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!!!