Wednesday, March 6, 2013

First Week of School

Started school back up this week!  So far so good, but I've only taught 2 classes.  My schedule is a lot different and a bit more complex, but now I'm able to see the 2nd graders every week and the 1st almost every week so that's great!  I am teaching 3 extra classes, but they got rid of my club classes so it's the 20 hours a week that I had last semester. 

We're just doing intro lessons so far.  Basically for 1st, I am introducing myself, telling them what I did over break and they have to write about what they did for break in a nice paragraph form (whenever I had them write last year they always made it more list like and I wanted to steer them away from that).  I'm trying to set a more academic and serious tone for the semester instead of just jumping into a game right away.  I have been pretty impressed by 1st grade this year so far.  It helps that they are in classes of 24-25 and they are leveled.  2nd is mixed level and has an average of 37 students in each class so it's a little crazier there.

I didn't teach the first two days because we had to arrange the schedule.  It was pretty hectic but we were able to get it done.  It's like this weird 6 week rotation with the 1st grade so I'm going to have to be super organized in terms of what class is doing which lesson.

We got a lot of new staff members too.  3 English teachers left (including the one that slept in the back of my class so I can't say I was devastated to see him go) but the new ones that I have met seem great so far.  I'm going to hopefully meet all of them later this afternoon at our first teacher workshop.  I'm also able to teach with some of the 3rd grade teachers since they have 2nd grade classes so I'm excited for that.  It'll be nice to work with all of them.

It's been great seeing my old students too!  They greet me with waves and hi's as normal (some of the first graders are still bowing and giving me the Korean greeting which I don't mind but I'm sure it'll change as we move along).  Definitely missing some 3rd graders but I get to seem them in the halls and at lunch so that's nice.  And the lunches have been great too.  I've been a fan of them last semester too so it's good to know that we still got some good ones.

The only other notable things is that I cleaned my desk out completely and threw away a lot of the things that I haven't really used/were from ETAs like 4 or 5 years ago and a first grader came into the teacher's office, went to my desk, and asked me for chalk (except he couldn't remember the word for chalk haha).  It was just reallly strange since I'm pretty much the last person I would ask since I have no idea, I don't know the Korean word for chalk, and pretty much every other office worker and teacher in here does know haha.  But it was very endearing and I'm glad that they wanted to talk to me, even if it was just to get chalk.

So yeah things are good and back to normal here at school.  So far so good!

1 comment:

  1. Never a dull moment. Sounds like you are gaining experience, thinking about it, and refining things. So good to hear as we desparately need some of that logic in our schools over here. Gone back to crossfit yet?

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