i would run myself in circles here without you

tuesday the 11th of october is finally over! why is/was this day so important that i am writing about it? it was the day of my open class. what is open class you ask? allow me to explain. 

last semester i was introduced to the concept of open class when my 5th grade teacher handed me a very, and i mean extremely, detailed lesson plan and asked me to check spelling, sentences, grammar etc. she informed me it was for her open class that was taking place in a few weeks and she wanted to make sure the English was basically perfect. open class? uh... should i know what this is and should i be preparing too? 

open class is basically the opportunity for other teachers, in my case, other native English teachers and their Korean co-teachers from around my area to come into my classroom and observe myself and my co-teacher as we teach a class. once this was explained to me, i was instantly nervous. even though i was told it wouldn't be until october.  

from then until now a few things had changed. my children had become monsters. not all of them, but a good chunk of them are monsters. my already monster children became devils, who get worse with every class period. my 6th grade co-teacher took a teaching job in Paraguay and left at the end of august. so i got a new co-teacher, who has never been an English teacher before. so i was a bit more nervous. 


my new co-teacher said she was the one that was going to write the lesson plan, which i was happy to let her do. it meant less stressful work for me to do. we went through 3 drafts of corrections and changes before we had a final draft. materials were made and we were set. tuesday came and i was a mess. 


tuesday was also picture day for the 6th graders for their graduation yearbook. which means we had to take staff pictures. i already had to dress nice for my open class, so that was fine. but it meant that i spent tuesday running around like a chicken with my head cut off. 


9:00am: staff picture outside. where i had to sit in front with all the 6th grade teachers, because i am the 6th grade English teacher. 
9:10am: run back up to the 3rd floor to start teaching. we spent the first 4 classes practicing our open class lesson plan on them, since it was the lesson everyone was on. this worked for 3 our of the 4 classes. naturally my 6-7 class of devils were in rare form, forcing me to making them write lines. a 6 line story, 15 times. they are so incredibly frustrating. i am at my wits end with them and honestly don't know what else to do other than what i am already doing. thankfully by the end of the day we were able to cut and fix a few things to where we were prepared for open class that afternoon. 


lunch-12:20pm: we ate quickly so we could prepare things.
after lunch, my 5th grade co-teacher and one of the music teachers went down to the auditorium to take our individual staff pictures. low and behold when we walked in, my 6-5 class, also my class i chose to do my open class with, were in there taking their individual cap and gown pictures. after explaining to the photographer that i had an open class in the afternoon, so i needed to take my picture now, i was put on stage in front of the back drop. and also in front of 35 of my 6th grade students. yep... they watched as the photographer positioned me, placed my hands, tilted my head and took my picture 3 times. not awkward at all. 

12:45pm: i am in the office getting my things together. i also have a minor panic attack while talking to mark and dani. mark's words afterwards: you were slightly freaking out. yah i was a little terrified. up until 2pm, my co-teacher and i were running around making sure that everything was set up. we went over our lesson a couple of times, made sure all of the equipment worked, all the materials were set up and everything was in order. 


2pm: GO TIME! other teachers filed into the back of the classroom and sat down looking at our handout copy of the lesson plan. we went through the lesson plan, keeping track of time as to not go over. it went off really well. my class was amazing! they did a very good job. 


3pm: the evaluation by the other teachers. this is a big part i was worried about. most of the evaluation was done in korean, which means i didn't understand most of what they were saying. some of it was translated, but a lot of it wasn't. the two native English teachers that were there, were awesome. lots of good feedback. including all of the Korean teachers commenting on how much they like my voice... my loud voice comes in handy quite often here! :) 


4pm: i got to go home early! it was a wonderful gift. i went home with every intention of doing my homework that is due tomorrow. i decided a nap would be a good idea, since i slept 3 hours the night before. my hour long nap turned into a 4 hour nap. i woke up at 9pm. ate a bit of dinner, looked at my homework and thought otherwise, skyped with mark and called it a night. 


i am sooooooooooooo happy to be done with open class! and i survived just fine.