shoulda just called it like i saw it... shoulda just called him whiskey

time to play the catch up game. ready GO!

these last couple of weeks have been pretty busy and full of so many things. it started with zip-lining, which will be a separate post in itself. let me just tell you that it was awesome! seeing how i am terrified of heights i was very proud of myself for going through with it. amazing!

before i left for korea, i decided i would part ways with my blonde hair and dye it back to brown so it would be easier to manage. well i have learned since being here that my hair grows incredibly fast. i finally decided that i couldn't wait any longer and i was going to need a hair cut. the problem was finding a place where i could convey what i wanted and have it not turn out completely different. thankfully my 6th grade co-teacher told me she was going to get her hair done and that she would make an appt. and take me with her so i wouldn't have to go by myself.

i managed to find a picture of what i wanted that would work. once we got there, i was instantly taken to the washing area, where sarah, the very nice assistant, washed my hair and gave me a mini massage afterwards. while i was getting my hair washed, my co-teacher came over and said i was going to be getting a moisture treatment after i got my haircut for free. perfectly okay with this considering the water in korea is slowly ruining my hair. well once we made it back to my seat, the hair stylist, a man named peter, took one look at my hair and said i was going to have to do the moisture treatment first.

as i just said, korea is slowly ruining my hair. the water is so incredibly different from home. it is very hard. it didn't help that i had to go a week without conditioner because i didn't have time to go and find any. looking in the mirror, my hair looked like a giant birds nest. it was terrible. so i was given the moisture treatment first. which was wonderful. then the stylist came back and went to town on my hair. at one point i had to tell him to stop cutting. he just kept cutting more off. it ended up being shorter that i had planned, but i had a good two inches of split ends. it's grown on me and i am actually enjoying it. my haircut happened friday night and the following monday i had orientation. gepik requires you to attend an orientation to help you get adjusted to living and teaching in korea. their goal is to have it before you really start teaching, but considering i got here in march and have now been teaching for two months, a lot of the information was useless because we already knew it. so overall orientation was sort of a waste of time, but i was able to meet plenty of new people, which was great!

orientation lasted monday through wednesday late morning. basically we were in sessions from 9am till 8pm. sessions about the culture, about the relationships in your teaching, what to do and not to do, etc. i left orientation not knowing anymore about teaching in korea that when i got there. i left with a ton of maps and books about the food, some information about traveling around korea and new friends.

upon getting back to school on thursday, my 5th grader co-teacher informed me my computer should be fixed. maybe. maybe being the key word. maybe in korea, usually means no when it comes to technology. i have been bringing my laptop since the first week. i finally said screw it, i was going to fix it myself. my computer's OS is in korean... that presented a challenge, but after a lot of guessing, a lot of cursing and some translating help at one point from my co-teacher, i was able to figure out the problem. I WIN! the tech fails. now to just get the technology gods to not hate me. i think i managed to break the projector in one of my classrooms (thankfuly my 6th grade co-teacher fixed it) and i might have blown a speaker. oops!

friday all the teachers in my school went on a school hike. on an island. don't ask me where it was, i have no idea, and anyone i asked didn't know either. i know it was near incheon, so near the beach. let me just say that hike was the steepest hike i have ever been on. it was a great hike in the end, with a lot of laughing! and i only tripped once, which is impressive. though it was once we made it to the top in a crack in the ground. pathetic i know, but still once is probably a record for me. :)

a temple at the beginning of our hike.

and the uphill trek begins.

this would be my 5th grader teacher. her ears were cold.

the last part of the hike had these nice stairs.

the view once we made it to the top.... so worth the steep trek!

once we got back friday night, i was exhausted. though i managed to stay up until 4am talking on skype... oops. skype calls weren't the only thing keeping me awake either. we had the biggest/longest thunder and lightning storm i have ever experienced. it started friday night, lasted through the night and into saturday evening around 6 or so. i took a couple of videos from my apartment. you can see the lightning and hear the thunder (though it doesn't do the sound justice... it was so loud!)

other than this, it's the same as usual. just working during the week and trying to be adventurous on the weekends. and speaking of adventures i am beyond excited for my next one! two of my friends and i decided that since we have a long weekend (thursday off for children's day, and then monday & tuesday off for buddah's birthday) we are going to take a trip to jeju island! it's going to be awesome and i cannot wait!

i just have to get through the rest of this week, which is going to be a piece of cake. tuesday is our book fair, so i won't be teaching, just showing a tom sawyer movie the school chose, wednesday i am teaching tuesday's classes to make up for the book fair. then i am headed to dani's for a cuatro/cinco de mayo shindig! thursday i have off. and friday i have to teach 3 classes and then am leaving early to head to the airport to catch my flight to JEJU!

dancing students and spelling mistakes...

So upon my arrival to Korea, I was under the impression I would be teaching 2nd graders. While I do teach a class of 1st/2nd graders for 40 minutes as an after school class, I was surprised when I was told I would be teaching 5th/6th graders.

My experience with teaching 6th graders was limited to my 9 weeks of student teaching my senior year of college and needless to say, it was the worst experience ever. The children were little devils, one throwing a chair at me on my 3rd day, one attempting to break a girls arm (for the fun of it) and not to mention the worst mentor teacher in the history of student teaching... ever. she told me to my face that I would make a terrible teacher and she didn't want me in her classroom and wanted to be done with me. To repay her for all her "kindness" I won't a 2-page letter to my principal why she should never again be a mentor teacher, which I then translated into my evaluation that was submitted to Pacific. Needless to say she got the worst review ever.

So going into this I was very nervous. Thankfully my children have proved me wrong. I love them. Of course there are a few that I could do without, the child who was sent to the vice-principal's office being one of them. Or the few who refuse to do their homework or participate and talk the entire time. But overall, my kids are great and I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of kids.

The other day I was working with my 6th graders on the different seasons in the year. In the book that we use (which I am not a fan of at all), there is a song that we sang about the seasons. Below is a video of one of my favorite 6th grade classes. They got very involved in the song and even made hand motions and everything.




Speaking of the textbook... We are given a student book and a teacher's manual when we started. The teacher's manual is in both English and Korean. I basically get the jist of the lesson and then go off from there and avoid using the book as much as possible. Well We were practicing a conversation dialog on the computer and what do I find when the dialog pops up... a spelling mistake. Not a small one letter wrong mistake, a big the word isn't even the same mistake.

Hoilyday?!?! What the heck is that? Of course I was the first one to notice the spelling mistake (considering I am the only native speaker in the classroom) and I instantly told them to not write it down in their books. (They are to copy the written dialog from the screen to their books so they can practice) I had to then write down the correct spelling and explain that it was wrong. I proceeded to find to more spelling mistakes in this lesson alone. The word "present" was spelled without the "ent" on the end and "April" was spelled "Tpril".

You would think that a textbook and DVD that is given out to the whole Gyeonggi-do province to teach English with wouldn't be full of the most ridiculous spelling mistakes. I was told I should keep track of the amount of mistakes I find... I'm considering it.

technology hates me... but the feeling is mutual

i'm fairly certain technology hates me. not just the computer, but all technology. and this is how i have come that that assumption.

upon arriving in korea, i had a washing machine, microwave, rice cooker and a television for electrical appliances. all of which have buttons and directions in full korean. which means when i look at it, all i see are a bunch of symbols that don't mean anything to me. i was finally able to decipher my television (not that i would understand what they were saying anyways), my microwave and of course my washing machine (after all the lights were blinking and refusing to stop for two whole days). my rice cooker on the other hand, i have not figured out. you would think it would be easy to work a rice cooker... definitely not the case.

when i arrived at my school the first day, i was greeted with a dinosaur of a desktop computer and was expected to make the extremely slow thing work for a whole year. definitely wasn't going to happen. after several attempts at getting the internet to work, i gave up and started bringing in my own computer to work. which wouldn't have been that big of a deal except korea and apple products don't go together.

everyone who has seen my computer has been in shock and awe over it. all of my teachers, some of my students, the worthless tech guy at my school and the tech person for my internet company. once the tech guy at my school got over the shock and awe, he was pretty much worthless in all other aspects. couldn't hook up the printer to my computer and couldn't figure out why my internet wasn't work. lesson learned: macs don't go over too well in korea considering everything they use for the internet has to be done in IE (Internet Explorer). have i mentioned my hatred for IE as of late, because i truly hate it.

so i took it upon myself to figure out what was wrong. now while i am not the most tech savvy person, i know a little bit. i believe i figured out that the LAN card in the desktop was broken, making it impossible to connect to the internet. therefore i needed a new computer. after much complaining between myself and my teacher, we were finally able to convince the school to buy me a new computer.

i received my new computer today. i was very very happy considering i have an online course i have to finish before next wednesday. this was supposed to be a great day. very much the opposite. my internet is still not working. i now have the newest computer in the school and the internet refuses to work. every other computer on the network in our office works just fine, but mine doesn't work. it either takes 5-10 minutes to load a page or it doesn't load at all. either way, this still leaves me with having to bring my laptop to work everyday. we have also come the conclusion that my work computer is racist.

lessons learned:
- IE is a horrible web browser
- Macs and Korea don't mesh well together
- the tech people (at least the ones i have dealt with) in Korea are useless
- a beeping/talking rice cooker makes me feel like an idiot

discplining differences

There are many differences between the US and Korea in regards to the teaching aspect. The list could go on and on with differences that I have noticed, but the one that sticks out the most to me would be how "punishment" works in Korea vs. how it works in the US.

Taking a look at the US and how punishment works is sort of a sour subject. As of right now, there are 30 states that have outlawed corporal punishment in the US. Most of the states that still have corporal punishment are the states in the south including, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana etc. As a teacher in the US, you are not allowed to hit a child, with your hands or any object. You are not allowed to grab them by the arm to move them or raise your voice too loud to yell at them. Basically you are not allowed to do anything that would harm the child, which I would agree would be a good thing. But to a certain extent, you have to be able to raise your voice to get your point across if your class isn't listening etc.

American's are so "sue happy" that they look for any excuse to sue someone for money. If a parent feels their child is being treated unfairly, they are going to make a huge deal out of anything they can find.

Perfect example: When I did my student teaching in my 6th grade classroom (nightmare), I had a student who refused to listen at all. The students were supposed to have their rough drafts of their papers done, well he didn't. So he was sent to a different classroom to finish it. He came back and had not followed directions at all, after having them explained twice. He was sent back to the classroom and missed his lunch recess to finish. Well apparently while he was gone, he went to the bathroom, used his cellphone and called his parents crying. This in turn caused the parents to call the principal, causing a meeting after school; including the principal, the parents, my mentor teacher and myself. The situation was explained and then the parents went off and threatened to pull their son from the class/school if we didn't treat him better. They couldn't see that their son was in the wrong. They just wanted special treatment for him or they were going to throw a fit.

Administrators are more worried about pleasing the parent than protecting their employees. If the parents are unhappy and aren't getting their way, they are going to pull their child. This results in less money being made by the employer. Because that is what's important, making money over teaching children.... GAH! Another example; me getting fired for have a loud voice. No joke... that is the reason I was fired from the Goddard School in Clackamas. (BTW, NEVER NEVER NEVER take your children there. Worst preschool ever!)

Here in Korea, they have a different outlook on things. In the past they have allowed corporal punishment. Teachers have been allowed to hit students, with their hands or with sticks of a certain size. There are times when a whole class is punished for one students mistakes. Only recently did the Korean Board or Education (or whatever they call it over here) have inforced that corporal punishment is no longer allowed in schools. This means that teachers are supposed to be able to hit students, but there are many teachers who still do it. Since it is a new thing, there really isn't a big punishment for them if they do it, even though it is technically not allowed.

So yesterday in my 6th grade class we were having the students read a passage line by line. Each student reads a line. We get to a student, who was labeled as a trouble maker from day one. He hasn't followed along and has no idea where we are. My co-teacher tells him to read and apparently he started cussing at her in Korean. She yells at him and tells him to read, and he proceeds to continue to cuss at her and tell her no. So what does she do, she slaps his back with her hand. So hard that the sound of it made me wince. I was in complete shock that she actually did that. I mean don't get me wrong, he had some sort of punishment coming at him, but I didn't think it was going to be that.

I have seen my teacher discipline the students in the past month, but this has included having them stand in the front of the class and write their names with the butts (as in moving their butts to spell out their names), having them stand at the back of the classroom for 20 mins. Or the most recent one, having the whole class sit with their arms straight up in the air for a good 10 minutes as she yelled at them for not listening and talking out of turn over and over. To the point that some of them had tears in their eyes.

This got to me thinking of the difference and I was trying to figure out where I stand on the issue. While I think that it is wrong to hit a child for no reason at all, even if you are disciplining them, I feel that in the US there isn't enough being done to make children understand that their actions are wrong. If we sit there and tell them, "No Jonathan, we don't hit that hurts our friends" after he has hit a child for the 2nd or 3rd time, the child isn't going to stop. He is more likely to continue to do it. I am not saying we should be adopting the old Korean ways of hitting children and punishing whole classes for one childs action, but I am saying that there has to be a point where teachers are able to sit a child down and get their point across to them.

I am not saying I will be hitting any children. No, I won't be touching any children, other than high fives and hugs from my 1st/2nd graders. I think I get my point across by raising my voice when needed. The students can see my facial expressions and tell when I am upset and because I am raising my voice in English (which they aren't used to), they are scared or worried enough that they stop talking and listen. There are times when all I have to do is glare at them and they quiet right up.

Apparently I can be intimidating when I want to be. Or so I have been told.