Last Day of Class

Today is the beginning of another work from home period.  The last three days, the school year has been winding down.  On Wednesday, I taught my last class of the school year.  I wish it would have went better, and I did my best, but something unpredictable happened.

I was playing a game that is on loan to me from another English teacher in Bucheon.  It is called TriBond.  It is a game where I show three images on the projector, and the first student to say what they all have in common will earn a point for their team.  For example one of the tougher ones has a tree, an elephant, and car.  An easier one features things that are all green.

After a student had correctly guessed what a turtle neck, a swan, and a giraffe all have in common, I was trying to quiet the class down so I could explain the answer, but one girl had her head down and she continued to talk. So I had to give her some kind of punishment.  Since I don't like to hit the kids (it is a gray area where I have heard it is illegal, but have still seen it a lot in school) I usually make them do exercises, and I call it my fitness club.

So I sent her to the back of the class and instructed her to do five push ups for not following my instructions.  She did one and then I told her to do another one, and she went down and started crying on the way back up.  I was surprised because, I have seen the other teachers make them do squats after a lecture until the student cries, so five push ups doesn't seem too harsh.  I guess she is really weak.

So then I told her to just go back to her seat and stop talking in class.  So she went back to her seat, still crying, and then her friends comforted her and they glared at me like I am supposed to apologize to her because she cried.  I should have punished her friend too for having to look at her ugly face.

Then later on in the day, the students received their yearbooks and seemed really excited to look at the pictures.  I was surprised that they were so high quality.  The pictures were obviously photo shopped though. Nobody really looks the way they do in their pictures.  Some people look about 15 years younger than they do in real life.  It was the beginning of the graduation period which would conclude on Friday.

Yearbook appreciation class

Some of the students could not afford the $30 yearbook. 

Nice Bruce Lee haircut.

The school principal Kim Hye Ryung.  She speaks English well and she likes to practice her English with me.  Usually in Korea, a message has to be delivered up a chain of command, but she says if there is something I want to talk about with her, I can just come to her office.  So she seems like a very reasonable person.

Vice Principal Lee Young Hee.  She was my neighbor for over a month when I was assigned to sit in the main teacher's office.  She became friendly towards me also.  

The letters next to my name read sanshengnim which is a respectful title for teacher. Fortunately, I was camera ready, since I didn't know that that was picture day.  The English teacher above the woman with the yellow shirt helps me a lot.  Her name is Kim Dae Hee.

I found out that in Korea, they do not have the tradition of signing the year book.  I only had one signature from someone who had spent some time living in the US.  I tried to prompt another student to write one and it was totally foreign to him.  He just wrote "Hi" and then my name in Korean.  They do have a page in the book where some students wrote messages though.  The real highlight of this yearbook for me is that it contains pictures of the kids having fun and doing poses.  But one of the kids in the class photo took this too far and got in trouble.  I'm kind of surprised no one caught this before it was published in the yearbook.

  You can see from this picture some of the kids are really sweet, like the two guys making a heart.  But some of them are trouble makers.  I'm pretty sure he was hit for this, but he gained some serious cool points with his classmates.