My last week and travel home!

  My last week in Korea was great! Francis was in Korea and we got to travel to Busan. I had never been there and we got to see the ocean and went hiking! Also we celebrated Francis' birthday by having some of my favorite things in Korea, chicken galbi and waffles with ice cream! I will miss those things a lot.

At the top of the mountain
we climbed for Francis' birthday!

Dressed in traditional Korean dress
at the Korean Folk Village.

On the train to Busan!

Chicken Galbi...first time using chopsticks for Francis!

Francis left on Wednesday after he left I went out with Falyn, Erin and Hongbum. I had an amazing time and will miss Hongbum a lot! He helped us all so much this semester and I am so grateful for him. I can't believe how fast the last month went.

Our last night!!

I will miss many people that I meet in Korea and some of the food like the waffles and chicken galbi, but I will not miss the spitting or pushing that some would consider rude and gross. The culture is different, but I am so glad that I went . I have grown so much in my personal and professional perspectives. 
  I wanted to teach in Korea because I wanted a different experience and I got it! I enjoyed my time with my students and learning about different ways to teach and how different cultures view the US and education.

I had an interesting experience on the way home though. Erin and I traveled together from Seoul to Chicago. We ended up having to drag our luggage down the hill to the get a cab to take us to the bus stop which was different than what we were told. We finally did get to the airport and checked our luggage. We tried to go through security, but they told me my carry-on bags were to heavy and Erin's bags were even heavier. We were told that we had to check a third bag and we were not happy. Erin and I went to  the checking counter and told them the situation, they okayed my bags, but told Erin that she had to check hers. After some complaining  Erin got her bag checked for FREE. which was amazing! We got to the gate, got on the plane, and traveled to LAX. Erin and I had to run through the LAX airport to make our connecting flight, luckily we made it and got all the way to Chicago safely!

Teaching in Korea was a wonderful experience and I will never forget the people met and techniques I learned.

My Last Week of Teaching and A Visit from Home!

  My last week of teaching went very well, but was also sad. I had my last classes with my after school programs on Tuesday and Thursday which made those days a little bit more rough for me. I decided to throw them a pizza party. I also gave them all like bags with stickers, a pencil and Smarties, which they loved.

3rd Grade Storytelling Group!

  My week was very busy. Monday was slow, just getting ready for Francis to come visit me. On Tuesday I had my last story telling after school group and it made me miss realize how much I was going to miss the 3rd graders. Through all of my schooling I have always thought that the really young children were my favorite to teach, but after teaching here in Korea I have realized that I love teaching 3rd and 4th grade. I also said goodbye to my 4th grade classes on Monday and Tuesday. My lesson for them went very well and they put in a lot of work. I had them form groups and create posters about Korea. I told them that I wanted to be able to teach students in the US about Korea and I needed their help. They  were so excited and did a great job creating posters. The posters are packed to make the trip to the US on Thursday!
     Wednesday all of my classes  were cancelled because of the Soongin Talent Show. It was amazing! The children were  great!  Ally and Professor Son put on a great Thanksgiving Party for us on Wednesday night too.

Soongin Talent Show!

Thursday was my last day at Soongin because they had a school holiday on Friday. I said goodbye to the Principal and Vice Principal which made me very sad. I also said goodbye to Ellen, my original CT and now have a great new friend and resource here in Korea.  Min-gi and Philly took me out for dinner on my last night. I couldn't believe how much the reality of not being at the school anymore made me feel so sad. I had a sad last day, but was excited because Francis came on Friday night.
   Friday I packed most of my things and went to get Francis from the airport. After getting everything he brought and we decided to go to Seoul Tower and it was alot of fun. On Saturday we went to many of the palaces that I had already been to before, but it was fun to see things through his eyes.

The week has been fun and sad at the same time. I have learned so much from the teachers and students. I don't even know if they know how much they have taught me. I hope to keep in touch with all of the wonderful people I have meet here in Korea and maybe I will visit again someday!

My last week with 1st and 3rd grade! :(

      This week has been bitter sweet. I am very excited that I will be going home soon, but I will miss all of my students!  I planned some fun activities for the classes and most of my classes were sad to see me leave. My 3rd grade classes made me a thank you/goodbye book. I will treasure it always! I have learned so much about teaching and being more aware of how I talk to students. I have really enjoyed getting to teach all different ages for children and have learned from each class I taught.  My lessons went very well and I can't wait to teach this coming week. 
   I had a dinner with the Principal and Vice Principal of my school on Friday. The dinner went well, they asked me about my experience and thanked me for teaching so many different students. I felt like they liked what I did with the students and enjoyed having me in their school.

    I have a busy week coming up with it being my last week in the school and Francis coming on Friday! I will miss Philly and the other teachers that have helped  me so much through this process. I will also miss my students, but some of them have asked for my email to keep in touch with me and I think that is a great way for them to practice their English. I had a 1st grader email me this weekend and thank me for teaching his class.
   Can't wait until Friday when Francis comes to visit me!

Winding down and getting cold.

      The week started out a little rough, but got better as the week went on. I can tell that the students have gotten used to having me teach their class because they are starting to misbehave more and not want to listen. Monday was hard because the students weren't listening and I haven't been sleeping well so that could be part of my lack of focus.
   Tuesday's classes went so much better than Monday's partly because I changed my lesson plan for second grade. I found a memory game online and used that to help my students remember different feelings.
    Wednesday the Principal told me that she wants to have dinner and a discussion with me before I leave. I'm very nervous, I hope that Kyoungwon or Ellen will be coming to the meeting.
   Thursday was a weird day for me. The schools didn't start until 10am because of the high school students taking the University entrance exams. I still taught both of my second grade classed, but the first one was only 30min. instead of 40 min. therefore I didn't do all of the activities that I did with all of the other classes.
    Friday was 11-11-11, Pepero Day here in Korea! I think it's like Valentine's Day in the USA. I only got one pepero today, but it's because the students were told not to bring it to school. I taught to of my second grade classes for the last time and I was kinda sad. I really enjoyed teaching them and they were all sad that I wasn't going to teach them any more. The teacher called her students 'unlucky' because they don't get to have one more time with me.
    Next week is my last week teaching 1st and 3rd grade. I'm sad, but kind of excited to get back to the USA and hopefully get my own classroom.  I've been working with the teachers and have really enjoyed getting to know some of the teachers. I hope that I will be able to keep in touch with many of them and someday maybe invite them to my classroom. I am glad that I have formed relationships with my colleagues here in Korea because then I will have more people that I can network with in the future.
   The week was not very eventful. On Saturday, Erin and I went to another conference for professional development. It was interesting and it was FREE! Philly went to the conference too and we found out that Koreans don't like it when people say SOUTH Korea and NORTH Korea. They prefer Korea and North Korea, Erin and I found that very interesting.  For anyone that comes to Korea in the future I was highly suggest going to a conference. The conferences are all in English and helped me learn new ways to teach English in the classroom. I am not an ESL teacher, but with the help of the conferences I was able to change my teaching to become a better ESL teacher.
    I can't believe it, but I have officially started a count down to my last day here and in the school. I only have 9days left to teach at Soongin. I will miss the kids and Philly most of all, but that means that I get to go home soon. I have enjoyed my time here, but I can't wait to see my family again. Francis is coming to visit in 12days and I hope to get to show him all of the wonderful sights in Korea. Sorry it's so short this week. I haven't been doing very much other than working and then going home and working on my portfolio. Also it's getting colder outside, no snow, but it's feeling like late Fall now. Two weeks left!

All the wonderful lights!

    This week went very will overall. My lessons with the 1st graders went very well this week. The students worked in small groups to make monsters and tell how many of something their monster had. They enjoyed creating monsters and seeing them solve problems about how many of something to have on their monster was very neat to see. Some of the groups seemed to follow one person where as others used the rock, paper , scissor method to decide. There were some students who had a very hard time not getting their way and cried, but for the most part the students worked very well together.

I didn't know that schools in Korea do not provide paint for the students so when I planned my lesson for the 3rd grade I had them mixing paints on Monday morning. I found out about the students not having paints at school 5 minutes before I had to teach. It was a good lesson for me to learn that I need to check with the teachers before planning an activity. Despite not having the materials for my lesson I was able to create a new lesson  when I got to the class. I had student's graph the different colors they were wearing and tell how many different colors there were in the classroom that day. I did my original lesson of mixing paints the next day and I actually liked the lesson that I came up with at the last minute better than the one I had planned on teaching.

      Less than a month until I came up...I'm very excited, but sad at the same time. I will be sad to leave my students,especially because I just started to really get to know them and settle into the school. I love working the teachers and the school is amazing, I wish I had been able to settle in sooner.

 On Friday night Falyn, Erin, Keely and I went to the lantern festival in Seoul and it was amazing to see the structures people were able to create with paper. I enjoyed the week and the lantern festival was a great end to the week.

AMAZING!!!!



Ghosts, Goblins and Students Teaching!

     The week went well as a whole, I had some rough days or at least days that didn't go how I thought they would. Monday was a little rough, but mainly because the students and myself were coming off of a three day weekend. My lessons went well, but I did modify both the 2nd grade and 4th grade lessons so that there would be more time for the main activity. The 2nd graders were talking about "Are you hungry" so I planned some fun activities, but I was bored and the students didn't seem to want to sit still so I found a song on YouTube  called "Are you hungry" and sang that will all of the classes the rest of the week.
   My lesson went well for 4th grade as well, we talked about Halloween, which is always fun. I taped myself in that class, but didn't like how it turned out or how I have been teaching it seems awkward to me. I watched the video many times and made minor changes to some of my activities. 4th grade went well on Tuesday as well and I felt like an actual teacher because the homeroom teacher was gone when I got there and needed to start class so I got all of the students to calm down and get ready for the lesson. It was very nice!
    Dr. Sung came to observe my 2nd grade class on Tuesday and I think it went very well, I won't get feedback until next week sometime. I was able to give some one-on -one attention to students who didn't fully understand right away while the others moved on to the next step. At pizza night she mentioned that she liked the lesson and the children seemed to have fun too. She suggested that I have the students think of foods and write them on the board rather than me just writing words so I did that on Wednesday and it worked very well.
   I had my 3rd grade storytelling group on Tuesday as well and that went smoothly...I  am going to miss that group so much!
  Wednesday was broadcast day as usual, but this time I had to read the story 3 time because of technical difficulties. Either way it went well and students liked the story about the five little pumpkins. I taught two classes of second and they both went well and I learned some new words in Korean from the students which was very cool. I love it when the students can teach me new things. I have learned so much from the students!
  I have been working in the Talk Talk Magic Shop with parent volunteers as well and have learned a lot from them too. I love getting to know the parents and talking with them about my time in Korea and what I need to make sure to see before I leave. It has been a lot of fun and I'm going to miss my school and the people a lot.
   Thursday and Friday were uneventful days. I taught my lessons to the 2nd graders and everything went smoothly. I think I have become better manager of time in the class and more confident too. I plan on taping myself again next week to see how I can change things and make my teaching  better. 
   This weekend is Halloween weekend and lots of people are going to parties, but as of right now I am not going to any parties. I am just going to stay in and work on my homework. I really want to get all of my big assignments done so I can focus on my PORTFOLIO...the word itself is daunting. 
   I was looking at my calendar this week and realized I only have 18 more days left of teaching and only 30day from next Tuesday Nov.1st until I leave Korea. There is so much I still want to explore in Korea, but I will be glad to be home with my family again too. Overall though a pretty uneventful week.

From teaching to NORTH Korea and celebating Birthdays

This was an overall good week for me. I taught Monday through Thursday and then went to the DMZ on my birthday.  Teaching this week went pretty well, but I didn't get as much done as I was hoping.
    For some reason on Monday I felt very off / out of my groove. I taught one 1st grade class and one 3rd grade class. My 1st grade class went okay, I was teaching them body parts in English and did the song "Head, shoulders, knees and toes". I thought it would be fun and that the students would not know the song in English yet, based on what my CT told me,who is a 1st grade teacher. However, the first class I did the lesson with already know the song and the different body parts in English so instead of spending time on learning the song we went right into singing it and doing the actions. It was also a little bit harder to get the children to pay attention, I could tell it was a Monday! The students had lots of energy and really just wanted to socialize with each other. I noticed that in most of the classes the socialization is a huge part of the day. The teachers don't ask students to stop talking very often, instead they just talk over the students that are talking. It is very hard for me to do this because by the end of the day I will have no voice so I do ask the students to be quiet while I'm talking. I use the 3 fingers in the air method and it has worked very well so far.  I decided to do the song for a longer period of time because the students were having fun and to help get some of their energy out so they would be able to focus more on the the part of the lesson that had them coloring and labeling a person. I was right, it helped them sit for a little bit longer and by the time they got antsy it was time for them to stand up and learn the new good bye song, which has them moving. So overall my lesson went well in that class on Monday.
    My 3rd grade class went okay, but I wasn't as happy with how the lesson went as I had been in the past. Our topic was "I can jump" so I came up with more words that I thought they would be able to act out.  I thought that some of the words would be difficult for them and I would have to explain, but I didn't have to. The students had already had a lot of the words, which was okay.  I decided to tape myself during this lesson just to see how I could improve for my next 3rd grade class on Tuesday. I am glad I did tape it because at one point I felt like the students weren't listening and it was hard to get them all back on track, which showed me how to improve the activity for the next day. The activity was for the students to find their partner without using any words, just doing the action on the card that I gave them. I thought I had explained and that they understood to leave their pictures on the desk. I found out that they must not have understood because they all took their pictures with them to find their partner and showed the pictures to each other rather than doing the action to find their partner. I changed the lesson for the next by just showing them the picture they had to act out and it went much better.
    My lessons on Tuesday went well too. I taped myself again in the next 3rd grade grade class. I was very excited to watch it and when went I did I found out that throughout the whole movie you can't see my face, I was so mad because the lesson went so well and I wanted to use it for my video assignment.
   I still have a hard time figuring out if I am being understood in the lower grades or not. I think I will need to teach the students how to say 'slow down please', or 'can you repeat that', I need something because their are students that do understand but I know there are some that are still lost when I talk. It's hard for me to remember from one week to the next which students need more explanation because I have so many students and I only see them once every other week.

The students get Soongin Dollars to spend
they receive them by doing very well at something
in school.

     My classes on Wednesday we cancelled due to a flea market that took place at my school for the students that day. The students all got to bring things they wanted to sell and got to buy things too. It was very cool to see them all learning about the cost of things and how to make deals with people. Wednesday was a very uneventful day for me though. I did get to help in the Talk Talk Magic Shop again and this time I took some photos to show you what it looks like...I would have loved this kind of shop as a kid.

The Magic Shop before opening.

The rules for the Magic shop and they are all in English.

Students look at items to buy.

   
   Thursday was a very interesting teaching day for me! I had my CT's
   Finally Friday, it was may birthday!!! Erin, Falyn and I went to the DMZ which was very cool and a little scary at the same time. I got to step foot in North Korea and I never thought I would get to say that. I had a great day and was so tired by the time we got home. We got to see all the freedom bridge, 3rd infiltration tunnel ( they say that the US intelligence says there are like 50 of them and they have only found 4 of them).We got to go to the Observatory where we saw North and South Korea at the same time which was cool.

Freedom Bridge

People leave messages and wishes for
loved ones who died or are still in North Korea.

You can see North and South Korea.
North Korea has no trees on the mountains
because they need fire wood.

We weren't allowed to take pictures
in the tunnels so here is the coal that
North Korea painted the tunnel with to
try and cover up their plan to attack the South.

The North Korean guard that
I later got a photo with.

 In the afternoon we got to go to the JSA ( Joint Security Area). There were US soldiers there too! The US helps to secure that area along with the South Korean Soldiers. It was very neat to see North and South Korea so close and I got to spend a second in North Korea while I took my photo with one of the guards.

That was the excitement of my week this week, but I'm sure I will have to talk about next week!