ESL Adventures

Teaching in South Korea

Archive for March, 2009

One more class

So Jasmine came in last Friday and informed me that along with Nick and Daniel, I’d be taking the Anderson/Einstein/Dewey speaking and writing class.  *sigh*  Just what I wanted.  Another class.  And not only just another class, another Kindergarten class.  I find they take a whole lot more energy than the elementary school classes.  I just keep telling myself it’s an hour and half of overtime every week.  Thankfully I only teach it three days a week.

I’m teaching reading.  We’ll be reading the various “Classic Tales” books published by Oxford University Press.  Nick is teaching writing.  He’s using the “I Can Write English” series from Happy House.  Daniel is teaching science with the “Blue Planet” series.  I teach the class three days a week, Nick teaches twice a week and Daniel teaches all five days.  Three of us are splittling the class because there weren’t two of us with all five days open in the two afternoon periods.

posted by Kathryn in Little Campus,Reading,Science,Teaching,Writing and have No Comments

I’ve been trained

I went to bed last night.  It dawned on me as I was  lying in bed.   Ivory has me trained.  I was all the way by the wall, basically smushed into the corner.  She was all stretched out on the other part of the bed.

It’s true what they say.  Dogs have owners; cats have servants.

posted by Kathryn in Home Life,Ivory,Just Wow,Off time and have No Comments

Current Schedule

So here’s my current schedule.  I have five kindergarten classes and eight elementary school class.

Our kindergarten naming scheme has changed, and I’m still trying to remember which classes are which.

As far as the classes I teach:

  • Dewey – 7 year olds – Math
  • Sha-Sha – 5 and 6 year olds – Language
  • Picasso – 6 year olds – Language
  • Newton – 6 year olds – Math
  • Einstein – 7 year olds – Phonics and Sight Words
  • A1 – Language and Reading
  • A1 – Special Speaking and Writing
  • A3 – Language and Reading
  • B2 – Math and Science
  • B3 – Math and Science
  • D1 – Language, Social Studies, Reading and Writing
  • D3 – Special Speaking and Writing
  • D6 – Math and Science
My Current Schedule

My Current Schedule

posted by Kathryn in Little Campus,Staff,Teaching and have No Comments

Happy White Day

It’s White Day today.  The streets of Samsondong were crazy packed with couples being lovey dovey.  Oh wait, let me digress a bit.

What is White Day?  Another wonderful Korean Hallmark holiday of course.  White Day falls on March 14th, a month after Valentines Day.  The tradition on Valentines Day is for the women to give candy and gifts to the men.  It’s just the opposite on White Day.

So back to Samsondong.  I had to go to Kidari today to pick up a workbook for my D1 class .  Kidari is right across the street from Lotte Hotel.  There are quite a few little restaurants in that area, including the one I went to lunch at.  The cab driver almost hit about 12 cars on the drive down to Samsondong.  Ugh.  I hate cabs in Korea.  This one section of Samsondong has a bunch of very narrow streets that aren’t really fit for automobile traffic.  So many people.  Not just people.  Couples in Love.  Disgusting.  I was glad to get done what I needed to get done so I could get the heck out of that madness.  On the plus side, lunch was good.  Spicy chicken and rice.  I’ll have to find out what it was called because I just can’t remember.

I got a nice little haul of candy from students yesterday.  I’ll probably end up giving most of it away to kids who come in and chat with me.  I like to reinforce the whole speaking English thing.  Korean Hallmark holidays are good for building up stashes of candy and treats for that.

posted by Kathryn in Celebrations,Holidays,Korea,Off time,Web sites and have Comment (1)

Whoa – Actual Updates

Well, in addition, to being totally busy, I’m also sick.  I actually took a sick day today.  Seriously, I never do that.  The last time I took sick time was when the doctor dumped me in the hospital with pneunomia.  That’s not something I want to repeat.  I picked up a cold, probably from a student, but possibly a coworker.  It so wonderfully turned into a sinus infection last week.  That immediately traveled to my chest and I now have bronchitis.  Oh yeah.  The biggest reason I took off today was because I have no voice.  Like, can’t even whisper no voice.  My ears are also blocked up so I can’t hear much of anything.

So to kind of bring things up to date, we started our new term.  We have a whole batch of new kids and the classes of the returning students have been rearranged.  Again, I get the pleasure (ha!) of teaching the second floor Sha Sha program.  It’s not so bad anymore.  I’ve explained that the books they use for those kids are horrible.  So I read story books and sing songs.  The goal of the program isn’t to get the kids fluent in English.  It’s really just general exposure in letters, sounds, colors and basic vocabulary.  I have a 6 year old class and I have the 5 year old class.  I met the 5 year olds yesterday.  There’s about 15 of them.  One one of them flipped out when he saw me.  Poor little thing, he didn’t want any part of me.  I have a feeling my 3.5 year old self probably wouldn’t have wanted much of anything to do with the adult me either.  I don’t hold it against him.  He’s a little cutie actually.

I have a total of 4 kindergarten classes, plus the Sha Sha classes.  I have 6 classes in the afternoon (2 A classes, 2 B classes, 2 D classes) plus two speaking and writing classes (A1 and D3).

We finally are almost finished with a curriculum.  This involved quite a few hours of meetings, but I think it will benefit everyone.

Ivory is doing well.  When I took her to the vet last week, she had her first set of kitten shots.  She’s still pure white except for a dime sized patch on the top of her head that’s gray (salt-and-pepper really).  She was 1200 grams (2.65 pounds) at her vet visit and she’s about 3 months old.  She’s now eating Hill’s Science Diet for kittens.  She loves it.  She devours it.  In fact, she’s doing that right now.  She loves the little toys on the end of an elastic band.  She goes crazy.  She leaps and twirls.  Ivory still takes up the entire bed.  I’m not sure how a tiny kitten can do that.  But it seems where ever I want to sleep, she’s there.  She’s actually outgrowing the kitten looking stage.  She seems to be growing into her body.  It’s amazing the changes in a few short weeks.  I can’t even imagine life without her.  I still miss Sparkler and Jeepers (my last cat).  Nothing will ever replace them, but Ivory has her own place in my heart.

I’ll post my schedule and I’ll try to get the curriculum posted within the week.

Take care everyone!

posted by Kathryn in Home Life,Ivory,Little Campus,Off time,Teaching and have No Comments

Busy Busy Busy

Life is interesting.  Life is busy.

If this cold clears up by tomorrow, I’ll post a real update about what’s going on over here.

posted by Kathryn in Uncategorized and have No Comments