If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

I guess gossip is an international thing. We have a new English teacher at school and I made a comment about him to another teacher, a friend of mine, thinking it would stay between us, but alas, it didn’t.

The new teacher wrote me a long letter and the whole thing became very awkward. He sits right next to me in the teachers’ office which makes it even more unpleasant – and of course we have to teach together.

Suffice it to say I am now following a ‘trust no-one’ policy with colleagues at school. Communication is difficult enough as it is without extra complications.

I think the primary reason for it having been a flop, is that I was on my own. My usual Co-Teacher is “a very important man” at school and is skipping more and more of his classes because he’s’ so busy with his business’ (=school business). Makes me mad. He is legally obliged to be in class with me. Usually he excuses himself, well mostly, but today he didn’t. He just didn’t pitch. And becasue he is such an important man there is very little I can do about it:  it woud be seen as very rude for me to go up to him and say that I think he should not skip my classes. He is SOO important, and SOO busy after all.

So, usually when he skips class, it goes OK. I have a few strong student in the classes and they help me to explain things and the topics are usually such, that complicated explanations can be avoided. But today, we were doing ‘Giving Directions’ and it was obvious that they hadn’t done anything like this before and were clueless. And on top of that the were rowdy and restless and there wasn’t really anyone who I could call on to help me – in that class the stronger students are the shy ones too so we were kind of stuck.And that class does seem to have more lower level students than other classes.

So it was a bit of a disaster. We managed to push through the textbook activities – although I doubt if 5 out of 35 did them properly or understood them. If that. We played pin the tail on the donkey which was fun and easy to grasp – fortunately. But I think they learned nothing, practiced nothing but left, right, up, down and the worst of it is that as much as I tried, I couldn’t hide my frustration at not being able to explain things to them. Arrgggh, so I think my frustration made the vibe in the classroom even more restless. What a dog show. Ah, no, actually, I would much rather have been at a dog show.

And now, forward – how? I am going to have to get used to Mr P. not coming to class. That is not going to change. Maybe I can tell – err, no, suggest – to him that if he doesn’t come to class I am just going to play games with the students and not the allocated textbook sections – which is the hardest part for me to do without his assistance. The crazy thing is that even when he is there, his assistance is not worth much anyway. He often just reads at the back or brings work to class. But I can still ask him to translate, even if it means repeating what I have just told the students.

I think the best I can do is focus on the simpler activities I had planned for the lesson and just omit the more complicated ones. But this requires thinking on my feet, because I just never know when he’s going to pitch. But it makes more sense to leave out the tough stuff rather than get frustrated and achieve nothing with 35 people relying on me to teach them! I feel it is so unfair towards the students that he doesn’t pitch. But then again, it’s not news that he doesn’t have their best interests at heart.

Any ideas?

I was involved in the English Speech Contest/Talent Show for the festival where I had to help judge the contestants. It was so much fun! I was very impressed by some of the girls: the entries varied from pop song renditions to speeches, poem recitals and skits. The funniest were the skits. I was also really impressed by some of the speeches and the poem recitals were also quite well done.

Here are some photos of my students in actiom: I was so proud of them doing their stuff – all in ENGLISH! Wow! Good Jooob! (<<< said with a US drawl!)

I tend strongly to the ‘not correct’ side of this argument and I am starting to wonder whether I a doing the right thing.

The reason I correct so very little is that I feel that the biggest stumbling block for students in Korea in speaking English is confidence. Their Korean teachers are very strict with them and are pedantic about accuracy, especially pronunciation. I think this has in general affected their confidence, which can’t have been very high to start with, as learning a foreign language is always daunting.

So I hardly ever correct my students in class (which is mostly focused on speaking practice): I don’t correct their pronunciation, I don’t correct their grammar. I do correct spelling and garmmar slightly more frequently when they are writing. I feel like it is less of a blow to a student to have their written work corrected, than their speaking. This is mainly because it is less public, but also because I think it takes more ‘guts’ for a student to speak out in class.

As a result, I feel like many students get away with poor pronunciation and grammatical errors when they speak in my class, but they do however feel (hopefully) encouraged to speak. This is a compromise that I have been happy with up until now, but now I am starting to wonder.

For example: in my high school classes I have fruit names for the students’ team names. I was playing a game with them and they had to call out their team names, so the one girl shouted ‘orenji’ i.e. orange. The word for orange in Korean is orenji (a kind of Konglish I guess) and so she technically wasn’t even speaking English, but according to my rules of not correcting I let it go.  Now I feel like maybe I should have corrected her, and maybe used it as an example to the class of how a word might be very similar in Korean/Konglish, but to use it in an English context they must try to pronounce the words correctly. But then that poor girl might well have been very embarrassed and not opened her mouth again for weeks. I battle to get the high school students to speak as it is…surely I can’t afford to make it even more intimidating for them?

I’m stumped on this one. Any ideas or thoughts would be welcome!

I taught them again last Thursday for the first time in 4 weeks. I only teach the 3rd grade high school students once every 3 weeks and I had had a week off teaching to write play scripts, so to have had a respite from the 3-2 class – the death eaters- had been great. But they’re back, and if posible, worse than ever. This is truly a ‘tough crowd’.

The reason I have finally decided that they are truly a horrible class is that EVEN my infallible, perfect,  lovely, cosy and warm ‘Food Lesson’ didn’t work for them.  Man, that’s when you know. (See ‘Talking about Food’ post)

So, what exatly is the problem with this class? It’s a tough one to get to the bottom of, but I think one of the biggest things is their EXTREMELY low level of English. They are 17 or 18 years old and have theoretically been through almost 12 years of schooling, 8 of which will have included numerous English lessons a week, yet most of them cannot say “Hello, My name is…” Be this out of lack of interest/motivation/ability, it doesn’t really matter, the point is they can’t speak English and they don’t want to.

They are not at all interested in the fact that I am there, and the fact that I have (until now) continued to smile at them and be kind and friendly seems to have escaped their attention. They are too self-involved and quite simply couldn’t care less about me or my teaching efforts or English lessons.  They are, quite frankly, the epitomy of teenaged-bitches, which is something apparaently rare in Korean schools, from what I’ve heard anyway.

When I walk into class with my cheery smile, positive attitude and oodles of patients and greet them with a cheery good morning, there are one or two mumbled replies but the rest just sit there and either continue with their own conversations or just look at me.  Last Thursday I tried to hype them up a few more times by acting silly and trying various greetinsg ‘hello’ ‘hi’ ‘how are you’ etc. This usually gets a rise out of a class but not this lot. They are just sour.

When I ask them questions, simple simple simple questions, they just look at me, or worse: look right at me and give me an answer in Korean, even though they know that I don’t understand Korean, or only very little. They do this with such attitude it feels like they are attacking me personal. It is really rude. Anyway, until now I have not shown my frustration with them (I hope). I have kept the smile on and the positive vibe flowing as well as I could and tried to push through til the end of the lesson with them dragging on behind me.

I am really at my wits end with them. I feel like it is a futile situation: They dont want t learn, maybe some of them can’t learn, and I have reached the stage where I DON’T want to teach them. My co-teacher doesn’t help much. He should be trying to discourage them from being rude, and encouraging them to participate, but I get the feeling he has also given up on them.

I think for the next lesson with them…a mere 3 weeks away…oh no…I will try one more time to win them over, make the lesson as accesible and interesting for them as possible (my gosh, what could be better than the food lesson? I am going to have to work a miracle)…and if they don’t respond and my co-teacher doesn’t help I will stop the lesson.  I get out of my 3-2 lessons so frustrated and exhausted and sucked dry that it is nt worth my while dragging myself through that. They obviously don’t enjoy it and it is all in all a waste of time. Thye would do better having some extra time to do self-study or something. I don’t actually care what they do with themselves as long as I don’t have to teach them. So I will try, ONE MORE TIME, and if things don’t work out then I am going to quit on them. I don’t really know what else to do. They are by far the worst class I have ever taught.

Little bitches.

If only they knew (or maybe not) what anguish they are causing me! And I do try so hard!

P.S. There is one student who tries: I have nicknamed her ‘Cinderella’ as she played that part in the school play last year. She is sugar-sweet and I think she has picked up on my frustration. She is heading towards the teacher’s pet side of things but that is WAY preferable to the sour bitch side. The thing is I think her classmates probably give her uphill for trying as she gets some dirty looks when seh does participate. So Cinderella, I’m sorry you’re stuck in with that lot. this post is not about you.

I feel like I have ‘got away lightly’ when it comes to co-teachers. I have two, no three, BRILLIANT co-teachers and a couple of mediocre ones. The mediocre ones are just that mainly because they lack motivation i.e. they are teachers for the money and job security and not for the kids or their English level is just too low for us to communicate and therefore teach together efficiently.

Before I introduce you to ‘my team’, let me explain the role of a co-teacher. According to our contracts, we are NOT ALLOWED to teach without a co-teacher. This suits most of us fine as they are vital for us to be able to communicate effectively with the whole class, as one will never have a class where all students understand English. So in many cases their main role in the classroom is as translators. In addition to that they are meant to help with discipline, fondly known as ‘crowd control’ amongst us NETs. Or in Jules’ case, ‘riot control’ (he works at a very unruly boys school where discipline is quite a problem). Anyway, since I am teaching girls, the discipline is usually not such a problem, and when it is the co-teachers are generally pretty good about stepping in.

So in reality the co-teachers help with translations and discipline. Ideally though, as the name suggests, we should be teaching together. i.e. a 50-50 kind of situation. This has also been referred to as team-teaching. And when we are called together by EPIK (The government department responsible for NETs inKorea) we are shown model lessons of how to co-teach. And this infuriates us to no end!! Because the models are simply not realistic. The perfect co-teacher would look as follows:

• be competent in English (I don’t mean perfect but I mean comfortable and efficient at communicating)
• be enthusiatic about their job and care about the needs of the students
• realise that the Korean government issued textbooks are near-useless and that to teach communicative English we need to add diversity to the lessons
• have lots (or enough) of time allocated to preparing and planning lessons together with the NET.

This is rather far from reality for most Korean English teachers though (KETs). Quite a few of them fulfill at least two of these requirements, but rarely have I heard of someone who fits the role perfectly. Two of my best co-teachers definitely fit the first 2 categories, one of them the first three but none of them can realistically ever fulfill the last one. Thye are eternally bogged down in bureaucracy, admin, paperwork etc. They have heavy work loads and they are not given any extra time to prepare co-teaching lessons with their NETs which would be necessary were we to attempt to teach by the models.

Anyway. So let me introduce you to my co-teachers. For the sake of anonymity I will refer to them by their surnames…there is not such a high diversity of surnames in Korea so they could be any old Mr Kim or Mr Park. I hope that’s enough anonymity – especially since I’ve even given them ratings out of 10!

Middle School: I have four co-teachers at the middle school:

Mrs Song: She is lovely. She is enthusiastic about her job and the students. She enjoys English, she is continually trying to improve her own English and she often incorporates extra activities beyond the textbook in her classes. She also tries her best to TEE (Teach English in English) which is something which is quite rare among KETs. She was my ‘mentor’ and ‘mom’ when I first arrived in Korea and I cannot sing her praises enough! (8.5/10)

Miss Kim: She also definitely falls under the ‘lovely’ category. She is my age and so not yet a very experienced teacher. She speaks relatively good English and is very good about saying ‘I don’t understand you’ when she doesn’t: this is not to be taken for granted in Korea! She is very kind and loving to the students and is very good at explaining activities to them: I always know my games will work well in her classes and her students seem to enjoy English-which would’ve rubbed off from her. She’s s winner! (8/10)

Mrs Kim: She tries. Her English is the biggest stumbling block for her as a co-teacher. She is also quite strict with the girls and gets a bad grimace on her face when things get loud (and the kids start having too much fun…). She does everything I ask her to do, she always comes to class and she means well. I think she feels very insecure about not being able to speak English very well and that gets in the way of our working relationship.  (7/10)

Mr Park: He’s what Miss Kim and I like to call a V.I.M. (very important man)  He has some kind of senior role at our school and it’s going to his head. He is missing more and more of my classes because he’s too “busy with his business works”. When he does come to class he often looks bored: sits at the back reading, fiddles with the books in the book shelf, looks at himself in the mirror etc. He also sometimes wanders out randomly and then back in again. He hardly ever translates, and when I do ask him to translate he hasn’t been listening to me so I have to repeat it all again to him. Then he still gets it wrong. Shame, his English is not that great, yet he’s the head of English at the middle school. Pretty shocking, but that’s Korea. He smiles a lot and thinks it’ll get him through anything. But he is too self-important to really care about the needs of the students and he is not a very good co-teacher at all. (5/10)

High School: I have three co-teachers at the high school:

Mr Kang: He’s as near to perfect as you can get as co-teachers go. His English is amazing: he spenat a few years in the US Army (the troops in Korea) which is where he not only learned to speak English almost fluently but he also seems to have absorbed a lot about western culture, customs, etiquette and attitudes. He is the one Korean I feel understands our situation the best and he has a great sense of humour – we have many laughs when we teach together and I really enjoy being in the classroom with him. It’s evident that he’s a good teacher as his students really seem to enjoy English and they are always laughing and having a good time. He let’s me teach whatever topics I like and is supportive of any new ideas I have. He is complimentary and praises my effort in preparing materials and so on: this is VERY RARE in Korea and I really appreciate it. His only downfall is that he is too busy for us to prepare classes together, but that’s not his fault. High school English teachers in Korea have ridiculous schedules, often staying at school until 11pm at night. (9/10)

Mr Kim: I feel like Mr Kim is my co-teacher in training. He is not a very confident teacher but he has the best intentions. He seems rather naive and a little insecure, and unfortunately his English is not that great and he is of course  insecure about this too. When I have had discipline problems it’s been in his classes because those 17-year old girls just walk all over him. He tries hard to be a good co-teacher: he translates often and also takes initiative and asks me to stop sometimes to give the students some extra explanations, which I really appreciate as it shows that he cares about the students and is reading them during the lesson. I definitely feel like he has improved as a co-teacher over the last 6 months and I see better days ahead with him!  (6.5/10)

Mr Yoo: I kept the best for last. Mr Yoo is a gem. He is a uniquely bad co-teacher. He is not as bad as some other horror stories about co-teachers I’ve come across but he just has a couple of attributes which combine to making him an unpleasant teaching partner. He is always fiddling with his cellphone in class. He teases the girls and laughs at them when they make mistakes. He often leaves class for cellphone calls or for smoke breaks, He comes into class with smelly breath ad the students don’t like this, I have seen them complaining. He pretends he understands me and then translates things incorrectly so the students get the wrong end of the stick and activities are often chaotic. He is a sleezy man: he always has some sexual innuendos or commnets to make, points at pictures of boobs and calls the girls rude words in Korean (similar to ‘bitch’). He is a bit of an unpelasant character and I just wish I didn’t have to tecah with him. At times I feel like he tries but his personality gets in the way of him being a good teacher and his English lets him down. (4.5/10) sorry, Mr Yoo.

I have been trying to figure out WHY it is that this lesson works so well, every time. It feels like an old pair of jeans: fits perfectly and feels right, every time!

I think one of the main reasons this lesson works so well is because of how I introduce the topic. I start off with some photographs of me eating food in Korea. Two plus points already: The students LOVE seeing photos of me and/or my boyfriend and they LOVE Food, especially Korean food (they are Korean of course and thus fiercely proud of their cuisine!) So this starts the lesson off on a good note.

Next we do some ‘brainstorming’ about what foods they like and what foods they don’t like. People love expressing things about themselves and these kids are no different. We compile a list of likes and dislikes with me trying to write Korean foods in roman letters which always gets a laugh out of them. If at this stage they are still a little quiet I try to write some of the foods in Hangul (Korean script) and this is a sure fire way of getting them laughing and impressed and happy!

Anyway, so the next part is a classical ‘find someone who…’ activity. We first practice a basic dialogue ‘do you like xyz?’ ‘no I don’t’ ‘why not?’ etc. They then get a worksheet with a list of foods on it (Korean and western food mixed) and have to ask each other if they like/don’t like each food, and they write people’s names next to the food items on the list and a reason why. This can be turned into a race and the first 3 students to finish get a sticker or candy or whatever.

The next activity is a picture card game which I’ve called ‘in the restaurant’. It is also preceded by practicing a simple dialogue for customer and waiter. Each student gets given 1-3 food cards with pictures and names of food items on them. They also have a menu with all the food items available in the class (or ‘restaurant’). Their cards are secret. They must walk around the classroom asking their classmates for food items e.g. ‘can I have some milk please’ ‘sorry, ‘I haven’t got any milk’ etc. If the person has the milk card they must hand it over and so on. The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner and gets a prize or applause or whatever.

So now to the analysis as to why this lesson works so well every time:

I think there are 3 main factors which work together to make this lesson a success:

1. Simplicity and ease of understanding: The concepts are simple, the language is simple and almost everyone in the class is capable of participating in the activities (even if they do it in Korean which often happens!)

2. Relevant and interesting topic: something they WANT to talk about!

3. Personalisation: OF myself and FOR them: I show them something of my experience in Korea, I try to write/speak Korean (always a hit!) and they get to express their personal likes and dislikes.

In addiction to these factors, there can be an element of competition which is important in classes where there are a number of higher level students.  I also need very little help from a co-teacher: the only part that can be difficult to explain is the ‘in the restaurant’ game but I have learned to explain this with gestures and demonstrations by now (I think I may well have taught this lesson almost 25 times by now!) Another thing is that there are pictures (picture cards and my photos) which is always a good thing in ESL lessons.

All in all my favourite lesson to teach: I think I should try to keep track of how many times I’ve taught it from now on…

In the Restaurant Menu

Find Someone who… food worksheet

This is kind of how I had figured it out in my mind: I have a couple of categories of students in each class: (I know stereotyping and  putting people in boxes is a bad idea but it helps me to prepare my classes as I have 2o of them a week and so having a pattern f my target audience in mind helps).

1. The top 3 to 5: each class seems to have somewhere between 3 and 5 students who are just great. The ideal students. They are bright, enthusiastic, work hard, want to learn, like me and participate in my lessons. They most likely go to a hagwon (English language academy in Korea) and so hare more competent in English than most of their classmates. They are generally easy to please and seem to enjoy my classes. If I was allowed favourites they would be them. But I’m not allowed so they are just nice, not the best, just nice!

2. The near the top confident and outgoing types: the number of students in this category varies from 1 to about 4, usually not more. They often don’t speak much English but are confident and outgoing people and so usually participate in class are not shy to try and answer questions even if they get it wrong and they are usually the ones who yell my name across the school yard or when they see me in town. If we’re playing a competitive game which is not too challenging language-wise their team usually wins even if they don’t have anyone from the top 3-5 in the team! Yey, I like that! They’re a pleasure to have and I know they’ll make my activities work because they try.

3. The very low level types: There are usually about 5 or so of these in each class, although it’s difficult to judge as they are usually very quiet, withdrawn and I easily overlook them (sorry girls!) some of them are obviously lost and confused in my classes and I try to help them but many of them sit next to a confident   helps them along or simply slip under my radar. Sometimes my co-teachers point these kids out to me, almost as if to say ‘don’t bother with this lot’.

4. The lazy and /or angry types: I don’t have many of these but when I do come across one, boy, do I know about it! These are the so-called ‘problem’ students. They don’t want to be at school, don’t want to learn and in some cases maybe can’t learn. They definitely don’t go to a hagwon and defnititely don’t enjoy my classes. They are usually the ones I have to ask to put away their mirrors, cell phones or mp3 players and are the ring-leaders when there’s trouble. I actually feel sorriest for this bunch: they are deeply unmotivated and with the intesne pressure on teenagers in Korea to get good grades at school so they can study further and ‘become someone’ this lot are destined to be loosers and I think most of them know it. I just smile at them and hope I don’t make them feel any worse about their situation.

5. The rest: this is an unfortunate category as it contains the majority of the class who are not memorable in any particular way. They are probably average students: either diligent and hard-working and so don’t draw attention to themselves or lazy but smart. They seem to go with the flow and if the top kids are having a ball ‘the rest’ will usually tow the line, however in some classes where the top kids are a smaller proportion and the very low level types or the lazy/angry types are the majority, the rest will usually follow the lead of the very low level/lazy and angry types.

Anyway, so I quite like having this pattern of who’s who in my classes in my head while I;m preparing, and as much as I would love to try and reach everyone with my lessons, I do end up aiming my activities at the top 3-5, the near the top confident bunch and some of ‘the rest’. When there are 30-35 students in each class and the levels of English vary as much as they do it is near impossible to cater for all needs. This is a sad truth that most Native English Teachers (NET) in Korean public schools have to accept.

So, what I am getting at is that I have found a new category of student within ’5. The rest’: They are: 6. The quiet ones who do want to learn and crave the attention… I found one of these students just the other day. I was walking around class as I usually do when the ss have been assigned a task, and this girl looked up at me as I walked past. She didn’t have a partner, and it was a paired exercise, so I decided to sit down next to her on the empty chair and do the activity with her. She was pretty clueless as to what was going on but she looked so happy to have me right there next to her. I tried to do the activity with her but she wasn’t understanding me so she tapped the girls in front of her and they explained to her. She looked very pleased with herself. I stayed with her for a few more minutes and spelled out the answers for her (literally, letter for letter).

Anyway, that little experience made me realise that just because the are quiet and low-level English and don’t really participate doesn’t mean they don’t want to. I don’t even know her name but thanks to ‘Miss Kim’ (chances are high that’s her name anyway!!) for opening my eyes to her and people like her!

Although I am meant to be focusing on speaking lessons, some of the textbook content doesn’t lend itself that well to speaking lessons, and so for example this lesson on emails and epals is turning into a lesson on vocab and writing, with a little bit of speaking.

The activity I have put most of my energy into preparing is an information gap activity. For this the students while be required to use the email/epals vocabulary to ask their partner for information which is ‘blanked out’ on their version of the worksheet. The worksheet has two emails on it, on which information such as the date, sender, and portions of the email addresses are blanked out. Note: before doing thios exercise they will practice the vocab in a word search exercise and also with a whole-class matching cards exercise on the board.

I think this exercise will work well as it will encourage the students to use the vocabulary in context and will get them to practice asking questions.

Email Information Gap: Partner A

Email Information Gap: Partner B

I am hoping it will be a platform for me to share some of my more successful lessons and associated materials and make them available to other ESL teachers.

It is also going to be a space for me to ‘vent’ and to ‘rejoice’ when either are called for: a good grumble after a horrible school day can do wonders. At the same time, sharing successes and teaching-highs is important too!

I am hoping that this blog will then be a record of my development of a teacher. Comments from fellow teachers and others will be appreciated: don;t be shy to be honest!