Still Truckin'
Sep. 4th, 2008 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaSo I've decided this can be my Teaching English Icon. It seems apt...
Evidence continues to mount that the part of this job I'm finding difficult and stressful is the part where I feel I have material to teach which is inappropriate in terms of either length or content. Usually length. The content issue is only serious in one class where I've essentially got a curriculum suited to children of that age who have extremely high levels of fluency if not total fluency and I just feel bad for the kids I'm teaching. The good part is that they come every day and three days a week they have appropriate lessons and the two days a week when they're doing this course, it's centred around a series of stories, and I can usually explain the gist of those at least. But...they just have no idea when it comes to the assignments. They can't understand them.
It's crazy how much more relaxed I am in the few classes where I'm allowed to teach more than a single page of limited text. And frustrating. I'm getting better at just playing games and generating hopefully vaguely educational excercises like word puzzles and crosswords, but there's only so many of those I can make before they get bored of them and start being very awkward as a result.
I think the reason I don't deal with it as well as some others, like Kev, who's also very stressed but I think slightly coping better than me, is an irksome personality issue I have wherein I'm completely disorganised and a control freak. This place enables my disorganisation like nobody's business but doesn't enable my inner control freak where at least I always know exactly what I'm planning to do at all times, at all. Because sometimes it takes three minutes to do an exercise and sometimes it takes twenty and I can never tell which it'll be. Whether the game or crossword will last long enough, or if I can't fit it in. If I shouldn't "waste" it on a class that's only come up 10 minutes short instead of the usual fifteen or twenty.
This is, I understand, the nature of teaching (the bit about kids taking different amounts of times to learn different things and to do the same sort of exercise on different days). It's not something I think is or should ever change. It's just something I'm acclimitising to. And I think I would be so much more relaxed about it if filling in time with a wordsearch or game was what happened when you happened to finish early this time because there is enough material, rather than something you have to assume will be necessary every single time. Because then I'm effectively trying to come up with half a lesson plan for every lesson without the ability to actually teach them anything since I'm not allowed to move forward.
So basically I suppose stuff's still the same. I'm still finding it stressful. It's still slowly improving. I still feel kind of isolated here in ways I didn't expect and in ways I did. I think one of the reasons I'm a little surprised at how isolated I feel here is the fact that one thing me and Kev always used to do was go window shopping. We'd just wander around malls, look in DVD and game shops, eat at Subway, go see a movie. We were big movie-people. Annoyingly the cinema in Incheon that was near us closed for renovations and the closest one we know about is a forty minute subway ride away. We haven't been to see anything yet because nothing we're interested in has been released. I'm also a little nervous of going there because it's laid out so differently to a UK cinema! I know that's silly when I'm kind of okay going into a Pizza Hut or a supermarket or other places and just...trying my best to be clear and polite and get what I need. But ah! It's so strange! It's like my familiar landmarks have been taken away. For some reason I'm totally intimidated by this cinema - which is very silly and a little embarassing!
And the weirdest thing is that there are ENDLESS clothes shops but there don't seem to be many DVD or Game shops. I've found one so far and that was out in Seoul and very small. I think that culturally, the same way people don't buy their own PCs for gaming, they use PC gaming rooms, people use the DVD bangs (places where you can go and rent a room to watch a DVD) and legally download mp3s rather than actually buying DVDs or CDs. Which is really interesting, though not something I expected or had thought to be different.
It's totally my fault for transposing what little I know of Japanese culture onto Korea. The Japanese seem to have more of a cultural tendency toward collecting things whereas in Korea it's almost the opposite. Says the girl who's lived here a month. Take my outsider observations with a large grain of salt.
One thing I'm totally not going to apologise for finding hilarious though, are the T-shirts. It makes me glad that I always refused to wear those ones for sale everywhere in the UK with Kanji and stuff all over them unless I knew what they said, because OMFG these t-shirts are HILARIOUS. Having english all over your shirt is like...the big thing here. EVERYONE from infants to grandmothers have English on their shirts. Often "English". Often unintentionally contextually hilarious. Often completely inappropriate.
Having heard about it from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pirateygoodness and her friends, I finally saw, the one that said, "Better daycare for teenage parents!" It was funnier because it was on a forty-something very wholesome looking soccer mom. But probably not as funny as the very, very old and hunched over woman wearing a sail of a black shirt which said, in big red letters across the front, "Erotic."
Oh, and not as inappropriate as the twelve year old in my school with the shirt that said, "Girls Love Market." I think perhaps they were trying to suggest that girls love shopping but that's really...really...really not what that sounds like.
Another highlight from my work is the girl who keeps wearing a t-shirt that says in ENORMOUS letters, "I <3 Crap".
Or the fifteen year old boy with, "Get yourself a college girl lifestyle."
There have been loads of others too but I'm ashamed to admit I've forgotten them. :(
OMG! I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION, one of the highlights of being here is that the western food you can buy at the supermarket is almost all american food. And the foreign TV is all american TV, and the foreign chains are all american chains, etc. So being here is a very weird mix of 80% CULTURE SHOCK and 20% OMG I MISSED YOU SO MUCH A1 STEAK SAUCE AND BASKIN ROBBINS AND GOOBER PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SPREAD AND AMERICAN TV SHOWS THAT ONLY AIR ON OBSCURE CABLE CHANNELS I DON'T HAVE IN BRITAIN!
So yeah...it's weird. I keep having these flashes of massive, reassuring comfort at seeing stuff I like and miss - like the first few days I get back to the States (and then the first few days I go back to Britain - I'm fickle that way) - in the midst of my general state of "everything is foreign and new."
Also today I was a responsible citizen and used the very lovely www.overseasvotefoundation.org to fill out my application for a postal vote so as not to miss the chance to vote in this HISTORIC ELECTION. Rock the vote and all that. For the record, I shall be voting for Obama, and I think I will just...cry if McCain gets in instead. But I do kind of hope that the election DRAHMAH continues to be this damn hilarious. OH SARAH PALIN, how I hate your policies but can't bring myself to hate you because this is all so amusing. If it keeps being so amusing, the true terror of you with political power may never dawn on me, and that would be a good thing.
And thus ends the daily wrap-up of all the things I haven't been writing about for...ages. I think mostly because I do it all day and LJ and the internets is my fun escape from that in the evenings. So I'm not sure how regularly I'll blog about school, etc. especially since I think a lot of you are mostly here for the BSG and the geekery (coming soon - more vidlets and perhaps some thoughts on the new Star Wars animated film!)
So, yeah. I figured I'd let everyone know how I was doing and what I'd been doing, and I'm about done now.
Still truckin' all!
Evidence continues to mount that the part of this job I'm finding difficult and stressful is the part where I feel I have material to teach which is inappropriate in terms of either length or content. Usually length. The content issue is only serious in one class where I've essentially got a curriculum suited to children of that age who have extremely high levels of fluency if not total fluency and I just feel bad for the kids I'm teaching. The good part is that they come every day and three days a week they have appropriate lessons and the two days a week when they're doing this course, it's centred around a series of stories, and I can usually explain the gist of those at least. But...they just have no idea when it comes to the assignments. They can't understand them.
It's crazy how much more relaxed I am in the few classes where I'm allowed to teach more than a single page of limited text. And frustrating. I'm getting better at just playing games and generating hopefully vaguely educational excercises like word puzzles and crosswords, but there's only so many of those I can make before they get bored of them and start being very awkward as a result.
I think the reason I don't deal with it as well as some others, like Kev, who's also very stressed but I think slightly coping better than me, is an irksome personality issue I have wherein I'm completely disorganised and a control freak. This place enables my disorganisation like nobody's business but doesn't enable my inner control freak where at least I always know exactly what I'm planning to do at all times, at all. Because sometimes it takes three minutes to do an exercise and sometimes it takes twenty and I can never tell which it'll be. Whether the game or crossword will last long enough, or if I can't fit it in. If I shouldn't "waste" it on a class that's only come up 10 minutes short instead of the usual fifteen or twenty.
This is, I understand, the nature of teaching (the bit about kids taking different amounts of times to learn different things and to do the same sort of exercise on different days). It's not something I think is or should ever change. It's just something I'm acclimitising to. And I think I would be so much more relaxed about it if filling in time with a wordsearch or game was what happened when you happened to finish early this time because there is enough material, rather than something you have to assume will be necessary every single time. Because then I'm effectively trying to come up with half a lesson plan for every lesson without the ability to actually teach them anything since I'm not allowed to move forward.
So basically I suppose stuff's still the same. I'm still finding it stressful. It's still slowly improving. I still feel kind of isolated here in ways I didn't expect and in ways I did. I think one of the reasons I'm a little surprised at how isolated I feel here is the fact that one thing me and Kev always used to do was go window shopping. We'd just wander around malls, look in DVD and game shops, eat at Subway, go see a movie. We were big movie-people. Annoyingly the cinema in Incheon that was near us closed for renovations and the closest one we know about is a forty minute subway ride away. We haven't been to see anything yet because nothing we're interested in has been released. I'm also a little nervous of going there because it's laid out so differently to a UK cinema! I know that's silly when I'm kind of okay going into a Pizza Hut or a supermarket or other places and just...trying my best to be clear and polite and get what I need. But ah! It's so strange! It's like my familiar landmarks have been taken away. For some reason I'm totally intimidated by this cinema - which is very silly and a little embarassing!
And the weirdest thing is that there are ENDLESS clothes shops but there don't seem to be many DVD or Game shops. I've found one so far and that was out in Seoul and very small. I think that culturally, the same way people don't buy their own PCs for gaming, they use PC gaming rooms, people use the DVD bangs (places where you can go and rent a room to watch a DVD) and legally download mp3s rather than actually buying DVDs or CDs. Which is really interesting, though not something I expected or had thought to be different.
It's totally my fault for transposing what little I know of Japanese culture onto Korea. The Japanese seem to have more of a cultural tendency toward collecting things whereas in Korea it's almost the opposite. Says the girl who's lived here a month. Take my outsider observations with a large grain of salt.
One thing I'm totally not going to apologise for finding hilarious though, are the T-shirts. It makes me glad that I always refused to wear those ones for sale everywhere in the UK with Kanji and stuff all over them unless I knew what they said, because OMFG these t-shirts are HILARIOUS. Having english all over your shirt is like...the big thing here. EVERYONE from infants to grandmothers have English on their shirts. Often "English". Often unintentionally contextually hilarious. Often completely inappropriate.
Having heard about it from
pirateygoodness and her friends, I finally saw, the one that said, "Better daycare for teenage parents!" It was funnier because it was on a forty-something very wholesome looking soccer mom. But probably not as funny as the very, very old and hunched over woman wearing a sail of a black shirt which said, in big red letters across the front, "Erotic." Oh, and not as inappropriate as the twelve year old in my school with the shirt that said, "Girls Love Market." I think perhaps they were trying to suggest that girls love shopping but that's really...really...really not what that sounds like.
Another highlight from my work is the girl who keeps wearing a t-shirt that says in ENORMOUS letters, "I <3 Crap".
Or the fifteen year old boy with, "Get yourself a college girl lifestyle."
There have been loads of others too but I'm ashamed to admit I've forgotten them. :(
OMG! I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION, one of the highlights of being here is that the western food you can buy at the supermarket is almost all american food. And the foreign TV is all american TV, and the foreign chains are all american chains, etc. So being here is a very weird mix of 80% CULTURE SHOCK and 20% OMG I MISSED YOU SO MUCH A1 STEAK SAUCE AND BASKIN ROBBINS AND GOOBER PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SPREAD AND AMERICAN TV SHOWS THAT ONLY AIR ON OBSCURE CABLE CHANNELS I DON'T HAVE IN BRITAIN!
So yeah...it's weird. I keep having these flashes of massive, reassuring comfort at seeing stuff I like and miss - like the first few days I get back to the States (and then the first few days I go back to Britain - I'm fickle that way) - in the midst of my general state of "everything is foreign and new."
Also today I was a responsible citizen and used the very lovely www.overseasvotefoundation.org to fill out my application for a postal vote so as not to miss the chance to vote in this HISTORIC ELECTION. Rock the vote and all that. For the record, I shall be voting for Obama, and I think I will just...cry if McCain gets in instead. But I do kind of hope that the election DRAHMAH continues to be this damn hilarious. OH SARAH PALIN, how I hate your policies but can't bring myself to hate you because this is all so amusing. If it keeps being so amusing, the true terror of you with political power may never dawn on me, and that would be a good thing.
And thus ends the daily wrap-up of all the things I haven't been writing about for...ages. I think mostly because I do it all day and LJ and the internets is my fun escape from that in the evenings. So I'm not sure how regularly I'll blog about school, etc. especially since I think a lot of you are mostly here for the BSG and the geekery (coming soon - more vidlets and perhaps some thoughts on the new Star Wars animated film!)
So, yeah. I figured I'd let everyone know how I was doing and what I'd been doing, and I'm about done now.
Still truckin' all!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 04:05 pm (UTC)Status quo: I don't think it means what you think it means...
(Or at least, I don't feel guilty about giggling when you blithely ignore the hilarious, obvious interpretation in favour of your attempt to jump on Clinton's coattails...)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 02:56 am (UTC)I mean, I'm not actually convinced that Obama's success in rallying the younger generations around him in a massive idealistic crusade for Hope and Change is as new as his supporters often like to convince me. Because, JFK, people. JFK. And Clinton. And perhaps even Regan a little in terms of his popularity if not his age. But I do at least believe he's sincere when he proposes change, and if I'm right and Clinton and JFK gained power from similar campaign platforms, then I'm relieved that change is still a staple of politics, considering it's our primary tool for social change.
McCain on the other hand is lolarious in his desperate attempts to sell some of what the other guy is selling even when it's blatantly not true.
YES! CHANGE! CHANGE LIKE KEEPING EVERYTHING THE WAY IT IS BECAUSE IT'S SAFER THAT WAY! WHAT A RADICAL IDEA! THAT WOULD BE THE REAL WAY TO SHAKE UP EXPECTATIONS!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 09:55 am (UTC)http://images.ucomics.com/comics/naqv/2008/naqv080905.gif
Heh.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-07 04:22 am (UTC)OMG thank you. That was hucking filarious!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 03:24 pm (UTC)This is, I understand, the nature of teaching (the bit about kids taking different amounts of times to learn different things and to do the same sort of exercise on different days)
yes. it gets easier over time. you sort of figure out a way to predict how long certain excercises are going to take and you find ways to either extend them or cut them short. although that might work better with something content-based/open-ended than a very formulaic excercise.
Or the fifteen year old boy with, "Get yourself a college girl lifestyle."
hahaha! i wish you could take pictures of these t-shirts!!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 04:18 pm (UTC)My dad's welsh (british), my mum's american. I was born in the united states but we moved to wales when I was a year old and that's where I grew up. I'm a dual citizen, so I can vote in both places. One year I think I managed to vote in the welsh assembly elections, the british general election and the american general election. I AM A VOTING WHORE.
Awesome - are you a teacher? I'm getting a little better at it already, but I'm still not great at it and of course the mentality of the students is a big part of it, so different classes take different lengths of time to do things, and they'll do it faster if they're in a good mood and slower if it's a lesson they really can't be bothered with right now. And of course, when teaching six year olds there's the wonderful discrepancy between the kids who rush through everything and yell, "Teacher, finished!" after two minutes and want something else to do immediately and start trying to sneakily do their one-page of workbook for the next day like I can't see them, and the kids who do thing slowly, methodically and panic and complain if you try to make them hurry/stop because it's the end of the lesson.
Of course, none of them speaking more than basic english! ;)
FUN TIMES!
I wish I could take pictures too, but I don't have a phone/phone camera or digital camera. I can take pictures on my PSP but I have to plug in the camera attachment, etc. which takes a few minutes and that's not even detailing the fact it'd probably be impossible to do so surreptitiously since I'm usually being watched.
Being part of an ethnic minority for the first time is interesting. Where I live, aside from my three coteachers at the school, I've seen - in the last five weeks - three people who aren't Korean/Chinese/Japanese in ethnicity and none of them were white.
It's not threatening (since it's neither coming from a background of hundreds of years of entrenched violence, nor are the negative white people stereotypes here rooted in violence), but it's interesting. Small children stare at me in unabashed bogglement!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 04:11 pm (UTC)i'm a grad student, so teaching comes as part of the package. of course the "kids" i teach are all between 17-22, hahaha. although sometimes you wonder if they aren't perhaps five. i think you will figure out more ways to keep them busy as you accumulate experience. i mean, you've only been doing this for a few weeks and you have already started to figure out how to structure classes more productively.
you definitely need a digital camera to document your time in korea!!
i've had the same experience in taipei. i haven't had any small kids stare at me, but i was constantly aware that i stood out as a foreigner.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-07 04:29 am (UTC)Can I be nosy and ask what you're studying/studying for? There was no teaching involved when I was a grad student but I was doing the world's easiest Master's degree and university in the UK is shorter and very different (basically we only study our major at undergraduate level and it's a three year course and a Master's is typically one to three years, usually two. Mine was one year, see comment above. It was in Creative Writing, for the record! And it was awesome, but not really very practical.)
I really should get a camera I can pull out at opportune moments. Though I am planning to go into school one day with my PSP so I can video the place and some of the kids. There's seven year old a girl who is a kickass dancer and I totally want to get that on film!
The weirdest thing for me with the whole foreigner thing, I think, was when I saw someone else. Not my coworkers, because I was expecting them to be at the school. But when I went into Seoul and saw another random white person for the first time, riding the subway, that's when I went, "woah, I stand out like that. Interesting." I kind of wanted to smile and wave, but then I also didn't because we didn't know each other at all, we were just both...foreign.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 04:52 pm (UTC)Oh, and I got confirmation about something I suspected (and have discussed with you) about the BSG finale from one of the actors...and that's all I'm saying here. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-06 02:58 am (UTC)(Note: I think I get by far the better end of the deal here... :p)
Don't worry about getting it together in a hurry though. For one thing, it's awesome that you wanna send me anything (and if you give me your address I totally want to add you to the list of people to find awesome/weird Korean souveniers for!), and for another I live in an apartment block with a tiny mail box downstairs in the apartment entrance and one of the things on our to-do list for next week is ask our wrangler how we actually receive packages since we want to order some stuff one we get paid (in just over a week YAY).