A Case for the Boys

Hi! 

I promise I'm not dead or have been shipped off to North Korea or anything.  Pretty much it's been a mix of laziness and being busy that I've neglected this poor blog.  I've had several weekend trips to Seoul, Busan, Hwacheon, and more in addition to my usual school work, applying for jobs, preparations for the YDAC Conference, arrangements for going home, speaking tests, etc., etc.

But I wanted to take a moment to talk about something that has been bugging me a bit lately.  As all of my faithful readers of my blog know, I teach at an all-boys high school.  And I absolutely love it!  When I proudly tell people I am meeting that I teach at an all boys school, generally the reaction is something like "Oh that must be so hard" or just awkward laughing and sympathetic looks.  This has quickly become one of my biggest pet peeves.

Even some of my ETA friends that teach here in Korea are very wary of boys and teaching them.  Boys have this reputation as these hyperactive, rowdy, mischievous, perhaps even uncontrollable group of students.  This isn't only the case in Korea, but in America too.  I think these expectations are potentially devastating for these students.

There's this stereotype that boys can't sit still, girls are smarter than boys, and other ones that I mentioned.  And frankly, there are quite a few boys that are living up to this expectation.  I've seen this in my own academic career.  For example, at my honors program in college, women had a significantly presence than that of men.  Approximately, ~30 women and ~10 men.  Even here at Fulbright it is a huge gap between men and women.  In my ETA class there were about 20ish men and 60ish women.  From my experience, men are just disappearing from the high-achieving academic world.

I really believe that teachers and society in general needs to have much higher expectations for males in education.  It happened with females a number of years ago and this obviously needs to continue, but expectations shouldn't be lowered for the male students. 

So simply excusing male students for poor behavior and simply writing it off as "Boys" as I saw recently on facebook, is simply intolerable.  We call it the "Self fulfilling prophecy" in the education world.  Students will meet the expectations that are given to them whether good or bad.  We need to have higher expectations for our male students.

Okay rant over haha.  It's just been something annoying me lately so I thought I'd let y'all know what I was thinking. 

Anyways, things are great here so please don't worry about my lack of updates.  I will be back in American July 14, 2013 btw!  Flying into Cleveland at like midnight or so.  I guess I can forgive you if you don't show up at the airport to greet me, but I'd love to see all of your happy faces soon! :D

The Island Getaway and My First Bomb

• We had a three-day weekend this week thanks to Buddha's B-day falling on a Friday!  So a few friends and I (well really them) organized a trip to a small island off of one of my fave cities Mokpo.  The name of the island is 비근도 and it was awesome!
• We basically just rented out a small pension/house and chilled for 3 days.  It was so great to get to see the ocean and a whole new place in Korea.  Korea in generally is a beautiful, scenic country, but this island gave me the most beautiful views I have EVER seen!  It was fantastic!!  Instead of just describing them, I'll show you some pics instead.  They really don't do it justice, but it's the best that I got!

• So I went with Di, Mina, Hana, Jason, and Mary (all Jeolla ETAs! Whoo!) and we did some hiking/rock climbing, swimming (even though it was freezing), cooking, card game playin, riding in a truck-ing, and just chilling enjoying each other's company and the splendor of the island.  It was definitely one of the best weekends I have had in Korea thus far!
• Now the Bomb.  So last week, I tried to do a grocery shopping simulation lesson.  We just did a money and big numbers lesson and now I figured a good transition to build off of that would be shopping.  So I put the most prep into any lesson I have ever done in my short, but robust teaching career.  I would say at least a good 12 hours when you added it all up.  And the first class I did it with was okay.  The actual "shopping" went pretty well (but I had to take a lot of money away from students since they were speaking Korean) but the clean-up/organization part did not go so well.  And, of course, this was the day I had 4 classes in a row.
• I managed to get everything to a decent presentation, but I now had to teach the class of second graders.  38 second graders.  This was coming from the class of 22 first graders where the lesson was okay.  I was a bit worried.  And, as I could have easily predicted, it was a diaster.  They hardly spoke English, they stole from each other, they bought too much, and the clean-up was essentially non-existent.  Ugh.  So I didn't even bother to try it with the next Grade 2 class.  I just used a filler Konglish lesson instead.  I tried again with the advanced 1st graders 4th period, but it again was only okay and even a little worse than 1st period.
• I was ready to scrap the lesson completely and play The Price Is Right on Monday, but my co-teacher convinced me that I should give it another shot.  After as much revision and simplification to it as I could, I tried it again with 2nd and 1st.  2nd grade was probably the worst.  The students just didn't listen well and it was the day when my co-teacher didn't show up so that didn't help either.  When I tried to get them to clean up, only 6 of the teams actually did and the rest just sat there and stared at me or slept.  I was finally just done with this lesson and I took the rest of the time in class just to do it myself.  I gave it one more shot with the smaller 1st grade class and it went fairly well, but again, clean-up was still a bit messy.  And this was done with all of the directions given to them in Korean by the co-teacher.  If they couldn't get it right in Korean, than there was no way it was going to happen in English.  I begrudingly came to the realization that the lesson bombed.
• It is a bit frustrating since I spent so much time planning and prepping it and it worked well in other ETA schools, but I guess I overestimated my student's abilities.  Overall, they have been doing better this semester than last, but I guess I forgot that the majority of them are pretty low-level still.  Oi.  Well I'm planning on posting it on the ETA forum so maybe other teachers could use it so it doesn't completely go to waste but I definitely cannot do it again.  At least all of the classes will be on the same page when we start up again next week becaussssssse I have a mini-vacation!
• Yes!  My students are all going on a field trip so there will not be any classes for me.  I mentioned some time ago that my students were going to Jeju Island and some military base, but I couldn't go with them due to funding.  While I am bummed I can't go, I am excited to use my 4-day vaca!  I will be going to Busan tomorrow to visit some old PNU and CrossFit Busan friends.  I might stay the night, but I'm not sure.  Probably not, but again who knows?  Then on Thursday (possibly Wed night), I am planning on going to Mokpo (again haha) to visit my pal Ammy's middle school.  She invited me to come last time I was there and now I finally have a chance!  I've been really wanting to go to another school, but it just hasn't been able to happen yet so I'm excited that it is going to!

Alright that's it.  going to CrossFit later and I have to nurse my sunburn.  I got burnt as usual, but hopefully it will be the last one of the year...

I ran a 4k in slippers

Hi!  Today was Part I of the annual Gwangyang High School Sports Day!  Super exciting!  Here are some of the highlights:

• To open the day, there was a ceremony type thing where a bunch of people make speeches and all that. A lot of Korean events do this I have noticed.  It's kind of annoying because I think people just wanted to start playing the games and stuff.
• Anyways, the first event was Tug-of-War!  It was pretty cool, they were all really getting into it.  This was pretty long because all 23 homerooms had to compete so I just moseyed around and chatted with students and stuff.
• There were soccer games of course.  Soccer is the most popular sport in Korea so this was one of the main events.  I watched for a while and it was actually pretty interesting!  I usually don't like it, but it was enjoyable.  I was playing a "bounce the soccer ball in the circle" game.  Despite my trash talk and comparisons to David Beckham, I wasn't too good, but it was really fun anyways!
• I also got to catch some basketball games so that was fun to watch.  Then came the Marathon (which really ended up being a 4k).  I didn't really want to run since I didn't have any shoes and when the race was setting up I was wearing dress pants, a tie, and a vest.  And slippers.  Not exactly proper running attire.  However, some 3rd grade students that I really miss started talking to me and they were saying how they were going to run and all of this and they somehow convinced to go with them.  I did have my gym clothes that I changed into, but I had to complete the 4k in my slippers.  It was pretty funny actually.  And I finished in a decent ranking so that was cool.  A lot of students were cheering as I was turning to the corner to finish so that was great too!
• Then afterwards, I got to just sit around and chat with some 3rd graders.  I really do miss them a lot.  It was great to just relax and talk with them about what's going on and how we don't really have a high school sports day like they do in Korea.  When I was talking to some of them, I noticed that some of them seemed to have lost some of their speaking abilities.  There's one in particular that was very vocal in class, and he is still vocal now, but his grammar is definitely worse and he adds more Korean than he used to.  The 3rd graders are pretty much exclusively studying reading and listening so he simply isn't using those skills anymore so they aren't as sharp as they used to be.  Oh well.  It was still great to talk them.

More sports day tomorrow!  Should be fun!!!! :)

Parent's Day and Birthday Secrets

I had an extra minute so I figured I'd just write a short post :)

• The money/big numbers lesson is going pretty well!  I'm glad that I thought to bring my money from the States because they get really into it, especially the 50 and 100 since they haven't really seen those before.  And with the 100, they don't have a bill in Korea that's equivalent or greater in value so they are really impressed with that one haha.  I think that and my high school yearbook have been the most helpful things that I have brought with me from America.
• I haven't been able to do as much crossfit this week since I've been under the weather.  But last night, I braved it and went and it was great!  I didn't go crazy with the intensity level, but it was still good.
• Speaking of CrossFit, I really want to go back to Busan to visit my CrossFit Busan friends!  They have this group on facebook that I'm part of and they post pics all the time and it looks like there are a TON of people there now!  The business has been super successful so that's great, especially since businesses in Korea have a really high turnover rate.  I still talk to the two instructors from time to time so it's good to keep in touch.
• Yesterday was Parent's Day in Korea so I got my parents + 할모니(spelling?) some cupcakes which they were pretty grateful for so it's good to get some bonus points there.  I got a pastry from the bakery to share with the children and myself.  I also scored a free pastry from the bakery since the owners and bakers are super friendly and I'm a pretty frequent customer haha. 
• Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm trying to keep it secret at school so no one goes crazy or anything.  So far it's working!  The homestay figured it out, but I'm safe at school for now!  I just don't like a lot of attention, though it's pretty hard to do when I with my blue eyes, blonde hair, and fluorescent white skin am teaching in a school full of Koreans, but whatever haha.

Sick (again!!!) and Dollars

Hi

• It was a good week last week.  I went back to Mokpo for like the fourth or fifth time last Wednesday due to having no school because students were taking exams.  It was great to see the Mokpo Mafia (minus Liam and Sarah) and we had some coffee and dinner and all that.
• Then I got sick yet again!  So annoying!!  I get sick maybe once a year or even like once every 18 months, but this is like the THIRD time I have been sick in the past nine months!!!!  Ugh!!  I fully blame the fact that 1.) I am constantly sharing food with people around me and 2.) my twin 4th grade host brothers basically never wash their hands and cough everywhere!  Example: Young Chan was making kimbap and coughed right in front of him and right next to the kimbap that he was making.  I was like "Young Chan!  You can't cough like that!" and I proceeded to demonstrate a good coughing technique into my arm.  He repeat that but then he coughs into his hands and starts handling the kimbap like normal.  Lesson fail.
• On Thursday, I made an attempt to actually hang out with foreigners for once and I posted on the facebook group to see if any Suncheon foreigners wanted to grab some lunch at a new brunch place, buttt the only person to respond was a Korean haha.  But that was cool so we had some lunch and it was good.  He's an optometrist/professor at the local health college and lives in the hotspot foreigner area.
• But I successfully hung out with foreigners on Friday night!  We went out in the area I actually live in so it was cool that it was close.  We got some makeoli and I got to meet a few of them and learn about where they teach and all that so it was nice.  Then I split early to have a fantastic skype session with the one and only Gus!  It was good to catch up with him.
• School is great!  This week we are starting a large numbers/money lesson so it went okay today.  I brought in some American money and the first class I taught, the $1.00 bill went missing -__-  But that's why I didn't pass out the $50 or $100 haha.  
• I've been doing my non-English teacher class and we talked about how being a teacher in America is different from Korea so it was pretty interesting since there are a lot of differences.

That's about it!  Sports day is coming up which will be super fun I think.  I wanted to go to Busan, but couldn't since I was sick.  Maybe Sunday?  I have teachers sports day on Sat so don't know if I'll have time for that.

See you in nine weeks!