11 AM: One of the best things from yesterday was when I was having Question Time and one of the C-levels, Jeongil was stumped on what to ask me. He finally landed on, "Teacher...do you like English?" I was blindsided by the perfection of it. My boy Sanghwa was watching this event, and he lifted his hands to the sky and said, "Oh. Game Over!"
I fell apart, laughing. It was such an apt description of what had happened, and it meantso much to hear something funny from Sanghwa. Points to you, Jeongil. You the man.
And in 2-5, 2-6 with H-Sol today, Giwoong and Hyunmin continue to study my hemline (which is not high) like it's notes for a final exam. However, we got in a lot of meaningful discussion today--I got good speaking practice out of them and I also had a Korean conversation with them about how they're both highly intelligent,but Giwoong does better in class because he speaks more. Hyunmin would excel if he talked a little more. Both boys seemed to respond well to my assessment of their intelligence.
And we also gained some rapport from the fact that I took away Giwoong and Hyunmin's playing-coins and made them sit down when they got up to waddle around aimlessly. Not in a mean way, just in a controlling-the-room way. The boys have gotten to where they just laugh over being put back in their place. They mostly stay put and mostly don't attempt to read comics/play with coins, etc. I'm happy with the way classroom discipline is progressing.
2-1, 2-2 with NG was good, too. It was our first attempt at having the kiddoes do a writing assignment and it failed, but we learned from it--next time, we'll explain the assignment and NG will work with the individual young'uns on it while I do speaking practice with the others. We're going to try that strategy out on the Triple Class this afternoon. Hee hee. Writing assignments for 30 kids--that's going to go beautifully.
But yesterday's Big Class was actually kind of fun. They were loud as a volcano eruption, but they were in happy spirits and I got 3 kids who had never spoken ever to do their practice. I described the class to NG as being like running a very small and unsuccessful nightclub. A tiny, noisy crowd that's almost (but never quite) having fun. And yet I do enjoy them so much--they are charming and it's not their fault that they got smooshed into a class with a billion other students.
I have an open class next month, says Mr. B. But! It's a 1st grade open class. So I have time to plan for it, and it's also my cute little babies, so totally workable.
B-Teacher made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the office. Holla. Lunch always seems so far away.
JY-Teacher tells me that I can maybe have an extra day of summer vacation because I had to work on Labor Day. That will be great--I think I'll be home the first 2 weeks of August. our break is from the 3rd week of July to the 3rd week of August, but most teachers have to teach a bit during that time. I shall know soon.
My afterschool yesterday was fantaaaaastic. I thought it would be so boring, but we did vocab on the Hunger Games, then did a wordsearch and a definition-thing where the boys wrote the Korean version of words like "hunger" and "archery". Then we matched the first 10 minutes of the Hunger Games and I narrated in Korean/English the whole time.
Because last semester, I had 22 kids and only 2 of them were B-level. Now I have 13 and 7 are A, meaning I have half the class who need extra help to connect with the material. But it went along in such a lovely fashion. They were basically enraptured by the story, thinking about the implications of Katniss volunteering to sacrifice herself and save her sister's life.
Before afterschool, my Jaehoon and Daehyun came by to visit me, just because they missed me. They're in Adorable History Teacher's afterschool now, and they say that I teach better than he does, which is flattering but I won't hear any ill words spoken against AHT, because he is wonderful.
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