11 AM: Best day everrr so far.
Morning class with H-Sol and 2nd-graders was amazing. I tried a new method for speaking practice and IT WORKED IT WORKED IT WORKED.
Only took near-about 2 months of failure smackdowns to find anything remotely workable. I talked it over with H-Sol and we had the boys come to the front in pairs, not saying the dialogue for the whole room but saying it for she and I.
They learned the dialogue from a paper I printed out, then they had to say it by filling in the blanks that I'd made on the powerpoint. It worked beautifully, made them use their brains a little, and still wasn't too stressful. H-Sol told me that she felt this was much, much, much better.
Eeeeee. EEEEE! I'm going to do it this way from here on out, I told her. I'm still open to change, but this is the best thing I've lit upon so far. Thank you God, for your many blessings.
3rd-grade class was stunningly awesome. I played them a movie, but most of us played a complicated Western-themed card game in the back of the room. BY ran the game--which he had excitedly told me about the day before. It was me, BY, Kyeongtaek, Sujin, Yoonjae, Yeongjoon, and Myeongkeun--if we'd had Byeonghyun in the circle, it would have been perfect.
The game was insanely complex, but BY was really patient in explaining the rules to me. The other boys were having the time of their lives and we all had the best time together. Daww.
Sanghyeop told me the movie was "no jam" (boring) and I said "no, it's kul jam!" (totally fun) and Heonmin corrected my slang--"kul jam" is okay slang but "honey jam" is even better when you want to say something really intense. I love my rapidly increasing middle-school vocabulary.
In the 2nd-grade class, I surprised Governor-Yunho by remembering that his birthday is next week (it's on my calendar). It's on Monday, when I'll be off school, but I can bring him something on Wednesday. I asked what he wanted. He said anything was fine. I told him I'd get him chocolate.
Seonwoo loves the "Fire and Ice" poem I put up in my office. He comes by all the time and reads it out loud. Today he muttered "Meoshineunde" (it's really cool) and that made me happy. Seonwoo has enough English to know this is a snappy poem.
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2 PM: Day stayed good! I tried out the new speaking-practice technique in class with NG, and it worked pretty well. The boys all got their speaking done, some better than others, and even when they were trying to "cheat" by giving each other words for the dialogue, they were still cooperatively using English, so score. Score, score, score.
At the end, the boys were pretty invested in the paper throwing-star-making activity and stayed right with me for most of it. We didn't have enough time to finish, but they were all up in it and were following each step and asking for help. Guhhh so good. What did I do to deserve a day so good?
After lunch, some 2nd-graders almost skipped lunch because they wanted to play ball with me. When I realized what they were giving up, I told them to scoot along--we'd play later.
I had Lunchtime Games with Jeongmin, Hyunho, Hyo and others. The Twins wanted chess, so I handed the board over to Eungyo. I had a conversation with NG today about how to tell the Twins apart--I can do it and he can't yet, so I told him the ways you can distinguish between them. I didn't add that Eungyo is the crazier of the two and if you see one of them standing still it's almost certainly Eunjae. The times I've seen Eungyo being still are almost nil.
Had to pause blogging because Tall-Giseok came by for Question Time. He's a kid I thought was pure trouble, but he's getting to be my boy gradually. He even stood in front of an ice cream shop last week and waved at me until I noticed him. He's a good one.
Further note: We have a super-long weekend coming up, no school on Monday or Tuesday, so I may not post until Wednesday. Maybe I will, but there's a possibility I shan't, since I'm travelling to the beach for the long weekend, and I'm taking work with me to boot.
I've got to buy a birthday present tonight and spend time with my birthday-friend before hopping on a train to the coast. Then when I come back on Tuesday, I've got another best friend's birthday to do stuff for. It's a fun, happy kind of busy-ness to be involved in.
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3:50 PM Got a few minutes to type before leaving work.
Final class was great--baby 1st-graders were grand. Jiyoon--that's right, JIYOON--appointed himself as the techie in charge of syncing up the subtitles every time they got a teensy bit off. Everyone sat really quietly and enjoyed the movie, except a little crowd of troublemakers who pulled their chairs up around my chair and spent the whole class period asking me questions and shoving each other.
And then there was Jeongmook, who switched seats with another kid so he could hold my hand. And hold it he did--for basically the whole 45 minutes. My boys Dongjoon and Jinhyuk had a million questions and I talked with them while Jeongmook inspected my hand. I'm really glad for the chance to talk with Dongjoon and Jinhyuk, because they seemed so unreachable around the first of the semester.
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