Snow Day

I found out today at around 12:30 that due to the snow, classes that night would be cancelled. According to my boss, this was the first snow day in the history of our branch, possibly even in the history of CDI. My initial reaction was utter relief and excitement, just as I would have felt growing up, after incessantly calling the emergency weather hotline and finding out I would not have to attend school that day. After the initial elation, I realized I had absolutely nothing to do all day; no plans, no errands I needed to run, and no one to hang out with...oh yeah, and no TV. Hence, I am writing my second blog post of the day.

A lot of my family members have asked me questions directed more specifically about my job. So here is a basic breakdown of my week. I have 5 different sets of classes, at 4 different levels. My biggest class has 16 kids and my smallest has 6. Because the classes are by level, I have a wide range of ages within the classes. My lowest level class is definitely my easiest because they are more than willing to talk, and they are actually very competent speakers and thinkers. That particular class is also the most fun, I laugh and joke with the kids all the time.

Each day, I have two classes; 4:30-7:30 and 7:40-10:40. The three hours goes by quite quickly with a small break in between each hour. Every teacher at every branch follows a specific curriculum and structure for each class. This makes my own workload quite light; I have maybe about 30 minutes of prep work per day. It also allows for only a week of training to be sufficient to start solo in the classroom the following week. We do various activities ranging from speaking, listening, reading stories, answering comprehension questions, and critical thinking projects. It’s not much different than a grammar school foreign language class in the states. The only difference is that the teacher, myself, does not speak the students’ first language.

The policy of “no Korean in the classroom” is hard on the kids because many times they get extremely frustrated when they are trying to get a point across, but are unable to find the vocabulary to do so. However, they are extremely compliant about following this policy. I was shocked to see how willing the kids are to speak solely in English, even on their breaks. One of my students wrote a love note to a student in another class and used another teacher as the messenger. He showed the letter to me (which is a whole other story) and the entire thing was in English. They will even refer to each other by their English names. Overall, the kids have really amazing attitudes considering that they are in a 3-hour “extracurricular class.” The last 3-hour lecture that I had to sit through in college I watched dvds on my laptop throughout each class and it was STILL boring and tedious. In other words, I keep that in mind, and therefore very rarely get frustrated with the kids that aren’t completely enthusiastic to see me. I can empathize. Although I really hope they don’t think of me the way I thought of Professor Trach...yikes.