Day 251

Tuesday August 25

I think my life is about to get a lot harder! You'll see why near the end of this post.

My first class was good. We were talking about school subjects today. My students like math and science. One of the boys kept turning around in his seat to talk to the person behind him. I had to keep telling him to turn around.

My 2nd class was good. The quiet student was less willing to participate today. We studied our lesson up the last minute today. I wanted to cover half of the unit. The students tried to beg me to only make them study 3 pages instead of 4. At the end of class some of the students were asking me for questions to their homework for their reading class. Today in class we were talking about an amazing parrot who could do things like whistle, speak English, sing, etc. I had them draw an animal in their book and tell me what their animal could do. 3 of them drew people instead of an animal. I drew a cat on the board as an example. Then I wrote, "This is an amazing cat. She can speak English and play the piano." They all laughed at that.

My 3rd class was good. We covered 4 pages of material and then I let them play a game.

My 4th class was good. I made them study for almost the whole class. I wasn't able to study all that I wanted to cover. Today was our last speaking class for the semester.

My 5th class was terrible! They told me that their bus leaves at 9:05 and when they get out of class at 9 they are late for the bus. I let them go at 8:55. The boys didn't want to pay attention. The girls were participating but I had to beg the guys to participate. The boys kept playing with their cellphones. One of the girls answered the phone in class. She said it was her mother. One of the boys didn't know where we were in the book most of the time because he wasn't paying attention. I couldn't get the students to read correctly. They are suppose to have speaking time to practice. I gave them speaking time but they won't do it correctly. Today was our last speaking class of the session.

Our school made an advertisement and my picture is on it. Its a picture of me pointing to something in a student's book. It was a posed picture, but it looks like it was just happening during class.

The Korean teacher asked me if I had picked out a textbook. I told her I did't know how to pick out a book. She found one on the internet and chose it. She let me see a preview of it. It had some good topics to use. I guess she will look at the bookstore website and find books for me.

The Korean teacher asked me if I would eat dinner with them on Friday night. Then she told me we are going out to eat because 3 teachers are resigning. Both of my co-teachers are resigning and one math teacher. Oh my! I'm going to be the most experienced teacher in the elementary dept at my school. Thats scary! I'm not going to have anyone to help me! I don't know if they have hired replacements for them for next session yet. I am going to be so lost if I don't have anyone around who knows what's going on. A lot of Korean teachers have quit recently. They fired 4 middle school teachers from my school about a month ago. All the foreigners are still here, but I think almost all of the Korean staff has quit from all 3 campuses. I thought my school was the only school were all the teachers were staying but my teachers are leaving. We only had 2 Koreans who taught elementary school and they are both leaving. And now the students will have to adjust too. They have had these teachers for a while and now they will have new teachers. Then in 6 months they will have to adjust to a new foreign teacher.