Today has been the same as the rest of the week. I'm going to have to look into ways of turning my negative classroom thoughts into something more positive. I am definitely struggling to accept the differences in teaching and methodology over here. It is very different, and parts of it are completely contrary to how I was taught to teach. I think most of it is the system, but some of it is certainly my co-teacher. The kids in grade three had to give short class presentations today, about an aspect of Korean heritage. Most of these were completely unintelligible. I'm pretty sure that either the kids have zero understanding of sentence structure or what most words mean, or they put a ton of Korean text from an online encyclopedia into google translate and didn't bother/couldn't tell if it made sense. It didn't. I had no idea what they were trying to say most of the time. Instead of working on this, though, Mr Beak interrupted them constantly to work on their pronunciation or to tell other kids off, at length. It was pretty rude, and I'm pretty sure presentations are a fluency exercise... pron errors should be corrected after, not during as it interrupts the flow of what the person is trying to say. I'm not sure if it's cultural or just awful, awful teaching. I also feel pretty judgmental because I'm so new to teaching, and Mr Beak's been doing it for about 12 years. Do I have any right to judge a culture that's not my own, and someone with so much more experience than me? Well, whether I do or not, I am, and it's making my days really negative. Maybe this is my chance to learn peace and humility?
Funniest thing today (but also a bit horrific) is one of the students was giving a presentation about some royal burial sites. He was trying to read the sentence "ancient royal Korean tombs", but stumbled over the word 'tombs'. Mr Beak told him the word was 'thumbs', so the kid read out "ancient royal Korean thumbs". Mr Beak didn't bat an eye! WTF? Ancient royal thumbs? No wonder these kids are having problems making sensible sentences... their teacher.... *splutter*... oh boy. And I couldn't do a thing! I've done a short internet training course the school paid for and read a Korean ministry of education booklet and both gave the same advice - do not question or correct you co-teacher in class, they will lose face, etc., etc. So, some poor kid now thinks that people are buried in thumbs. It was all I could do not to laugh in class. All I could think about was ancient royal thumbs!
So, my day did contain some levity! And I've been reading Harry Potter at my desk, so that's fun :)
But it's Friday! I've got a nice weekend planned: Skype mum tomorrow morning, then I'm going to the Suwon Hwaseong fortress with a couple of other expats for a walk and some lunch, then check out 'open mic night' at a cafe in Osan. On Sunday I might finally make it back to Hongdae for the art market and Taco Bell :) I'm going to wait until Tuesday to do my grocery shopping because I want to try shopping at the traditional market.
No comments:
Post a Comment