2003-10-06 - 9:26 a.m.

Friday, Sept. 19, 2003

On the train, commuting to ShipSam Dangee

(The kids went on a trip to a mountain, for a picnic on Wednesday.)

I've got to pick up a book at the Ha-an-dong Sagori branch of YP Books.

(The story behind that is that, all last semester, I taught from photocopied pages provided by Eunji, my most loyal student. I felt too "broke" to spring for a book. Now I've made a commitment to teaching, down on a gut level. I can tell because of the urgency behind the decision to buy a book that we will begin working from way off at the end of October.)

The other big agenda item today is meeting Connie's husband. He owns a hogwan that specialises in prepping high school students for the college entrance exams. They need me two evenings a week, my choice of nights. I'm going to give them the scoop that I'm going to the U.S. for two weeks in October and will line up a substitute if they decide to hire me.

It will be good for students to hear a different voice. That's a major difficulty for local students,- not enough experience with different accents. I had some kids last semester who knew their phonics very well, but consistently spelled words wrong because they'd been taught by New Zealanders. They put "e" where "a" should be.

18:30 Finally headed home! Just passed "Shindaebang samgori." What a lovely, rythmic name: shin' tae-bahng sam' go-ree. In my pidgin Korean it translates as "New big room, three corners." {I'm using "corners" in the sense of " road intersection," which is a more literal translation.}

I think I aced the job interview. They were glad that I had ideas on coping with their god-awfully big classes. I was completely frank. The students are going to have more chances to speak and interact if they are in smaller classes. The more active they are, the faster they will learn, and the farther they will get. Kids learn by doing. They figured that, when I had assessed their grade-level, they'll be open to dividing the two present groups into 4 smaller classes.

I plan to go in early and work up some assessment tests on Monday. It's easy. Just take dialog from textbooks; photocopy pages and have 2 kids at a time read the parts. Learning to run their copier will probably be the hardest part,- Korean labels. Then run off 40 copies of "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." Kids love that song, especially those who've had 2-3 years of English.

The practice I've had working with 10-12 year olds is really going to stand me in good stead with these boys. What I have to stick to is the fast-paced, entertaining mode: Songs, skits, supplemental sheets (the 3 Ss that keep both kids and parents happy. We like happy customers.)

Thanks for reading.

Happy Trails! ~ Sil

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