So my first day teaching I walked in to see a fancy podium and a stage in front of the class. I was like, what the heck is this? I guess I just expected it to look something like my classroom.
So I started class by introducing myself, explaining where I am from, and sharing that I am an elementary teacher, and then we got started. I jump right in with some ice breakers only to find that the students came to class COMPLETELY UNPREPARED! No one had any paper. It killed me. They were worse than our elementary students and their stupid mechanical pencils.
So we jump in with the rest of the lesson which focuses on dating and love. (Clearly something I'm an expert at. . .). So there was a video clip that the students were supposed to watch, which of course didn't work. So this entire section of my lesson wasn't going to work, and I had to come up with something to do for the final 45 minutes. . . . since the clip was supposed to be from the show HOUSE, and about speed dating, I decided we were going to speed date in our class. So I had the students draw a picture of their ideal mate, and THAT is who I had speed date. We talked about questions they could ask, and then I made all the girls get up and then take their imaginary man around and speed date the imaginary person the guys drew.
Then today I went in (to a completely new set of students) and was supposed to be teaching a lesson focusing on Obama and elections. We first did a Venn diagram comparing Obama with President Lee of Korea. (Which made me really miss my interwrite pad...). Well, first I had them tell me the things that were the same. They came up with the obvious...they are men, they govern their nation. Then we went to the things that are different. They told me that Obama had big ears, and that he liked piss. I was like WHAT? The poor kid goes piss....you know, world piss. OH, world peace I said. Seriously....I hope I was able to keep a straight face with that comment. Then I had them tell me things about President Lee. They said he was ugly and a liar. I was like whoa, don't hold back!
The next part of the lesson was provided by the university. This is the video we had to watch and discuss:
I watched it before, and was like, what the hell. This is so inappropriate....but I guess this is college, so I just played it. I don't know what their reaction really was....because to be honest, they seem to be able to control their facial expressions much better than I can.
So we continued our lesson, and I had the entire lesson built around this one project they were going to work on at the end of the trip...only to find out that the teacher who taught this class on Tuesday did the exact project that I was going to do. This left me with a problem...1.5 hours to fill. Well crap. Thank goodness for Youtube. We watched some videos on Rock the Vote. Then I had them do a poster to fill the time. Here are some examples of their work:
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| From Gwang-Ju |
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| From Gwang-Ju |
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| From Gwang-Ju |
Here are my assigned topics for this summer:
June 21st: Love and Dating
June 22-27th: Leadership and Obama
June 28 - July 1: Personal Environmental Impact (AKA Pollution)
July 4-July 7: Computer Addiction (really?!?)
July 8: International travel
Just to give you a quick idea of what else is being covered this summer, here are my favorite topics that I am NOT teaching:
~ Conflict Management (Dealing with conflict, and resolution)
~ Student and Teacher Relationships (including appropriate and inappropriate student/teacher relationships)
~ Anger Management (identifying and controlling anger)
~ Addiction (substance abuse...p.s. Binge drinking is apparently a huge problem here)
~ Depression (defining and overcoming depression)
4 comments:
What a great experience you're having! I love the comment about World Piss. Love that. You definitely have composure; more than I would have.
I'm actually impressed that the Korean education system is taking on some issues that impact people that age. I would LOVE to get imto any of those subjects becasue they are real. Go to Teach With Movies web site and find some movies that match up with the values/virutes/issues you are assigned and go from there. Movies are great discussion starters and fun to watch. You don't need any stinking paper!
Wow :) The "piss" story and big boob Obama lover is enough to make me crack up! Those are really interesting topics - I agree with Jim (at least they're "REAL" topics) - the 4th gr story of "Peanut the Turtle" is a great story to get the hook into pollution too (animal effects are always pretty heart-wrenching). I'm curious as to what you'll teach with the inappropriate teacher relationships topic - scary!
way to make me pee my pants becca.
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