Things That Are Stressing Me Out, Part 1 in a List

Update time! Things have been super busy for the past few weeks and they're not likely to settle down for couple more. Reasons #1 why I've been looking a bit crazy about the eyes:

English camp: There is a six week summer break from July 20th to August 28th and during the break I will teach three English camps. There are specific goals of the camps (for example, the first and second graders are studying phonics), but it's less of an actual class and more fun times with the American teacher. We play a bunch of games, sing a few songs and hopefully the kids learn some English, or at least get a chance to use what they already know. I won't be teaching with my regular (beloved) co-teacher because she has a training program during the summer break. Instead, whoever ranks low enough on the totem pole and is available will show up to be my co-teacher. (I found out TODAY that the vice principal will be my co-teacher for an entire week, which is okay because at least he speaks English, but also stressful because he's my boss.) All of this means that I'm in charge of making the lesson plans and developing all the necessary materials.

I spent about a week in a mild panic over the lesson plans. (I seriously spent about a week staring at my computer with the crazy eyes and accomplished almost nothing.) I downloaded a bunch of sample lesson plans from other schools' camps and read them all and just could not process everything. Too much, too fast, too much and I was completely overwhelmed. Then I bought myself a cute little notebook (it has a panda lying in a field of clover telling me "you need a refresh") and started writing things down and breathing a bit deeper and lesson planning is going much better. That doesn't, however, mean it's going quickly. In the past week and a half, I've written the (super super detailed) lesson plans for half the camps. I've also stayed late every day this week. I'll be finished with the lesson plans by the time the first camp starts, but I'll still have to create all the necessary materials, which I had hoped to have already started by the end of this semester.

Part of the reason I'm so worried about these camps is that I've taught English camps before and it was a less than pleasant experience. I had a month of English camp during the winter break and the one time I wrote about them I said:

Part of the reason winter camps are going so well is that we always have all the materials we could possible need, primarily because I have five hours to prepare the day before. Need 180 flashcards for a game? Sure, I can make those. It's not like I'm doing anything else with my time. I'm going to run out of things to prepare soon, though. I've already started on next week's lessons.

The next week the camps collapsed into a disaster of awful, which just goes to show that you shouldn't be cocky on the Internet. The first and second grade camp, the only one where there was a textbook, went fine, but the rest were a disorganized, ill-prepared hot mess.

I think I know why they were such a disaster and can learn from those mistakes. I was looking at the lesson plans for the winter camp today and I scratched my head because, seriously, what the hell was I thinking? There was maybe thirty minutes of material to fill nearly two hours. And not only was there not enough material, it wasn't presented in a way that was conducive to learning. I think that was in part because my former co-teacher (who created most of the lesson plan) had no idea how to make a lesson plan, something she demonstrated practically every day, and in part because we were both new teachers and neither of us realized how much we relied on the textbook to provide structure for the lesson. Take away that structure and everything collapses in on itself. To compound matters, during all this Ji-Won failed the national teachers examination (for a second time) and just checked out for the rest of the year. She stopped coming to school, leaving other teachers to cover her position, which meant that I was in charge of creating everything we needed for the three hours of class, usually the afternoon before. I was staying late and coming early in a desperate attempt to get everything done by myself and even though I knew we didn't have enough planned, there wasn't any time to come up with more. It was an exhausting and disheartening few week. Luckily I left for two weeks of vacation the last day of camp and came back to Korea rejuvenated and no longer wanted to punch someone in the teeth, but you can see why I'm a bit stressed. Not to mention that it's a colossally huge amount of work that I only have a few weeks to do.

A few weeks ago I was telling a friend how stressed I was about the camps and she brushed me off as neurotic and high-strung and once I was done punching her in throat (no actual punching was involved), I did admit that she's sort of right. Things will go better this time. I know what went wrong the first time and I'm correcting those mistakes. I'm worrying and stressing about things now, when I have time to do something about them, rather than the day before the lesson. I'm a much better teacher than I was seven months ago. I know a lot more about how to plan a good lesson and I have a whole list (a literal list; it's in the panda notebook right next to the activities about food) of things I can fall back on if we start to run short. Things will be better this time, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried now.

Fourth Graders Are Adorable

There are truths universally acknowledged: a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife and fourth graders are adorable. I teach third through sixth grade, but fourth and sixth grade are my favorite. I have a rotating group of fourth grade girls assigned to clean my classroom (no janitors in Korea, they use the children instead). Half of them hate it because my classroom is always a mess (although hopefully my new policy of if-I-see-you-throwing-things-in-my-class-you're-staying-late-to-clean will help with that), but the other half love it because it means fun times with the English teacher. Also, sometimes I give them candy.


This is 예림 and 유지. 예림 (Ye Lim, English name: Tiffany) is on the left. 유지 (Yu Ji, English name: Alice) is on the right. They don't actually like cleaning the English room, but they love to come by my office after school. We talk, usually about makeup (which they are obsessed with and I am woefully uninformed about) and I let them play games (usually about makeup) on my computer. I justify it by making them explain the rules to me in English and they make it worth my while by showing me a Fair Isle knitting game on Naver (Korean Google).


This is 윤주 (Yun Ju, English name: Judith). She is easily one of my best students of any grade. I am constantly taken aback by how *advanced* her English is. She's all quiet and demure in class and then - bam! - she breaks out a fully formed, grammatically complex sentence. With the rest of my fourth graders, I'm just happy if their sentences have a noun AND a verb. She used 'widow' in conversation one day and when I asked how she knew the word, she told me it was because she's reading the Bible in English.


Only girls are assigned to clean the classrooms, which, of course. Korea? A patriarchal society? What makes you say that? (The boys do have chores, but they're assigned things like crossing guard duty in the morning, not cleaning.) 강석 is the one and only boy in the cleaning rota and it's only because he was shanghaied. The poor kid was just walking down the hallway one day, minding his own business, when a group of girls rushed out, grabbed him, drug him into the English classroom and put him to work. He was a good sport about it.


재희 loves to teach me Korean. She usually stick with nouns, things in the classroom she can point to. I have learned to words for pencil (연필), pencil sharpener (연필 깎개), scissors (가위), eraser (지우개) and window (창문) a hundred times. She's always super excited when I write anything in Hangul (Oh Teacher, very good job!) and together we cover the whiteboard with writing. On the board, you can see the day's vocabulary: sun (해), name (이름), desk (책상), the name of my school, table (서탁), dog (개), girl (소녀), phone (전화) and radio (라디오).


On Friday, my cleaning crew discovered that there are some English board games in the back of the classroom. We never use them because the classes are too big (a 4-6 player game in a class of 38 doesn't work well), but they're great for a couple of 4th graders. The girls chose Boggle Jr. which was perfect for them. The fourth graders are just starting to learn to read and write, and since the curriculum completely ignores phonics, I jumped at any chance to teach it. (I have a big long rant about phonics and how they don't exist in the public school curriculum. I think I understand where they're coming from. The Korean English teachers are often woefully unqualified to teach English and phonics are confusing, especially if your native writing system is a one-letter-one-sound-no-exceptions system like Hangul, but if the children don't learn to sound out words, their only alternative is to what? Memorize the dictionary? Good luck with that one. A few months ago one of the vocabulary words for 5th grade was elevator. I gave the kids a worksheet with their vocabulary words written in English and told them to translate it. Only a handful where able to translate elevator, which is funny, since it's the same damn word in Korean. They had just never seen it written before and they couldn't figure out how to sound it out.)


With that being said, English phonics are incredible confusing. Take for example wood (above) and tool. Both have "oo" as the vowel sound, but the vowel sounds aren't the same. My poor babies were so confused. "But Teacher," they told me. "Wood. Tool. Not same same. Why?!" Kiddos, the answer is that English is the language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary. Also, we like to screw with your minds.

Seoul Racecourse

I went to the Seoul Racecourse with Tony, Christine and Charles this Sunday. They've been a couple of times and I've passed the Seoul Racecourse Station hundreds of times, but this was my first trip. The racecourse is nice; it's in the middle of Gwacheon but the mountain across from the track is undeveloped, giving the racecourse a secluded feel.


I'd never been to a horse race before, much less bet on one, so this was a new experience. I'm very bad at betting, probably because I ignored the stats and went with the horse with the best name. There was a giant screen at the track that provided up the minute stats for the race, but I ignored it and put all my money (all eighty cents [1,000 won] of it) on Free Hugs and Angus Empire. I lost all the races I bet on, but I only bet a few dollars in the first place.


We stayed for seven races and watched a few of the Busan races that were being shown on the TV screens at the track. We watched from the Foreigner Only lounge, which I was fine with because it had air conditioning and it was scorching outside. I spent a few races down at the tracks, just so I could take pictures, and the racecourse was packed. It was a fun day, although not something I would necessarily choose to do again.


The full set of pictures are here.

WWKIP Day 2009

World Wide Knit in Public Day was this weekend and last weekend! In Seoul, we celebrated last Saturday.


The Seoul KIP was held at the Seoul Arts Center in Seocho. The Art Center is very nice; all open and green with dance performances and sculptures and lots of families enjoying the nice weather. We met at the Mozart Cafe next to the World Music Fountain. The World Music Fountain mainly played things like "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion and the theme of Chariots of Fire, but the kids seemed to like it.




I would like it to be known that I am wearing the exact same glasses as that six year old boy.
There were about fifteen knitters, including a couple of people I'd never met. There are five or six Stitch N' Bitches in Seoul and I can only make it to three of them, so it was nice to have a chance to meet some new knitters. We took up two tables, and even eventually managed to get two tables next to each other.


Starting with the redhead and going clockwise: Siobhain, Jennifer, Sha, Jinny, Angie. Please notice the looks we're getting from the passing ajumma.


Starting in the bottom right corner and going clockwise: Denise, Carson, Bethany, Kathie, Nikki's mom, Nikki and Michele's hat.


From left to right: Bethany, Caron's seriously adorable sock monkey cup cozy and Kathie.
Nikki organized a yarn swap (I got nine skeins of yarn even though I didn't actually bring anything to swap) and a knitting quiz. The quiz was a combination of your knitting experience and knitting knowledge. I did quite poorly on the last part. One of the questions was Odd One Out: Nupp, Noil, Thrum, Slub. I thought they all sounded like things parents threatened their naughty children with. As in, boy, you're asking for a nuppin' when we get home.


From left to right: Nikki and Carson
Angie was selling raffle tickets for an ugly blanket and a bunch of people were working on squares. Siobhain was making a square from Chenille and eyelash yarn held together and the yarns became horrible tangled, as yarn is wont to do. Marie and I were helping her untangle the knots, and we decided that this wasn't a mere tangle. This was performance art and should be displayed as such. There was a grass field next to the fountains, and we stood in the middle of it and worked though the knots while the Koreans watched with bemusement. One of the ideas behind WWKIP Day is to draw attention to knitters and show the public what exactly the knitting demographic is. In Korea, I think we proved that it's crazy waegooks.

[and you’re blown away by your own hurricane // and you wonder why]

A few weeks ago, I told a friend that I love taking photos because it means I had a blog post without having to write anything. Of course, I always end up writing something anyways (I'm not good about shutting up), but it is easier, especially when I'm swamped at work because of two %$&@#* open classes in two weeks.




Roses, incongruously juxtaposed against the urban sprawl of modern Seoul. (The bee says, "Bzzzt!")


One of my tiny precious 4th graders (the one who always wants hugs) gave me a bracelet made of random Latin letters. It happens to spell out SSK. Any knitters reading this will know why that's funny. It also spells out ZOG, which is such a coincidence since ZOG! the Maleficent is the villain in the B-movie of my heart.


Sixth graders! I needed a photo of students for my open class lesson (Q: What do they do? A: They are students!), so this afternoon I stuck my head into the music room and snapped a quick picture in between songs. A few weeks ago my dad asked me why I kept throwing the peace sign in the photos I sent home. I told him, "Well, when in Asia, do as the Asians." (I started out doing it ironically, but now I think it's just that thing I do when I see a camera.) He asked if it was true that Asians, or at least Koreans, have a Pavlovian reflex to make the peace sign when they see a camera. Since I quite literally stuck my head in the classroom, shouted, "Guys!" to get the kids attention and snapped the photo, I think it's safe to say that yes, yes they do.