Warning: School Rant

I was a little worried that with the classes switching up, I would be losing my beloved Jaemin (He was wearing jeans with a Super Mario design today, and the rad Velcro puma shoes.). I did lose him, just not in the way I expected. Two other students have joined us in GS1A and apparently, Jaemin is kind of an attention stealing brat when surrounded by other children. He is likely going to turn out to be one of those dreadful problem children (when he’s older) that cause me turn into MP (you know who I mean). Oh my sweet Jaemin, where have you gone? On a brighter, more optimistic note, today in class, he pointed at the question mark and correctly identified it as a question mark. We had previously been struggling with the difference between a question and a sentence (a question is most likely a type of sentence and the correct difference would be a question and a statement, but seriously, he barely knows his colours).

Who am I? Caring about shit like this, school children and stuff. Never mind that I am excited about this small indication of progress, I have, since the change, actually started looking forward to my elementary school classes more than middle school classes. The elementary kids are baaaaaad, to be sure, but at least I am aware they are alive, with all their screaming and whatnot. The middle school kids are sullen brats who refuse to speak to me. Not to mention that all (ALL!) the cute middle school boys seem to have disappeared. I was so hoping the hot tall one in in MLGL would be in one of my classes, but he’s gone. The flirty one in one of MLPA classes is gonzo, and all I’m left with the is bratty one who has the most adorable dimples, but whom isn’t cute enough to get away with being a brat. Anyway, I who claims to despise children find myself singing awkward esl versions of Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes and I have the Hello and Good-bye songs stuck in my head. Also, today, I totally played Simon Says (with GS1A, the whole Simon thing is totally lost on them, we are learning body parts. The book I am teaching from is terrible by the way. I hit play today, expecting the normal, perfectly good tune of Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes and was thoroughly disturbed by the same lyrics set to different, worse music. Never mind that they fucked with ABC, everybody knows it is sung to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, except the writers and editors of We Can! Even the kids were thrown off by the difference. I have to teach three different levels from the same crappy series and the GT2A’s are way too advanced for the book, two weeks ago we were reading Mouse Soup and now I am supposed to teach them “Hi, How are you?” What is this bullshit? But I digress.) and replayed the Hello and Goodbye songs because I wanted to hear them again. They were last class’s songs.

I guess after that rant, I should provide a quick explanation of the change up. (Talking about Jaemin was supposed segue into post for Monday, December 22. Later, I’ll get to that later). January 2 was the start of new school schedule, I mentioned before that I now have classes six days a week and I am teaching during the day instead of in the evening. The kids have a break in regular school so for the month of January, they attend hagwons full time. All the classes have been changed around, the kids have been reorganized according to their new skill levels. This means that some kids moved up and some kids stayed at the same level. The classes have also been reorganized according to size. Before Christmas I had some really small classes and some big classes that were the same level. Now all of the classes are pretty much the same and all of my classes are too big. At least in the elementary classes.

We also started with brand new curriculum, this means I am getting used to a new schedule, teaching new material, and have a many new students with which to deal. Also, I have more classes per week and per day. Before I never had more than five classes a day, now I have at least five and some days I have seven classes, that means no breaks, at all, expect for lunch. There are only five minutes between classes; that is barely enough time to go to the bathroom. And, as I mentioned earlier, the books are pretty bad, all of them. I have a bunch of writing books, teaching kids how to write, not the mechanics, but actually be good writers, like how Joan Diddion is a good writer. I have four different levels that I am teaching this series to, and I’m pretty sure these books aren’t made for ESL students. I’m pretty sure the books are for native speakers. We read a “narrative nonfiction” about Wangari Maathai the other day. I spend the whole class trying to explain the story and then the simple questions asked. These questions are supposed to be warm up to inspire you to eventually write your own story about Mother Teresa. So over there heads. I had to explain the difference between a sentence that gives information and a sentence that gives an opinion. How do you teach this to students who don’t understand the sentence at all! Never mind explaining concepts of opinion and information. Seriously, try it sometime and remember it has to be in the simplest English terms because you audience’s knowledge of the language is limited. These kids aren’t stupid, they know these things already, they just know them in Korean, which is such a totally different language the words themselves don’t really translate, no matter how long they stare at their cell phone Korean English dictionaries (standard on phones here, can you belieive that? English is such an important part of their lives, cell phones come standard with Korean English dictionaries).

I am also teaching a few classes that have TOEFL prep books as the course material. All of which are way too advanced for the students, especially because the books are geared towards people of university age, not middle school. This same problem also occurs in the listening classes, Impact Listening 2 is not meant for middle school students, especially the younger middle school students. The situations that the book uses as real life examples are totally lost on the kids that would be about the grade sevenish. The allusion to the possible love triangle between Paul, Alicia, and Paul’s girlfrind in Spain was a little stupid and Spanish guitar music in he background was super lame. And I had to explain “interested” in the romantic way and “broke up”. Really? Really? If good marks on the TOEFL is the ultimate goal, I don’t think this is the way to go.

On the bright side, I’m pleased with the redistribution of students and disappearance of few elementary students. I have not got super mad at any one class yet, although I perhaps should, but this week I have felt like they don’t deserve to be yelled at because the material is by no means engaging and I have done nothing to make it better for them. If it is way too hard or way too easy, why should I expect that they will be willing or able to pay attention? It’s going to be a long month, I think.

This blog was supposed to be much different. I’m still going to post it.