My focus in this blog is going to be mainly on the play I'm rehearsing for and my job, which makse sense, since the aforementioned subjects are where I spend the majority of my time these days. So let's just jump right into it then, shall we?
Rehearsals for our play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" are going well. I see a lot of improvement in myself and in all of my co-actors each week. For those of you interested (especially if you're in Korea!!!) check out the website for our play: http://gototheatre.weebly.com/ . There are only two more weeks of rehearsal before opening night on June 25, and we still have some work to do, but it is looking pretty good. I am nervous, but excited. I haven't been in a play since Jr. High unless you count the two I made cameo appearances in for my two Kindergarten class graduation show this last Spring. I don't feel nervous about it while I'm at home, or even while I'm at the theater, until I step back stage and am waiting for my turn to come on stage. Even during practice this gets my stomach in knots, though I don't think it helps that I've usually drank 2 coffees not long before this point!
But nerves are good I suppose, that's part of the reason I took it upon myself to try and be a part of this play, to step out of my comfort zone a bit, cause living in another country where I don't exactly know the language isn't uncomfortable enough!! When I auditioned for the play (in February?) I didn't think it was going to be this much work! I also kind of expected a smaller role, but was also excited when they directors told me I got the title role. I am glad I am doing the play, practice can be fun, though frustrating at times. The people in the play with me are all really nice, and I enjoy spending time with them. Though it's really starting to eat up my weekends, and I will be glad when it's over and I can go out of town on the weekends if I want to, or just stay in bed all day, or basically do whatever I want without having a weekend commitment.
Play rehearsal has cut into some of my other previous activities, like the GIC talk (an informative talk on varying subjects by speakers in the international community each Saturday), and my Spanish/Korean Saturday evening class. I also am not currently taking a Saturday morning Korean class because I am too damn tired of waking up early. And my weekends are busy enough as it is without class. My time spent studying Korean these days is rather minimal, and I would like to change that.
My mind is getting enough exercise as it is with the play and trying to handle my younger students, I somewhat recently started working on getting my body into a respectable physical condition. As many of you know I am saving my money to go travelling with my college buddy Gavin, who I basically lived with for 3 of my 4 years at Chico. We are going to meet ~ Nov. 1, probably in Vietnam, though we haven't worked out the specific details yet. We figure we can do around 4 months of travelling around South East Asia relatively cheaply and have enough money left of to WWOOF in Australia and New Zealand for some months after that. But since I got to Korea I have been doing less physical activity than I ever have in my life. Even a while before I left I wasn't doing anything since after I got jumped last August my body wasn't feeling so great. Well my back is still a bit shotty, I think it's from that incident, BUT I figure now is the time to start working out and getting ready for some good hard backpacking. As long as I stretch before doing physical activities, and I avoid putting lots of pressure on that part of my back (squats hurt the next day =\ ), my back doesn't limit me from doing things. So I joined a gym with my buddy Stu from work, and since then I have been going 2 - 3 times a week. It's only week three now, but I think I will be able to keep it up since I enjoy working out (more so the feeling afterward and the next day) and the gym is so close to my apartment.
I have not made it to the girls orphanage in the past month (quite unfortunately, I miss my little friend Da Song). Varying reasons have kept me from being there including some irregular transportation issues as well as my mom and sister coming to visit me and going out of town with them. I went to Seoul with them their first weekend here (the first of May) and Jeju with them their second weekend and last days here. I had a lot of fun, and it was really nice getting out of Gwangju and seeing new places. A bit surprisingly I had not visited Seoul before they came here, and when they were here with me it was the first time I have been living in Korea where I felt like a tourist. But it was a nice change of pace, and it was great getting to see some family, it has been a long time. There is a lot I could say on that visit, but that's not what I came to talk about today, check out the pictures of that ( i don't think i put them up yet, but soon!!)
My classes are pretty good. There is one that I really wish I could get rid of, and I dread it every Tuesday Thursday, but at least it's only 80 minutes a week with those kids. There are 6 boys in that class, and 4 of em are brats, 1 in particular. It just doesn't work with that kid, I have tried punishing him, I have tried rewarding him, I have tried witholding rewards from him. Sometimes he's okay, but usually he's a shithead. At times the Korean co-teacher for that class will see him causing trouble and take him out of the class for a while, which usually makes the class MUCH better overall, though the other boys may still occasionally act out, it's much easier to handle. There's only so much I can do, the kids are only 5 western age, there English is obviously limited, though there are a few kids in that class that are quite smart. They don't completely understand me and if they don't want to listen or if they want to yell while I'm talking I can't do much about it. I don't have that problem with my other classes, though I experienced that overwhelming feeling of uncontrollable kids a little bit last semester with my Daisy Duck class. I'm about ready to give up with those boys and just send them out to their Korean teacher every time they act up, which would have Rickey out of the class for most of the class every time. Daniel would probably be gone quite a bit too. I'm just too damn tired of trying to control them and getting nowhere.
I really like my elementary classes. It's like they're real people or something!! I think most of the kindergarten kids I teach are too young for the serious book work classroom learning they are forced to do. I have deadlines on when I am supposed to finish my books with my classes, which is fair enough. And in the plan it seems like there is enough time to do the book work and actually teach them the subjects reasonably well in that timeline (this is for my main class 80 minutes a day). But then we have gym every Wedensday (40 minute class), Leadership every Tuesday (40 min class), Science on Thursdays (usually takes all 80 minutes, and the kids will cry if they don't finish it) and role play on Fridays (we are supposed to do 40 - 80 minutes, with my low level Korean 6 year olds I generally need all 80 to feel like I taught them the subject well). Which leaves me with 80 min on Monday, 40 Tues, 40 Wed, to do three books. One of those three we are supposed to finish each month and send home, so i have to make sure and keep on track.
The teachers at my school have recently been doing a teacher's seminar at the end of every month to help us teach our books / subjects better. We are given a section of a book and asked to make a lesson plan for it, and we do that for an hour or two and talk about things we could do with our classes. That's all well and dandy, but I don't have TIME to play all these games and do cool shit with my classes because we have to be doing book work all the damn time otherwise we will fall behind and won't send our books home in time and the parents will bitch and I will get bitched at! And not just that, but it's really frustrating for me because I often feel like I don't have enough time with my class to really drive the material home, or to review the material. We always have to be going on to the next pages or we will fall behind. It's not condusive to learning, especially at that young of an age level. And it's also not condusive to keeping me sane. It makes me testy when the kids goof off and sometimes I start to snap beause I know we don't have time to goof off or either we won't finish the pages we need to, or they will just scribble on the pages and not learn anything. But I know I need to relax, they are kids and they do need time to just play, but it's not a great system. It seems to be more about selling the books than teaching the kids, and it's not the most effective way of doing things. Don't get me wrong, my school isn't bad. As far as I can tell I'm quite lucky where I was placed as it is my first time teachind and my school is pretty good to it's teachers compared to other hagwons (private schools) in Korea. Well there are more thoughts I would like to share, but it's getting late and I have work in the morning. An nyeong!
No comments:
Post a Comment