Events (Story Book)

Hello,

                Wintermute here bringing you your seasonal scoop of Smartr. Naw, I’m just kidding, what if this site was called Smartr, would you still come? This is Dumbr in the Classroom and we have been learning about Event ideas for your students. Here is one of my all time favorites that can be done with any age group.

                O: Each class will write a story, just one story, the same story. However each class will be responsible for a separate part of the story. Meaning: Class 1 will provide the intro, when they are finished they will pass the story off to the next class. They read it, then class 2 provides the middle, pass it off and class 3 ends it. Of course if you have more classes (which you will) you can separate it into more parts. Or just simply write separate stories.

                O: You should write/type the story on a large A4 piece of paper. Make it pretty, and throw it up on the wall outside your class for all to read. When every class is finished each student can go through the hall and chronologically read the story in order from start to finish.

               O: I don’t think I have to tell you but this is a wonderful way to get your kids speaking in only English and has them working with other classes to make one final project. And being able to see their work on the walls of the school will make them more than proud. It doesn’t have to be done in one day, or week for that matter, you can pace it out so other teachers can work it in their schedule as well.

               O: Truth be told, this is how some Final Fantasy games are written.  One Author will write the beginning, and then another does the middle, so on and so forth until you have a convoluted adventure through space and time with a random nonsensical final boss that was never mentioned anywhere else in the story (Looking at you Zeromus).

                That ends our segment on Dumbr Events, the next Segment is Korean Holidays and how they greatly affect your classroom. We will start that on Sunday, but to end the week, tomorrow we will discuss the most treaded day of a teachers life, “Open House”. Be prepared.

Your Final Fantasy Fan,

Wintermute

Events (Pajama Party)

Hello,

                Wintermute here bringing you your daily does of Dumbr. Tonight we talk about every child’s dream, a slumber party at school with friends. The best part about throwing a pajama party for your students is it forces your employer to pay you over-time. ;)

                First you will have to decide what your students will be doing; this event will be set up much like the Fair we discussed earlier. Each Class will be a different stage for the kids to venture to. However this time around the kids won’t be involved in the planning process, they are there to have some fun. Here are some ideas:

1.       Bowling: Get some 2 liter bottles, fill them up a quarter of the way with water (not all the way or they won’t fall), tip the desk to make a lane and have the kids play.

2.       Team Games: play some games with all of the classes to promote team work, such as passing a ball behind you first over then under then over until the end of the line.

3.       Team Contest: Make a team with each individual Class, have the team come up with a name and then have them design a banner, and last make a team cheer. All the classes will go to the gym and present their banner and cheer. I’m not too hip on this one, but the kids love it.

4.       Anything really, just make sure it’s fun.

Pick a Friday to have all of your students return to the school around 6:30. Tell your kids to wear pajamas and bring sleeping bags. When they arrive have them drop their stuff off. Let them play the games for however long, after a while though serve them some dinner. Something easy like fried chicken, because who doesn’t like fried chicken?

Then have them get their sleeping bags and head to the gym, turn down the lights nice a dim, get a female teacher and have her read them a story. Hopefully they will all fall asleep. None will however, but rest assured the parents are well on their way and ready to pick their sugar high kids up.

Have fun, enjoy yourself, and stay Dumbr. Be sure to comment and ask questions. Tomorrow, Story Book!

Your seonsaengnim, (pronounced song-say-ee, or teacher in Korean)

Wintermute

Classroom Games Intro

Hello,

                My name is Wintermute and this is Dumbr, an account of my life and times teaching English as a second language in South Korea. Over the past couple months I have talked about South Korea, Teaching Contracts, common classroom occurrences and discipline tactics. Today I would like to start a new segment, Classroom Games.

                One of the hardest things to do is make class fun, new, and refreshing every day. Parents want class to be fun because it looks like a good learning environment. Managers want class to be fun because they don’t want to send off the impression that English is boring. You want your class to be fun so it doesn’t get dull and boring for you and your students. But the most important factor will always be your students, who also want class to be fun for obvious reasons.

                I think a lot of teachers get this idea that if they play games all day they are not learning. This can of course be true depending on how often you play and what kind of games you play. But understand this, playing fun educational games with the students can show them more practical uses for what you have taught them; it lets them see how they can use their new found knowledge. This week we will cover:

1.       Board Games –Quick, on your feet games that can be played with any size class on the classroom marker board. (Marker board on the wall by the way, not table top in a box board games)

2.       Gym Games – There are games out there other than Duck Duck Goose.

3.       Music Games – Hate singing like me, than have some fun instead.

4.       Word Games – Making students speak while learning a new language? Absurd!

5.       Computer Games – They are Korean After all.

               By the way, a little where am I now? I will be moving back to South Korea next week and I’ll do my best to keep you updated. I will do everything in my limited power to take pictures of my flight trip and arrival, but I’m not much of a picture taker, and not at all a picture uploader. Thank you all for your amazing support, be sure to share this blog with everyone, facebook it, blog it, twitter it. Bring your Questions, and I will see you in class tomorrow!

Your Teacher,

Wintermute

Discipline part 2 (Structure)

Hello,

                Wintermute here and this is Dumbr. Yesterday we started our new segment Discipline. We will continue today with more tips on how to keep your class in check.

Point Cards: Back to structure and repetition, in my class I set up these point cards, good students received a card, bad students lost cards, the kid with the most cards at the end of month got a prize. This worked wonders, all I had to do was threaten losing a card and a child would start bawling and begging for forgiveness. I won’t lie the power  is a little overwhelming, and with great power comes great responsibility, you have to understand that these cards mean the world to these kids, so don’t pass them out lightly, and don’t take them away for every offense. But have a system in place, (if you do A, you lose 1 card), stick with it, they will learn.

Line up: Koreans love to have every student go at the same time for everything (line up, getting bags/coats, washing hands); they seem to think it’s faster. They couldn’t be further from the truth. What happens when 20 little kids try to bum rush a line up, they start to push, hit, cut in line, etc etc. Instead, make a line leader for the day, and then call each student out one at a time to line up behind the other, no fights, no fuss, and no mess. Plus it allows you to make sure each student cleaned up their area, and pushed in their chair.

Teams: Embrace the power of teams.  I was lucky, our desk were color coded, I had two desk for each color, I put those desk next to each other, students sitting at those desk became a member of the subsequent team color. You may not have that option, but form teams somehow. This is amazing and you won’t understand until you see it in action. Kids will try so hard to do well for their team, and it will make them more competitive. Just keep a simple tally on the board of points for whose doing best, the team with the most points at the end of the day gets cards, easy. They really will pay more attention in class and try much harder, and you can use it in other ways. Say something like the team that cleans up first and sits down gets points. The best team in gym will get points. So on and so forth.

Thank you for being here and for your continued support. Be sure to come back tomorrow for more tips on how to keep your students in check.

Your Teacher,

Wintermute

Discipline part 1(Foundation)

Hello,

                Wintermute here and this is Dumbr. We will start a new segment called Discipline. Discipline is one of the hardest parts of being a teacher. I don’t want to brag, but this is one area where I really excelled at, my students were well behaved, listened, and always followed instructions.  But how do we turn our rugrats into well mannered English spouters?

                Children need structure; this is first and foremost, the only way they will learn right from wrong is through repetition. Through continual trial and errors they will learn how far is too far and when to stop. You need to set up the rules, whatever they may be, and always follow them, so that the children know, if I do A, than B will happen. Never change the rules as this will confuse them, it needs to be the same every time with every student.

No Yelling: The big number one no-no, never yell. Okay sure, yelling will work the first time, and the second, heck maybe even the third time. But by the fourth time its power has completely worn off, the students will sit there going oh, that’s just teacher, he always yells. They will learn nothing comes from it, no consequence, just you yelling. Worst part is, they will never take you seriously, so say they are doing something minor and you want them to stop, well they won’t until you get angry and yell, which means you will spend your whole day yelling. What’s next, we all know how much children love to imitate others, monkey see monkey do, well guess what your yelling has started. Use yelling in the most extreme and rare occasions. In all my time teaching I have only yelled once, let me tell you those kids flipped and never did wrong again.

Time out: So what can you do if you can’t yell at them? Plenty. Why does anybody do anything they know is wrong? For attention, the student wants you to get angry; they want you to notice them, the more attention you give them, the more they will act up, and other students will follow suit. They will see that you spend more time with the bad than the good. We want to do the opposite. Now I’m not saying completely ignore the bad kids, but separate them from the main group for a little while. Something simple like putting them in the corner for one minute will do wonders; the kid will want to be with his friends having fun. Remember monkey see monkey do? I had twins who loved to put other kids in the corner when they were upset.

Thank you for being here and for your continued support. Be sure to come back tomorrow for more tips on how to keep your students in check.

Your Teacher,

Wintermute

In the Classroom part 5 (New Material)

Hello,

My name is Wintermute and this is Dumbr, a blog about my time teaching English in Korea. This week we have discussed common classroom practices, and today we continue with how to introduce new material to your students.

Sometimes this can be a little bit more difficult than you would think. Generally speaking my method has always been to make sure you have the classes’ 100% attention the entire time, which I know you are saying “duh”, but it seems to go over looked a lot. I do not allow the kids to have their books or pencils out at all when teaching new material. Otherwise the kids will attempt to follow along or do it themselves and work ahead getting answers wrong, or fall behind the others and get lost.

Instead I spend the majority of the class period teaching, and then at the end let them get their books (no pencils), we do the page/s together in class, I ask if everyone understood, and then let them get their pencils and have at it. For me this seems to be the best method, it allows for no distractions on their desk, and they should know all the answers as we did them together.

 As I said in my earlier post not every kid learns and works at the same speed. This method is good because say you had the books out and tried to do it together in class, you will have every kid sitting on question 2 for 30 minutes when the greater majority could have moved ahead. You should not let one student force the others to fall behind, instead take the time to help that one student.

Something I’m sure few have thought of that I have noticed is presenting new positive and negative material at the same time. There will be moments when you will teach a lot of new words, and I found that depending on the order you teach them it can have very different results. Say you are teaching emotions, I find it better to teach the negative emotions first and then positive. If you teach negative last your students will leave the class feeling… well negative and go home to their parents yelling “I’m sad, hungry, and angry!” Same goes for weather, start with the dark dreary stormy, and then move into bright happy and sunny.

Hope these few tips helped a little, I tried to keep it short as yesterdays lesson ran a bit long. Do come back tomorrow where we will start our new segment on Discipline. Be sure to spread the word of this amazing blog Dumbr, as we want everyone here reading along.

Your Teacher,

Wintermute

In the Classroom part 4 (Level Gap)

Hello,

My name is Wintermute, and this is Dumbr, an account of my life and experiences teaching in South Korea.  Over the past few days we’ve been discussing common classroom practices to help you in teaching your students. Today we will discuss how to deal with a level gap among students.

It’s sad to say, but no matter what you do you will always have that student who seems to be a bit behind. This is very common in private schools as they tend to just shove as many kids in one class regardless of skill level.  When I started I had 7 students, 4 were good, and 3 were bad.  About a week or two later I got many more, the numbers kept increasing and the skill levels constantly changing. I had to find a way to reach out to the students who were behind. Oddly enough, each one had to be handled separately.

Caden: Caden was my worst speaker, you could hardly understand him when he spoke, and he was a major cry baby and hardly ever listened and so couldn’t do his work or answer questions. He was friends with the smartest kid in class and wanted to be friends with everyone. I separated the class in two parts, the Furious Five and Fantastic Four, or good and bad. I would have the two compete in order to show the level gap, the Furious Five did remarkable and could answer every question. I would then ask the Fantastic Four the same questions but they were not able to answer as many. When this happened I had the Furious Five laugh and literally mock the Fantastic Four, and make fun of them. Sounds horrid right? Yes it is and I do not recommend it. However it got wonderful results. Caden was so ashamed, he wanted to do well and be a part of the Furious Five,  Caden was able to see how far behind he was from his friends and did not want to be made fun of. He tried really hard and in a little over a week he was able to move up turning the Furious Five into the Super Six. He continued to do well and became one of my top students.

Kevin: Kevin had to of had issues, when I got him he could not walk or sit in his own chair. When met with any opposition he threw a temper tantrum, we did not get along well at all. His favorite past time was to eat his crayons, I don’t mean naw, I mean bite down, chew, and swallow his toxic crayons. There were other classes at this school; one was the “baby class”. To be put in this class would bring shame and dishonor to your whole family and well being, so of course it made for a wonderful threat. But this wasn’t enough, so I did the opposite of what I did with Caden. Whenever Kevin had a hard time I would have the class help encourage him by yelling out things like, “you can do it”, “we believe in you”, “keep trying”, so on and so forth. It made Kevin really happy to see that the class wanted to accept Kevin as one of their own and so he began to try harder, his mom came in one day to tell me how much better he was doing and how happy she was he no longer ate crayons or pencils.

James: James was my smartest and brightest. This child was way beyond ahead, if intelligence was water, my students could fill a fish bowl, and James could fill a planet. Anything you said, he remembered. I had him writing digits in the millionth place, when I taught ordinal numbers to my class I taught him Alpha through Omega, I taught him French German and Japanese, the boy was 6. And of course he became the class clown, as is normal for smart kids because they get bored, so I had to prepare a whole separate lesson just for this one kid. I could not meet the demands of this student; I would bring him books to read, or printed out worksheets online. He usually spent the day on the board solving some weird riddle I stole from Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I requested he be put in higher level classes but since the managers could care less about education he remand with me.

As mentioned earlier I had both smart and not so smart students. It got to the point where the smart could finish their work in 5 minutes, where as the others could not finish. My solution, have the smart kids teach. Oh I received high praise for this one. Basically if a kid was finished I had that student go around and help the kids who were still working. On the plus side it just made my job that much easier, also to sit and watch my class speaking in full English to one another was rewarding too.  This brought great joy to the managers, sadly I received no pay raise, but I did get more students from other classes…

I bring these up as all of these scenarios could happen to you, and at least one will. You will get a kid ahead or below the rest, you need to take the time to help that kid. I assure you he wants to do well, and really it’s not his fault he isn’t, it’s yours.  Just like adults every child is different; they learn and respond to different methods. Find the ones that work for your kids, I gave up many the break periods and lunches for my kids, and I have no regrets.

Your Teacher,

Wintermute

In the Classroom part 3 (Art/Music)

Hello,

                My name is Wintermute, and this is Dumbr, a blog of my time spent in Korea and some of my teaching methodologies. Today we are going to be talking about ways to handle your music and art classes. I understand that not all of you are singers and few are artist, so hopefully this will give you a few ideas of what to do in class.

Music:

                If you are like me your vocal talent can be compared to the sound of a cat stuck in a lawn mower. This can be very problematic as you could be teaching music class twice a week or more.  Obviously you are going to be using a radio and CD, but honestly that’s not enough to get your kids involved and makes it difficult on them to learn the words. The more into you get, the more into they will get.  You just kind of have to remind yourself you are doing it for the kids, they don’t care if you can’t sing or what you sound like, it’s just for fun.

                A few good tips: I put my music class at the very end of the day, before home time, it was the shortest period in the day and the kids were so tired most just slept through it anyway. I would waste a lot of time talking about what songs we would sing and have them tell me about the songs. Also you don’t have to sing every day, instead give them some large paper to draw with. Pick a song and have them draw out images of that song. This is actually a really good idea because it allows you to see if your kids comprehend the lyrics. It’s one thing for them to spout out random words in any given order, but can they comprehend them and understand what the song is talking about? Every teacher had their own method to test song comprehension, mine was drawing.

Art:

                Sad to say, I’m good at art. But that does not mean I want to overdo it every time art class comes up. Very rarely I had time to actually sit down and prepare a class, remember I had 30 minutes to plan 9 hours of class and do all of my school work like report cards, schedules, etc etc. So I made up a lot of simple projects you can do on the fly with little to no planning. Things like making a starry sky by taking a black piece of paper and a water bottle, fill it up with water and a little white paint, and then squirt the paper. I got some toy cars and paint, and let the kids roll the cars around on paper making paint streaks. You can get some of that floam stuff; it’s really cheap and not messy.  I did tie-dye with my kids, the Koreans did not approve, but the kids sure loved it. Point is it’s easy to come up with simple projects with little time on the clock. Look around and see what you got. Also there are plenty of sites to help with this sort of thing.

I could start a whole new blog on all of the art projects you can do. The point I’m trying to make is you don’t have to be some amazing artist or that creative, and you don’t even need a lot of time.  I hope all of this info helps you plan out better classes for your students and I will see you all tomorrow.

Your Teacher,

Wintermute

In the Classroom part 2 (Brain Exercises)

Hello,

            My name is Wintermute and this is Dumbr, it’s a look on my life and experience in South Korea teaching English as a second language among other things. I was going to talk about Discipline today, however after writing it all out it was about 5 pages long. So I will make Discipline its own segment. Instead I will change the topic; I got a lot of request to learn more about brain exercises to do with your students. So I will share you more of mine.

Acrostics

              Pick the first word, and let’s say something corny like SHARING. Write it vertically on the board and have the kids raise their hand and come up with a word for each letter of SHARING. My children loved this; they were literally begging to do more. Kids seem to really enjoy the simple games; their favorite gym game was the “sit down game.”

Story Game

             I would have the kids tell a story one word at a time, one word for each kid. Depending on their age and skill level you can have them repeat all of the former words said prior to that student, or if not say them yourself. Generally speaking I hardly ever got a real story out of them; it was just for fun. Things took an odd turn when a student spouted out the word panties; I allowed it as it made them laugh like no bodies business. 9 times out of 10 however, the story was “Wintermute teacher wears panties!!!” This helps them construct simple sentences, if it does not flow they must come up with a new word.

Memory Game

             I would draw a 4X4 grid (or such) on the board. I would place the 16 numbers in the grid, one number for each square in a random order, not numerical. I would have the kids look at this for a minute, then erase the numbers, then ask them where each number was on the grid. Good game for helping with their numbers and memory.

Tic tac Toe

             I’d draw a tic tac toe grid on the board, and play with one student. BUT, they could not draw or point to where they wanted their X. Instead I would put my finger in the middle; they would then tell me left down up right depending on where they wanted the X. This is a great game for helping them with their directions.

            There are plenty more games like this that you can play with your kids to help reinforce what they have already learned. I highly recommend it as it helps demonstrate and relate practical uses for what they learned. Come back tomorrow where we will talk about Art/Music and some other class tips.

Your teacher,
Wintermute

In The Classroom Part 1 (Morning Routine)

Hello,

Wintermute here and today we will start our discussion of “In the Classroom” with Morning Routines. I would have to say that this is the most important part of the day for you and your students. It’s a good time for them to fall back into the routine of only speaking English, work their brain into learning mode, and warm up for the hard day ahead.

The morning routine is literally just that, a routine or system that you will follow each and every day, this routine will hardly differ from any other day. It’s a time for the students to say to themselves its class time. So what we need to do is give them things to familiarize with so that each day they know, its class time. Think of it as an ad on T.V., they become so familiar with it that the students just sort of snap into place. I always start with a simple hello, usually repeat a few times getting progressively louder, kids love to yell it back. Then I look at each individual student and ask “how are you?” simple question, simple answer, happy, sad, angry etc. Then I ask why are you happy, sad, angry, etc etc. This gives each student “teacher time” and makes them start talking, that’s what we want.

Then more simple questions, what day is today, yesterday, and tomorrow, what’s the weather. The more advance your class gets you can have them right the days on the board (this uses up a lot of time). When talking with your students make sure to use their names a lot, (or in my case nicknames) as their Korean name vastly differs from their English counterpart. Have a schedule on the board, so throughout the day the kids can see what’s coming up and what they did for that day. This is important because guess what the parents first question to their child will be. What did you do today? So be sure to ask your class and refer to the schedule often.

I made mini books for my kids, a new book for each week. It was about 5-6 pages of simple sentences with pictures. I had 12 students, I would make 6 books, have the kids pair up with another student, and read the book to each other. This is getting them use to speaking in English to each other; the more group activities like this you can work in is great and will help them develop confidence. I would also send the books home with each student so they can practice with the parents.

Then comes brain exercises, my kids loved these. These are simple exercises (I stole from Brain Age DS) that get your kids thinking and ready to learn. My favorite was a play on the classic rock paper scissors. I would hold up paper and the kids yell what beats it, then Id hold up rock and the kids yell paper etc etc. Then you have them yell what loses, you hold up paper they yell rock. Go faster and faster and mix and match lose and beats often.

By now your class is more ready than you are to get on with the day. Again never introduce new material in the morning, keep it systematic but let it feel fresh and exciting. This is also a good time to pass out jobs and roles for your students to perform throughout the day, such as line leader. I also had my students stand in front of the class and introduce themselves, and talk about themselves. Not needed, but an idea.

Your Teacher,
Witnermute

Contract Week Part 3 (Accommodations)

Hello,

                My name is Wintermute and today we will continue Contract Week with day 3, “accommodations”. It is the schools’ responsibility to provide you with a place to live. Being a foreigner you yourself cannot rent out an apartment and it’s just much easier for the employer to pick one for you. It is possible to ask for a specific apartment as long as they agree.

                This is one part of the position that can go oh so many different ways. I have watched hundreds of youtube videos of new teachers’ apartments, and there are a fair share of great and not so great. But how will you know which you’ll get before going? One way to insure you are well accommodated is by picking a well known recruiting company such as EPIK. They tend to make sure that their teachers are well provided for, schools want to continue working for companies like EPIK and so they make sure to keep their teachers happy.  

          
                One thing you can do for yourself is to ask for pictures of the apartment complex, sometimes the school will provide it, and sometimes the school will provide stock photos of studio apartments which will do you no good.  One thing you should always do is ask for the e-mail address of one of the foreign teachers, I have never been denied this and it can give you a lot of intel.

                Some basic things your room will include are, a bed, a gas stove, a t.v., a mini-fridge, a washer (Korea has no dryers), maybe a desk and couch. That’s about it, you could get lucky. You could get a modern apartment, that has closets, a shower, a loft, and maybe even curtains over the window, but I wouldn't hold my breath. And just so you know, typically in Korea there are no shower booths, instead you shower hose is hooked up to your sink next to your toilet, meaning  you turn the sink on and that’s your shower, there is a drain on the floor, so basically your whole bathroom is a shower room.

 Another thing you need to make sure is crystal clear is the distance from your apartment to the school. A lot of times they will say it’s a 5-10 minute walk. What they mean is, 5-10 minutes to the nearest bus stop/subway that will take you to your school. I was about an hour away from my school walking distance. Now Korea is a beautiful country so a nice morning and evening walk home was no problem for me, however I would have liked to of been told this prior to going to Korea. And I figure I should mention this for those who don’t want to walk for an hour.  Thank you all very much for reading this and I will see you tomorrow!

Your friend,

Wintermute

Contract Week Part 2 (Duties)

Hello,

Wintermute here, and today we will continue our ongoing conversation detailing every part of a teacher contract with “Duties”.

Every contract I have looked at list in detail your duties. This is a must have for all contracts as it needs to be clearly defined what the teacher will be involved in. This can range anywhere from assisting in other classes not yours, feeding students, progress reports, making test, talking with parents, etc etc.

You’d be surprised how many duties you can actually be assigned, and you may look at some and say to yourself that it doesn’t sound like a “teacher duty”. Such things as picking up students, feeding students lunch, checking in on students by phone at night to make sure they did their homework, along with making and passing out fliers. There really are schools out there that will require these and more. If your contract has something listed that you believe you should not be doing, than say so before signing.

True story, I was given a contract from a private school that had I think 6 foreign teachers already. After reading the contract I could not believe anyone in their right mind would sign it, I thought they were joking. Among the many things wrong with it the one that stood out the most was the duties portion. It had listed 8 duties, 1 through 7 were fine, no problem. But number 8 read and I quote: “Perform other duties given by the employer”. Well what the hell does that mean? That could literally mean anything, I am signing my life away to this school, they could ask me to do anything and I’d have to agree. I figured they don’t know English well, surely it’s not intentional, I’ll just ask them to change it to “perform teacher duties”, because then at least I would have something to fall back on. If the school would ask me to do something I could say “No, that’s not a teacher duty”. The school declined my request.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to be over critical of your contract, they are a year long, and require you to be in a different country, not too many can protect you there. Thank you all very much for reading this and I will see you tomorrow!

Your friend,

Wintermute

Contract Week part 1 (Student Cap)

Hello,

Wintermute here, I hope you all are as excited as I am to begin our discussion on certain red flags you should watch out for when signing a teacher contract at a school with “student caps”.

Most contracts in Korea will read something like; “the teacher will be given a class of students when he/she starts, depending on how good the teacher is he/she will be given more or less students”. This is very common; typically they will have a student cap. I read a contract that did not, meaning I could be stuck with 40 students while the other teachers only had 10. I asked the school to place a student cap in the contract. The school declined my request.

True story, at my first school a cap was clearly placed in the contract. However one day the school decided they wanted to exceed that number and give me more. I already had the most students than any other teacher, they claimed I was doing a wonderful job and thought I could handle more. Okay yes I could easily handle more, but if I accept this one student, what’s to stop them from giving me 2, 3, etc etc? Had my contract not listed a cap, I never would have been able to contest denying the student.

Sadly the school did not listen to me and gave me the extra student anyway and I walked out and waited until they got rid of the new student. Understand that had I taught that child it would have been all profit for the school, I would be teaching the kid for free as my contract said I was making X amount of money for teaching X amount of students. I asked to be given more money in compensation for the student. The school declined my request.

What really got me though was I was working near 2 more hours a day then some other teachers and had roughly 36 something students, while one teacher had around 10, and I got paid less than any other teacher. If you think I was being spoiled and unreasonable I can assure you that was not the case. I never complained to the school as I agreed in the contract to make oh so much money for oh so many students and agreed to work oh so many hours.  And I am not complaining about it now, but what I still don’t understand was if I reached my limit and could accept no more students while there were teachers with 2 hours extra to sit around on YouTube and Facebook, then why couldn’t they have been given the extra student? Thank you all very much for reading this and I will see you tomorrow!

Your friend,

Wintermute

Birthdays

Hello,

  Today we are going to talk about something that I thought was an absolute phenomenon in Korea. It made no since to me why Korea put such a high importance on Birthdays. But lets go through a little back story first.
  
  All of Korea uses the Lunar calendar, not many changes other then New Years is on Feb. 24th - 26th (the third full moon from the solar new year Jan 1st.) The holiday is called Seolnal.  I spoke with some Koreans telling me of an old tradition that Koreans don't actually "age" on their birthday, but instead everyone ages one year on Seonal. Something important to note that in Korea, when you are born, you are born as 1 year old, as opposed to America where you are 0. 

   Enough back story, now for mine. So in South Korea I found out that your first birthday is the most important, even though you can't remember it. I was invited to someones first b-day, along with I'd say 500 people. I never saw the parents who actually invited me as there were so many quest. And it's important for everyone to bring gifts. The child in question is usually dressed in these really fancy ceremonial type ropes. I was told this is very common and how all first b-days are held, I couldn't believe it, it is one of their biggest celebrations. 
      
  What about the rest of your birthdays? Good question. As a teacher I was able to take part in all of my students birthdays held by the school. And each and every time I was surprised by what I saw. It was pressured heavily on the family to throw a party at the school for their child. And so what would happen is the parents would bring in literally mounds and mounds of food. Far more then a class of twelve six year olds could ever eat.  Some would bring in a Mountain bouquet of Fruit that almost reached the ceiling, some parents bought 3 tier cakes you'd see at a wedding. After my students parents learned I liked fried chicken, they would bring me baskets of it (no complaints). But why do they go through all of this food when it can't be eating. It's easy, to show off. Koreans lives revolve around money, they love the stuff, and the more money you have the better off you are in life. So parents in order to look as if they were well off and successful, would shower food and gifts at their child's b-day party. They are actually so worried of looking poor in front of others they will spend their money simply to say, no I'm not. 
    
   It's sad but true, I've learned that Koreans are always worried about what others will think of them, almost like American Christians. They judge everyone but hate to be judged, and will say its bad to judge others. 


Peace,
Wintermute

Travels

Hey,

I suppose I will use this blog as a way to detail my travels through South Korea. Starting in April I will be heading back to South Korea and working as a English Teacher. This will be my second time going and I will be working in the same city I was in last time. Rather lucky for me really.

I will be working in an public elementary school. The last time I was there was I worked at a private school which was one of the most horrid experiences of my life Grant it I loved Korea, hence my return, but if you are ever planning on teaching in South Korea never ever teach in a private school.

Talk to you later,
Wintermute