The Joys of Working With Children

I haven't been sick this often in a long time. Catch a cold, catch a fever, catch another cold, catch a super bug, catch the runs. The latter having little to do with children, probably. I'm told after a year of this your immune system gets warmed up. I hope so.

I haven't yet missed a day of school. Though I have taken the liberty of stretching out on our classroom heater when I had a fever. I have taken a nap in the library when I had no energy. And I eat hand fulls of cough drops, which I have to hide from students who think its candy.

One student told me, with broken English, that he was concerned for me that I was sick and far away from my family. That was nice. Then his mother gave me some ancient Chinese cold remedy. A black liquid that smells bad and tastes worse.

I don't know where all the mucus comes from, or how my body manages to keep these production quotas. Here we have to buy special garbage bags to throw out trash... I'm wasting all my money on spent tissue. I thought I'd share.

7 Hour Hike

What is worse?

I don't know particularly what is worse a class full of 10 year old's without energy, or same class will too much energy.

Korean Class Update

A new Korean teacher has arrived on the scene. She is both skillful and energetic. Ms. Kim is a professor at Samyung University. Class is moving faster, much faster. We learned "What is this?" and "What is that?" We learned things in a classroom: book, chair, window, door, clock, pen. Also, we tackled words incidental to the learning process: Understand, Don't Understand, Read, Say, Write, Difficult, and Hard. Some syntax was learned. There is a suffix that is applied to the last word of questions, and another suffix to the last word of statements. My inability to read with proficiency is a severe handicap.

Becoming the student is a great reminder of how difficult it is to learn a language. I think that most my students learn quicker and retain more than me compartively. I don't think that i'm so old that my age is a disability, as much as an advantage. Yet pound for pound my 3rd graders do better than me, or is it I.

Korean Commercials & Music: A cultural perspective

Some funny commercials and songs that show aspects of the culture.

Commercial: Figure Skater Kim Ya Na for Hauzen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbz4juVgISc

Song: Wonder Girls Pop Singers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2zWrYtsGFY

Commercial: Big Bang for Cell Phone "Ice Cream"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHbVJ5vNQ64&feature=related

Commercial: Roasted Chicken
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb3H4dsO3Jg

Commercial: Show Cell Phone Provider
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM72A5DpGoA

What a MBA Does for Teaching Elementary Kids

A native English teacher from another elementary school asked me, "You manage the students like you manage a business?" I explained, "People are people..."

It is my experience that Koreans are a little shy at first. When I first started teaching it was difficult to get students to come to the center of class and role play. In today's classes students get excited upon the introduction of a role play. Their hands shoot up into the air all at once to come up front. Some of the kids cry out, "Me! Me... Pick Me.... Pick Christie... Me!!" What changed?

I began reinforcing the behaviors I wanted the kids to emulate. I reinforced behavior immediately when it was observed, explained specifically what was being rewarded (with help from Co-Teacher) and added extra incentive candy, fruit, or yogurt.

PASSWORDS

I've instituted passwords, something my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Obregon, used at Miami Palmetto Senior High. Students are given a password which is required to enter the next class. The students have really taken to this... and enjoy enforcing the rule nearly too much. Different grade levels get different passwords... they have included:

Family: My (insert family member) is (insert adjective
Home: Home is where the heart is (Advanced). Home sweet home (Intermediate). Name two objects in the house (Beginner).
Home2: Name two activities in the house.
School: Switch an activity to the past tense(Advanced). What is your favorite subject? Do you like to (insert school activity)?

Reflecting on My Education
Class is going well... and I'm putting my tens-of-thousands of dollars of education to work. I wanted to major in English in college, but it sounded so impractical. I majored in Management Information Systems instead... I don't know if I've ever needed programming or database design on a daily basis.

Emergency Sirens and Killer Dust

The city's emergency sirens howled like old air raid sirens. The 6 year olds and I stared out the window looking for something to happen. My Co-Teacher made us continue explaining this was a regular exercise. She said it happens about every 15th of the month. I don't remember this happening since I've been here. I was kind of excited to see something happen, and almost let down that there weren't any dog fights overhead.

Also, there is news of killer yellow sandstorms from evil China. Apparently this happens a couple times a year. We are supposed to wear masks, and avoid being outside.

More Rural Korea and Hiking Near Cheoung Pung Lake

The pictures show how small scale merchant/farmers try to take advantage of the wealthy hikers that are bussed in from Seoul.

Unrelated, I bought a bright LED flashlight worn around the head. I decided I wanted to night hike after work. The first night was somewhat eerie. The second night we were about 30 meters into the trail when a set of eyes reflected back our light in the distance.

I wasn't sure at first if it was an animal, until after a couple minutes of hesitation the eyes looked to either side then back at us. You could tell it was a large animal. The color was white, so I ruled out a cat. My friend explained using about 10 words of English, 40 words of Korean, and much emotion that he saw a news program about wild boars. It was reported that Korea, and this region, lacked predators and wild boar populations were growing unchecked. They had attacked hikers recently, and this time of year that presents the most danger. Instead of doing the prudent thing I went the sinister road. I wanted to see how far we could get before complete fear took over. It took me a while to convince him, and I only convinced him to climb half the mountain. Twenty minutes later with much looking over our shoulders we heard grunting off the path. We came down the mountain quickly after that drunk on adrenaline. I asked around, and read online... apparently he was right.