Monday, June 3, 2013

First day teaching!

Here's some more reading music: Cherry Blossom Ending by Busker Busker

So how did my first day of teaching go? I want to hold onto little moments like this, because I know that the time is really going to fly now that teaching has started.
Before class yesterday, I was feeling pretty nervous, but not really the weird in-the-pit-of-your-stomach nervous, but the restless nervous. I kept getting up and walking around, not really sure what I was trying to do. I felt like I wasn't able to think of anything I needed to prepare until I started teaching, and then it would be too late to prepare it, so that was kind of a frustrating feeling.

But, 2:30 came around quite quickly, and suddenly there I was in my little classroom with three little girls staring up at me from the red swivel chairs. They wanted to be known as Love, Joy, and...Sandy. I thought we were on our way to being a fruits of the spirit type group, but last time I read that verse, Sandy wasn't an attribute listed there. Haha. So in I launched, with lots of animation and lots of mime. The results? I am pretty sure they learned A, but they did not understand the whole "ask your friend" concept when I was introducing the "What is this" "This is an Apple" shpeal. I'll try again today with that, and hopefully when we review, they will still know A.

The next class was a class that I took over from another teacher, the Phonics 2 class. They were more familiar with the pattern at Connexus, but we were starting a review month which was different from the other things they had been doing. This class is the most difficult, but mostly only because one student really does not participate much in class, and kind of just floats along with the other students. So that will be a battle, I think. I want to get him to participate more without calling him out all the time, because that makes a student feel even more unsure of themselves. But all in all, that went pretty well too.

Then came the Storybook classes and the day went much better after that. The Yellow group, which I took over, are pros at the Connexus style of things, so they were able to help me out when I messed up the order of something, and we just had a grand old time. We are reading the book "Peter and the Wolf" now, so we talked about Grandfather's rules for Peter and whether they had rules they had to follow at their houses. They were kind of so-so with that, not really into it, until I wrote one of my rules on the board: "Everyday I must eat candy." They thought that was hilarious, so we switched to thinking of rules that we wanted to have, like "Everyday I must play 3 hours."

The next two Storybook classes were higher level in English, but brand new to Connexus. One of the little boys in the Blue 1 class pretty much only whispers, so that will be something to get past too. I think he was just very nervous. They were able to do very well as well I think, although I forgot to give them their homework assignment sheet, I just told them what it was, so I am hoping they were able to do it...The Blue 6 class was a little more advanced, and I felt very good about how well they were doing and how much they knew, but then at the end when I tried to tell them what their homework was they were totally not getting it, and I ended up going over time, which was embarrassing because our president had to stick his head in the door and tell me that the van was waiting for my kids. But, then when our receptionist explained the homework in Korean, it still took a long time, so I think it wasn't just my fault, they were just not used to having homework given in that manner, I guess.

So it was a whirlwind of a day! My host family also had guests last night (in-laws, I think) so they asked if I could eat dinner with the other teachers, which I was more than happy to do. After an adventure at Lotte Mart with Anna (so many free samples, but why is toilet paper almost $25?), we went to the teacher's apartment and had a light supper and ate watermelon.

And today, I'll do it all again, this time with the Backpack curriculum...Second day teaching, go go go!

1 comment:

  1. this makes me happy!!! So glad that your day went so well. Sounds like you have some fun days ahead! thanks so much for the update <3

    ReplyDelete