8 / My First Day

O_O

... O_O

!!!!

I taught for the very first time today!

Fff, I'm so overwhelmed. I actually just walked in, put some rice in the cooker, and now I'm trying to settle down and think about everything that happened. Phew.

I went to the school pretty early in the morning, way before I was supposed to teach. It was nice because I had the chance to talk to the teachers, introduce myself, and explore the school a little bit more. I really like everyone at Seosu... They are all incredibly friendly and nice people, though they are shy to talk to me. When I would be speaking English with my mentor teacher or the Korean university student helping me, sometimes a group would gather around us to hear me speak in English, but they'd be too nervous to join in. So funny.

I also had lunch at the school. By that point, all the kids [28 total] had realised that I was there, and had varied reactions... Some came up to try and say "hello!" to me, but others were too shy as well. All of the kids are soooo cute, but some are definitely more mischievous than others. Even just in the space of one day I got to see so many personalities.

I'd come up with a lesson plan for my first day as a way to see how much the kids knew already. I'd been told that they would have almost no English skills at all, but I was pretty pleasantly surprised. I'll go into each class in some detail --

1st and 2nd Grade -- The hardest class of the day. Not only was it my first -- and I was pretty nervous -- but these kids were pretty wild. They did not want to be in class at all, had no interest in English, and pretty much mocked me for the entire forty minutes. I had my Korean co-teacher there with me, and she was practically the only reason they listened at all. There were only two children in the group of six who made an effort, and I made sure I praised them a lot, but the others were difficult to control. :p One little boy was kind of the instigator... I attempted to teach them things like "hello" and "nice to meet you", and whenever I tried to get them to repeat after me he'd just go "dadadadada". Too cool for school, I guess. I'll have to try something different with them tomorrow, but I really have no idea where to start. One girl clearly knew what I was teaching already, and she'd just stare at me like "really?" whenever I spoke. ;_; Lol. After this class, I was pretty disheartened, but I still tried my best. Hopefully somehow I can earn their respect. This class will also be difficult because they don't know the alphabet or how to read. They copied some letters well enough, but really had no patience for it. I hope I can figure out how to make it fun. I remember I didn't really find learning to read very fun, even though I took to it pretty quickly as a kid.

3rd and 4th Grade Things really picked up here. I was SO relieved. These children told me they didn't like English, but wanted to learn it anyway. It was a slow forty minutes because while they were willing to try, they didn't know very much. Still, it made me feel so much better. They had very good spirits, smiled a lot, etc. We did dialogues together and wrote our names in English. One little boy kept asking me for "more" to learn to write... So we wrote "Hello! What's your name? My name is _____." together. All of these children too would write notes for themselves in Korean about how exactly I was pronouncing things. It made me feel so useful. c: Tomorrow I think we'll read a story together and review what we did today a little bit more. I am nervous that my co-teacher won't be there, but I think that this class will go all right anyway.

5th and 6th Grade My mind was totally blown away by these kids. They completely, completely surpassed my expectations. These kids knew EVERYTHING I was trying to teach, knew how to read, knew more vocabulary, etc. I was amaaaaaazed by them and told them so. (: We read aloud a story together, did dialogues, and played a game using the alphabet. They had so much energy and even though they knew the material already, were okay reviewing with me. Wow, wow, wow. We actually had fun together! Tomorrow I am going to move on to new material, like classroom vocabulary and dialogue. I hope that it's not too boring for them. A lot of these kids go to private school after they finish at Seosu, which is how they know so much English already. Their parents push them very hard to do well, so I also hope my class can be a little more fun for them too, since they already work so much. I honestly can't even believe how much work these little kids do. :O

All in all, I had a pretty good day. Some hard moments, but it was mostly very rewarding and I'm looking forward to seeing the children again tomorrow. Hoping this is the start of something very good. c: Now to eat dinner and... Relaaaaxxx.