Saturday School

In Korea students attend school every other Saturday, the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Saturdays of the month to be exact. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment in my opinion. We woke up bright and early to head to school and while we were waiting for the bus my homeroom teacher drove up and gave us a ride to school, which was great. Not only did our free ride safe us money but we also arrived early. We headed to homeroom class and as usual in homeroom I watched the students study or sleep until first period. It turns out the students actually also do those same things during first period on Saturday also, I was glad that Crystal had a talkative student in her class who kept us occupied for most of 1st period. So during 2nd and 3rd period we thought we were going to be participating in Indie Film and Music club with one of the Korean English teachers. Great I thought! It turns out this Saturday the International Track students were taking the PSAT so all of the students had to leave campus and do activities outside of school. Because of the PSAT a lot of students were busy with that and the club size shrank so we were paired up with Drama club, another non-threatening club. Well in response to the required abandonment of school both the teacher decided we should simply hike up the local mountain for 2 hours. Wow! This came out of nowhere. I was glad that in the morning I had decided to go ahead and risk wearing jeans and sneakers (as I had seen numerous other teachers wearing on different occasions). So up the mountain we climbed. 

Taking a rest break

Wall that surrounds "Old Seoul"

SGHS is down there somewhere

Hazy Seoul

Earlier in the week I taught a book club after school class and and English Class. Book Club had the potential to go very well but I ended up with only two students because students were getting mandatory immunizations. English went better than last time also, I had an extra game planned so in case I had extra time (which I had) I could keep the students engaged. In Book Club I the students read sections of an article then we discussed them as a group. The students were great even though there were only two of them. In English Conversation class I asked the students to guess their learning styles then gave them the test and we discussed the results. English was first period so the students were not very awake at that point but they engaged in conversation with me about it and seemed interested in the results.  At the end of the class we played the Who is this? game. I asked students to write 3 things about themselves on a note card then we mixed them all up and students read them aloud and guessed who each other were based on the three facts written on the card. 

Book Club

Book Club

Who is this?

This week I had my first "counseling" meeting with 4 of my students from homeroom.  I met with 3 girls to talk about their lives at SGHS, they shared their college goals with me and what they wanted to study and do for their careers. The students wanted to be a broadcaster, a teacher, a politician, and one wanted to study either English or psychology. They are not allowed to date at school and CCTV watches all of their movements. They could be expelled if they were found to be dating. They were all very ambitious and bright young women who will do very well in their lives.

The only real student and classroom management issues I've observed continue to be sleeping in class and occasionally watching TV on their IPod. Apparently, students were told that high school students who sleep for 5 hours a night don't get into college while those who sleep only 4 hours a night do get into college. There is a tremendous amount of pressure placed on these students to excel in academics they stay up all night studying for exams.