Teacher Olivia

Now that Michelle and I have told you a little bit about our school, we each thought we would let you know a little more about our own classes in our own entries. I teach first grade science where I have 102 students split up into three homerooms - Faith, Love, and Hope - and I teach one third of the students in a homeroom at a time. In other words, I teach three 40 minute lessons to nine groups of 11 or 12 first graders. I also teach two after school review classes for some of my students, so 5 to 6 classes each day.

The students call me Teacher Olivia, or more often Olivia Teacher, which I love so much more than Ms. Baad! I have also had one or two call me giraffe teacher thinking they were hilarious, although it isn't really that surprising because it isn't really rude here to just point out things about someone's physical appearance, like saying "you're fat," and I am obviously exceptionally tall compared to their Korean teachers/parents. They also told me I was tall like an elephant the other day, but I definitely prefer giraffe haha.

The science material is very basic and the kids are all so smart, already knowing most of the material from kindergarden or their Korean science class. As such, I spend a lot of class singing science songs, playing games to solidify the concepts, doing experiments, and every once in a while watching Bill Nye or the Magic School Bus which often times is really helpful for the kids that have poor English skills since they can more easily visualize what we are learning about.

Some of my students playing with their handmade wind vanes after a lesson on weather tools. Sorry for the blurred pictures! I accidentally used an odd camera setting. 

Some of my students, like Cindy, have very limited English yet can still have fun with our experiments. As a side note, all students have to have an English name. Some pick their own, others are given by their parents, or even by their teachers. Cindy recently changed her name from Sinby - one of the many questionable English names some of my students have as a result of this practice.

Something really nice about teaching science is that the kids tend to inherently like it. The fact that we play games and get to do experiments and projects is a nice change of pace for them from their other classes. It is frustrating that the point of the class is for the students to learn English, not really the science material, so sometimes it feels like they don't bother to do anything but memorize the definitions of the weekly vocabulary words. However, I do try to throw in fun memory tricks for them for some of the concepts so hopefully they will have learned some actual science by the end of the year!

Something else a little frustrating is that the school was recently told by the government that they can no longer test the kids before placing them in immersion classes, as it is unfair to exclude these kids. As a result of this being the first year that this was put into place, there are definitely some kids with extremely low English skills. In theory I guess they are just supposed to learn from osmosis but it is really hard for them, and boring since they often don't really know what is going on. This can then lead to the kids being disruptive which causes its own problems.

Indoor wind vanes during one of the multiple Typhoons we have had in the past month. 

"In winter it is cold. Some animals hibernate but dragons don't"
The kids had to make a book where they wrote a couple of sentences about each season and drew a corresponding picture. Harrison had his mind set on drawing dragons so I told him he could if his sentences corresponded accordingly. For fall he wrote "In fall it is cool and dragons fly south." Creative, funny and indicative of his English skills and his grasp of the concepts.

In addition to teaching science class, we are also basically a homeroom teacher for one of our classes - my homeroom being 1 Faith - and are in charge of the class if the Korean homeroom teacher isn't there, helping the kids get to lunch, etc. Normally for me this means intervening during the break after lunch when kids are teasing each other or crying for various reasons, at least when they choose to come to me to tell me about it. Dealing with this can be difficult of course when the kids involved don't speak the best English or are too upset to explain what happened. In these cases I normally just have the kids with better English translate for each other but it doesn't always work. It really hit me the other day how helpful speaking Korean would be in these situations when I looked up from my desk when I heard someone crying to see one of my students looking like something out of a horror film with blood gushing all down his face, all over his clothing, and all over the floor. I grabbed some tissues to hold over the cut to slow the bleeding (he ended up going to the hospital to get stitches on his forehead which he is now quite proud of) and rushed him to the nurse. Of course, although I asked him and the girl with him what had happened I was unable to get a coherent response and still don't really know what caused the cut, or why my kids came to me instead of the Korean teacher in the next room.

Overall I am really loving teaching here so far. Sometimes it is draining but the kids are so smart and sweet and funny that it makes it totally worth it. I don't regret the decision to do this one bit and can understand why many of the teachers at our school have been here for over a year. It is definitely pushing me towards wanting to teach for a career and not just a year abroad.