Day 260

Thursday September 3

My package still isn't here! I saw some packages in the guard's office, but they were gone by tonight so none of them were mine. But I do know a way to tell if a package is mine. The US postal service sticks a sticker with an eagle on it on each side of the box. I didn't even think to look for that mark. None of those packages had the eagles. Tomorrow will be 14 days since the package was mailed. It was suppose to take 6-10 days. I found out it was sent Priority mail instead of Express mail so thats why it wasn't fast. Which is really bad. I can't get a refund for being late and if it never shows up I'm just screwed. I told my mom to make a mental and physical note that in the future important things need to be sent by EXPRESS MAIL INTERNATIONAL.

now me and the new Korean teacher are both using laptops. The computers that were being used by the old teachers are gone. The new Korean's laptop is connected to the network and the printer. I need to get mine connected to the network.

I still don't have a proper text to teach out of for my writing classes. I'm using a copy of the book. Too cheap to actually get me a book to use so I have to just use a copy. I wish I had a teacher's edition. I'm no expert on writing and I'm not qualified to teach it. Some of the stuff in the higher levels is hard to explain.

I had 3 students in my first class. The highest elementary level that I'm teaching which is an intermediate level. There are 3 girls in the class. 2 returning students and one new student. One of the returning students was happy to see me. She said she missed me and she wanted a hug. She hadn't seen me in a week. One of the students was asking me if I knew her sister. Then she told me who her sister was. Her sister is my youngest student. The 2nd grader. She was telling me how cute her sister was. She's 12 and her sister is 9. Today we went over a writing unit about staying on topic. The lesson for today was kinda long so we didn't get finished. During class the students were telling me how hungry they were and asking me to buy them food. I told them I didn't bring any money with me to school. I don't usually carry around any cash. Later they were asking me if I would give them 500 won so they could get a snack. I told them I might have 500 won in my desk drawer. I found enough change to give them money for the snack. They were all excited and said thank you.

My 2nd class had 2 boys. They used to be in my level 4 class. Now they are together in my first level of intermediate class. We did a writing unit. I think I'm going to have to do a lot of extra preperation so I'll have enough material to last for the class. The lesson was too short! I actually covered more than I was going to cover. I was only going to do lesson 1, but since it was so short I did lesson 2 also. Today we were talking about sentences, labels, word order. Very simple stuff.

In my 3rd class I was back with the 3 girls that I taught in my first class. I teach them twice on Thursday. Once for writing and once for the English Newspaper. We talked a little before class then they took charge and started reading the article on their own. great! Each person would read a sentence and then they'd answer the questions that I put on the bottom of the page. today we had 3 articles. One was about David Beckham. Another was about Sportsmanship. And the last one was sorta like an advice column. Then they got to have free time for the rest of class. Next week we will be doing the English Newspaper in the lab so it will be more organized. This week i was told just to print out articles.

Then I was going to teach conversation to my middle school students. My schedule said that they were in room 203. I'd never even been on that side of the hall before. I walked into 203 and got some weird stares and shocked looks from the students. My conversation classes had been previous elem. school students and I didn't know any of these students. The class was way bigger than the 9 that I had anticipated. I wrote my name on the board and asked them if they had the textbook. Then they said that they were in math class. Then I walked out and went back to the teacher's room. I was going to see if anyone could help me but no one was in the teacher's room. Then when i was walking down the hall I saw some of my students sticking their head out of a class room. My students were in room 212 and no one bothered to even tell me. and you wonder why I hate my job! They probably laughed their head off once I left the class.

I had 6 students today in my conversation class. All of them were returning students who had just moved up from elementary to middle. We had a good class today. We listened to 2 conversations and practiced with partners. Everyone practiced with their partners. Well sometimes 2 of the students I had problems with last semester didnt want to do it correctly or rushed through it. One of them was playing an English game on his phone. He was asking me for help. I told him the answers but I told him to quit playing the game and fill in the answers in the book. We also had 2 listening parts. I'm teaching out of a student book so I don't have the class cd that would come with the teacher's guide. (see what else I have to put up with!) So I was just reading the audio script and they had to listen and fill in the blanks. One student read all the answers for one of the listening activities. He did a good job of listening and filling in the blanks. I actually like this textbook. The textbook for the other 2 conversation classes is too much work for a short time, but this one is perfect for the time allotted. I didn't give them any homework. Actually I don't know how to give homework for a conversation class. I may just get them to write out a conversation for each scenerio like today I could have said "write a conversation between 2 people who have just met". I think for the tests I may play a conversation and they have to fill in the blanks.

My last class had 4 students. 2 returning students and 2 new students. We went over a writing unit. I think they grasped the concepts. Today we were talking about topics and ideas. I had to help them some with their sentences. All of my students like to write "She goes to home" instead of "She goes home". That's a common mistake that I see in everyone's writing.We didn't finish the lesson. I dont know why the lessons in levels 2 and 3 are too long and the lesson in level one is way too short!

I think this semester I'm going to be swamped. All the lessons are short and they don't really have any pages that they could do for homework in the book. I'm going to be busy making extra homework everyday. I'm also going to have to do a lot of studying so I can explain all this stuff to them. Maybe I just won't give much homework. Its not like I have anyone checking up on me to see if I'm doing what I should be doing. I don't have lesson plans for 2 of my classes yet because they haven't been made yet.

I still don't have my spelling books for my classes tomorrow. Again i won't be able to adquately prepare. But this is kindergarden level spelling so it can't be that hard. I think I'll be using a copy of the text from the student book.

Tomorrow I have to teach 2 English newspaper classes. I'm going to use the same 3 articles that I used today since its the same level of classes. I've added more questions and a word list for the students. On the English newspaper website there are words underlined and then when you scroll over the word the Korean equivalant will show up. I copied that word list for the children. Instead of me trying to explain the word they will understand better if they have the korean eqivalant in front of them.

I also have to teach 2 kindergarden level spelling classes.

I have to teach 2 beginning level classes and 2 intermediate classes. At least it will be an easy day.

This schedule for this semester really sucks! I have no time in between classes. The only break I have is 5-10 minutes between classes. I don't have time to eat supper. When we had 2 teachers I used to have at least a 45 minute break after teaching 2 classes. The only thing I like so far is the class setup. I don't think I'm going to have any behavior problems. I had some kids who would act up when they were together but now those students are all in separate classes. I may have a problem in one class with 2 boys but I'll seperate them if I have to.

I do like the small class sizes. The smallest class is one student in the beginning level. The largest class in my elementary level class is 7 students. My middle school classes have 10, 6 and 6. I counted up all my students that I've had so far and the total is 47 between 10 different classes. (22 middle school and 25 elementary). There may have been a few absent students on the first day of classes. I noticed a few of my students from last semester weren't in class anymore. Either they were absent or just don't come to our hagwon anymore. I have no attendance sheet so I just had them write their names in my notebook.