So when I first arrived in Korea, I started an expat series on my GRRRLTRAVELER blogsite called, Just Show Me Pictures, dealing with the frustrations a newly arrived expat has with learning a new language in a foreign culture.
I actually derived the series from this ppt presentation I did for my Teacher & Adult English classes. There's no sound-- it's really a powerpoint presentation which I walk through and elaborate on with personal stories, such as the fact I washed my hair with Korean conditioner for 2 weeks thinking it was shampoo!~ This is a very short presentation but it's definitely one of my favorites.
Here's a pdf version download (roughly 40MB) of my ppt in the case anyone wants to use it.
The above checklist worksheet is something I passed out to my teachers at the beginning of class. It's a list of subjects they might want to learn and I have my teachers mark or rate what their preference for topics.
First Class teaching Teacher's English
I really didn't know what to prepare or what to expect.
I spoke to other EPIKers as to how they were handling their Teaching Teacher's English class. EPIKer Anika had some great tips as she was excited about teaching her teachers and had several lessons worked out. Her checklist above is what I thought was brilliant.
Extracting answers from my Koreans teachers
A class needs a curriculum for structure and when you can't teach from a textbook, this can be hard--
I will be the one creating the textbook, the Powerpoint presentations and possibly worksheets. Getting teachers' interest is a way to form a curriculum.
But if you ask adults for their ideas or interests, it's like asking to be frustrated by the response of silence. Getting my teachers to speak about their personal goals or expectations for the class wasn't easy. Many of them were either, too shy to express what they want; and some, I suspect didn't quite know what they wanted out of the class either.
Asking for ideas from your students? No.
Bad idea.
It was a god-send that I printed out the above questionnaire in advance as a safety solution. I had the students fill them out in class and voila! I have a direction to shape my class curriculum.
Class #1: Activity : Give students an article and generate a class discussion from it
Didn't quite have faith in this activity but it was recommended by another EPIKER. I hear some EPIKers will pass out articles for students to read and generate class discussions from. I find this a bit droll but it was my first class and I didn't have a safe springboard.
In the U.S. many of us women have at least done one in our lifetime. This is a more extended answer of a questionnaire (no spicy content or choices to choose from. I have students choose from the list of questions to Ask/Answer Are you a Cosmo Girl/Guy? to other students when they do this. They do it for 3 minutes and rotate partners.
- I got this from some teacher's idea site (I wish I could remember so that I could give them credit; I think he was an EPIKer). The questionnaire was named something else, but seeing as I was starting my class on the subject of Gossip & Glamour, this was a nice continuation.
Finally, time for my introduction
My extendedversion of my Powerpoint Introduction to the Teachers, spoke a bit about my challenges in learning the Korean language.
A video of my first day at Anil Elementary School (short & sweet- I threw it together very quickly at the last-minute...)
There was no "teaching" on my first day of school and essentially the rest of the week. My job has been to sit in our English teacher's office room and browse through textbooks. So I volunteered to do a Learning about Introductions presentation for my classes, to escape boredom and to finally see some of my kids. Apparently, on Facebook, some others are experiencing the same sitting-around thing. It sounds as if many co-teachers aren't prepared to have to work with us or are just as new to teaching English as we are.
I help teach 3rd-6th grade and there are 4 classes per grade, so essentially, I teach 16 classes a week. I have 3 different co-teachers I have to work with and only 2 have experience teaching English. They say flexibility is key in Korea - how their teachers are thrown different responsibilities at the last minute is an example. I am one of those responsibilities for my main co-teacher and the English teacher without experience was really a music teacher until last year.
The English teacher's office
First Day Introductions
Hello, You're a Celebrity on the School News Channel My school introduced me via video broadcast. Our school has a broadcast room and when they introduced me via video camera, I had to perform a short bow so that the students could see me on the computer web-cast/projection screen in their classroom. While this may seem spectacular by western standards, for Koreans, its nothing out of the ordinary. The Korean school system seems to be a little more technologically advanced in their own way; and while teachers may not all be tech-saavy, they can all teach via Powerpoint presentations. I guess you could say the Korean classroom has the tools of a typical American business.
The Welcome Lunch Being a new inductee to the school, me and a handful of other newbie teachers and school staff were treated to a welcome lunch by our Principal and Vice Principal. During lunch period, we walked over to a nearby restaurant. My co-teacher was um..."uninvited", which embarassed and miffed her a bit- she would have taken it as an honor; but my Principal is a soft-spoken and elderly lady who makes you smile inside and her English isn't bad either. We spoke on the way over to the restaurant and I sat next to her. Oddly however, it was our Vice Principal who sat at the head of the table and posed a more intimidating seal to crack. Sandwiched proudly between my Principal and V.P. on the left side of the table, it was the right hand seat of the VP which seemed to be the senior and honored seat (I'm guestimating...). The new 6th grade home room teacher who was seated there mock-declined her seat in the standard "Please, please...I'm not worthy..." Asian way. She looked sweet yet was dressed in a bit of an authoritative, manish way- a suit with a tie- and took command of certain traditional things that I would have not known, like pouring drinks, etc... She was definitely the right right-hand.
Other EFL teachers on my EPIK Daegu groups on Facebook experienced drinking soju, dinner partying and noribanging (aka going to karaoke) with their Principals and co-teachers. Not here. The air was stiff at our lunch table to the point of making me forget how to use chopsticks! There was light conversation, but only in reply to the seniors when they would speak. It was a meek, serious and quiet bunch... still, I was very grateful they weren't into getting plastered and noribanging (those were two rumored things I was actually dreading)!
My 1st day name cheat sheet (all the names which would be bad not to know)
The Challenge of Memorizing Korean names Unlike the Western culture in which each person is called either by their first or last name; in Korea, each person essentially has 3 names- a family and a two-legged surname (or last name, first-first.. something like that). For instance:
Principal: Choi, Jung-Hye Vice Principal: Jung, Yong-Suk Main Co-Teacher: Kim, Eun-Hyung Co-Teacher #2: Kim, Soo-Mi Co-Teacher #3: Lee, Hyun-Jeong
That's a brain-full for the first day. Seeing as I'm new and obviously will have trouble remembering them all, I've been allowed to call a teacher by her first name (at least that's one down) and if a teacher is really nice and excited about my being there, then she might even give me a English name to call her by, if she has one. I've only gotten one English name and it's Angelina (I think you can figure out where that name comes from, so I'm actually going to try my hardest to remember her real name)
For my first week of elementary school EFL, I wasn't expected to teach.
Still, I thought I'd do an Introduction in Powerpoint anyways. Afterall, my kids will want to know about me anyways, and because I have pictures/video to share of where I'm from, I'd like to get them engaged from the start.
The first lessons for the Korean elementary school year is always about "Making Introductions" anyways.So my co-teachers loved the idea and the fact it roughly took 10 minutes of classroom time.
Hopefully you can open it but if you can't, please email me and I'll send it to you. Good luck to all you teachers.
Fighting!
Classroom Observations:
1. Most of my students know who Obama is! (gasp-- I don't even know who the South Korean president is...)
2. The video of Elementary school children in Hawaii doing cultural activities actually kept them awake (*Tip: kids like seeing other kids in videos- if you can actually shoot the videos at their eye level, it's even better.)
3. They are curious about you and your personal life, like family.
4. Local pop celebrities: for them as a wake-up surprise if they were drifting off. When they saw the performer, Bi/Rain, some of them shouted out his name and got excited.
5. Travel photos- *Tip: photos of kids, yourself, and animals are interesting to them.
just as new to teaching English as we are.
