Thursday, March 27, 2008

First week of Teaching

Well I just finished my first week of teaching. For the most part it has been rather enjoyable. Some classes were better than others. The school I work at on Tuesday and Thursday is quite a bit bigger than my Wednesday Thursday school. The class sizes are around 25 students per class on Tuesdays and Fridays. The class sizes are from 7-14 students in my other school. It is so much easier to teach in small groups.

Today I had a hell class. I moved several kids around the class. The homeroom teacher had no control over them. They just did not listen to her. She was a quiet one though. When I have class with her again on Tuesday, I will attempt to remedy the situation before class. This Wed, Fri, school has an English Language classroom. She lets them sit where ever they like. That shit just isn't going to play. They don't listen and just talk to each other. So Tuesday they will be moved into a seating arrangement where I can control them.

I would have to say that my favorite classes are my younger groups. I teach a mixed class of kindergarten and first graders. They are so cute and so much fun. It is a high energy class and thus I am constantly having to do run around trying to get these kids to speak or do the songs that I am teaching. I taught them head shoulders knees and toes. Then I followed that up with a drawing segment of the class. I needed to check their understanding. So we drew monsters. I told them what to draw and how many. Most of the kids understood.

So this is what I gathered from my one week of teaching. There aren't English Language teachers. The homeroom teacher is in charge of teaching everything. Sort of like it was like, when I was in elementary school. I think they should have teachers, who just teach English though. Both of my counterparts, speak really really well. One has done a fair amount of travel and the other hasn't been out of the country. Both are attractive. It is fun to teach with them. Just hard to concentrate. My mind kind of wonders. Some of my teachers can hardly speak any English. Some can speak fairly well.

Koreans are of a different breed. In my smaller school, I have a teacher, who is rather young. Really friendly and all, but when I went into her classroom, I just laughed. She got up and she had a smile on her face. I could see why she was so happy. There was a buzzing sound coming from her chair, and 2 glowing knobs. I just can't see someone doing that while at work. On that note, I'm outie