Hanam,
Gyeonggi,
Korea Rep.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
I've had a lot of people from home ask me about my job. So here's what I do. I teach children that are in the April program. They are anywhere from 5 to about 12 years old. We have four different levels of students. Seedbed, Seed, Sprout and Sapling. I teach Seedbed 1, Seed 1, Sprout 1 and 2, and Sapling 2 classes. So I teach everything from the very beginning students to the oldest in our program. After they finish at the April school, they can move on to a ChungDahm school, which is the regular English program. I have to go to work every day at 1:30pm and begin classes at 2:30. Before classes start we print out review tests and make sure all of the online review homeworks are graded. My students have online preview and review homework that they complete at home. For my classes, which are the Speaking classes, my students have to record their voices describing pictures of things we talked about in class. Once class begins, I give them a review test and then begin class. In Seedbed classes, we learn new sounds and identify words that begin with those sounds. I get to draw a lot of pictures and be very silly with the kids to help them remember things. The other levels are all similar. We listen to a short article about anything from using solar power to the pros and cons of drinking soda. They then make a presentation describing pictures of things in the story. After that they practice a dialogue on the topic by listening and repeating the sentences as I read them. Finally they have to memorize a short script (currently it is a news report) about the topic and act it out. When they act, they get on stage in front of a blue screen. I can then add backgrounds with the computer and make a video of their acting. I upload these videos once a week for their parents to watch. My days end at 8:30pm on MWF and 9:30pm on Tu and Th.
I love my kids that I teach, or at least most of them. They call me teacher, or Heather teacher. They always want candy or say "teacher hungry". The biggest challenges are when students speak in Korean, because that is against the rules and I have to stop them, and when kids are just tired and not intersted because its really hard to motivate a kid in a language they barely speak. Also, since my lessons are already made up, I have to use my creativity to make the lessons I teach fun and engaging. I've let the kids do some classroom decorating for Christmas and played some Christmas music for them off of the computer. They like learning about things from America, so sometimes I will tell them a story about something back home
