."

Then I showed them about 20 signs and they guessed the meaning, and then made a sentence (No pets, You may camp here, You must stop, You must not touch this)

Then I gave them all bingo cards, and we played Bingo for about 15 minutes. The kids loved it. Since I was just picking out and reading the names of signs, I decided to take a short video of the class. This is my actual classroom, though I only teach here about half the time.

Pocheon Middle School "Special" class

We needed some English Artwork to display at the upcoming festival. These are some of the pictures that we'll hang up. Actually only about 18 kids out of a school of 500 got to even try to make the art work. They chose the 18 best, most likely to create excellent work. Kind of like having a competition, but only letting the top 1% of your school enter. Anyway... this is the result of an early morning english art class. I was really impressed at how well they did!

(1st years project)



This is the first year kids project. They had a "main" topic (Summer/Fall/Birthday/Vacation/etc) and then they wrote down as many words as they could think of that were associated with that topic... (Summer - Sun, Skirt, Icecream, Hot, Sun) then make a shape and instead of using lines, use words.

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(2nd year project)

This is the second year students project. They created their own comic-book super-hero. They wrote about their powers/abilities, and who they would help, and fight against, and what their name would be. The picture at the top is their super-hero's symbol.
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(3rd year project)

This is the third year's project. They used their names, and then thought of things about themselves that began with each letter of their name. For example some of the kids wrote things like "J - Jamboree; I am a party animal!", "L - Lovely; I am a lovely girl", "U - Unique; I am the only one like me in the world". Then they tried to make a small picture that represented what they'd said.

Class in the English Lab

This class is in the computer lab. The kids were still coming in.

Me: Who is coming?
Kids: (speaking Korean)
Me: In English!
Kids: Is, Sanghoon, is, yongoh, not come! (yongoh = English class)
Kids: (Arguing in Korean)
Me: He's not coming now? Or he is coming? Say "He is coming"
Kids: He is coming!
Me: We will wait for him then. Sit down please.

Introducing the topic to the class. It's a lot of repeating and gestures and they still only got the idea of a computer game in English.

Panning around the room while they are playing the game. It's called "Bookworm Adventures" It's a really cute game, and the kids love it. You spell words to fight against monsters. Longer words do more damage. You go up in level and get special treasures and abilities.

I'm trying to teach the kids to memorize a few phrases in English to use in the classroom. They usually say "Teacha! Teacha! Hep!". She's saying "Teacha, can, I, can you, can, can you hep me pleez? This what?"

Girl: Lex, is crazy?
Me: What do you say?
Girl: Can you help me, please?
Me; Yes. OK, now what is it?
Girl: Lex, light, what?
Me: Likes what? You mean, oh oh oh! OK.
Girl: What Lex, light?
Me: Can you see this?
Girl: Yes
Me: That means, he is getting burned.
Girl: Bund?
Me: Fire. Yea, like "fire is burning"?
Girl: ok, OK!

Where is she?

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My street. I live above a chicken soup restaurant. Next door is a duck restaurant. The next shop down is a dog meat restaurant.

This is my "Villa". I don't know why they call it that. This is the typical housing for people who are starting out, or who don't have kids. This is, obviously, my bed and windows.

Panning around, this is my bed and desk. You can see the laundry room behind.

This is the enterance/kitchen. You can just see the outline of the bathroom door between the kitchen and the front door.

My two standing closets, and a pair of chests that my friend gave me, stacked on top of eachother. Also a massive plant of some kind that so far I have succeeded in not killing.

This is my tiny kitchen. It's a bit hard to cook in here, because there's not really any counter space. Or storage space. Or space to turn around. But so far I've been pretty sucessful in making decent food.

The secret to my social sucess here in Korea... (just kidding... kind of) an

actual oven. Other western teachers envy the luxury of a real microwave and oven combination. I've had several westerners over for dinner, making roast chicken, casseroles, muffins and other baked goods.

Behind my house there is a small hill with a really beautiful walking path, picnic tables, and exercize equipment. When I'm not in a hurry I walk this way to get to my school.

Pocheon Middle School had a festival to celebrate their fall semester. It was a really big deal for the kids. They hung up all the art work and projects the kids have done for the last year, and had two days of games, competitions, tallent shows and class presentations. It was quite fun, but very noisy. This is the first year class, banging orange noise makers that are very popular in Korea.

The pictures and little houses on the table were all made by the kids. Not in *my* classes, obviously! I was surprised at how good a lot of their work was.

They had a competition for jumping rope. They had different classes, and groups of kids, all jumping. They counted how many times they could jump before someone made a mistake. These kids got up near 40 I think, I can't hear what he said exactly.


It's difficult to tell what they are doing at first, watch through to the end. One student is running across the backs of his classmates. There are actually 3 classes running at once, this is the first year class. They won. The kids are yelling "il-ban-fighting" (First years, fighting!)

Koreans are trying very hard to learn English. Or rather, as my students say "We are study hardly!" This is a company moto, printed in large letters, on the back of a company car.

There are many ways of saying "Congratulations", or "Thank You". But in Korea, you can say it with a nice SPAM gift set. Six cans of SMAM and two bottles of cooking oil make a great impression. Only 29,000 won (about $29 USD). To the right it is the canned Tuna and SPAM gift set.

Space is a really big problem in Korea. They have about 20,000,000 people in the greater Seoul area. Roughly half of their entire population! This is a convenience store with Valet Parking.

Usually they have squat toilets here. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the toilets in Korea have been switched over to western style. Some places have these signs to help Koreans adjust to the new equipment.

If you look closely, you'll notice that the angry puppy with the bone in his mouth is sitting in a pot. Korean's believe that dog meat gives men "stamina".