Teaching My First Class @ SGHS

This week was the first week that students were back in class after the midterms. I was able to observe some classes and had the opportunity to teach English twice. I decided to use the first English lesson as an opportunity to introduce myself to the students and find out more about their lives in Korea.

I used the PowerPoint presentation we prepared before we came to Korea as the beginning of my lesson. I then developed some questions and asked the students as a class to answer them. I asked about their family size, where they are from, their hobbies, and goals. The first class was a bit of a challenge they were engaged initially but tuned out towards the end of the lesson and were not engaged in the discussion anymore. I tried to improvise and add in some discussion about the differences between Chuseok and American Thanksgiving. This garnered a bit more attention and some of the boys wanted to talk about football. I ended up teaching them a college football chant, which everyone seemed to have fun with.

Introducing Myself

I took what I learned from that lesson and some of the recommendations from the native English teacher who observed me and I made some changes before I taught the same lesson to the next class. I decided to have the students work in pairs to answer the questions that I posed so that they had a chance to talk with each other and think about their answers in Korean before having to formulate their responses in English. This worked a lot better and the students had great responses to my questions. I also added a final slide into the presentation about American Thanksgiving and again taught them the college football chant.

Teaching Football Chant

These two classes were a great learning opportunity and I think that I definitely will allow the students to work together in groups again when I do a class like this. They are in classes all day long and study all night long and don't have a lot of opportunity to discuss things with each other during the day. Most instruction at SGHS is done lecture style and I could tell that the students really enjoyed my change from lecture style to more group work.

I have also become responsible for giving announcements to my homeroom class. I go to the class each morning and afternoon. The regular homeroom teacher brings me a list of announcements to let the students know about and then they have self study and reading time.

Students settling into Homeroom

Homeroom Motto

This week I was invited to lunch twice with my teachers, to dinner with the other native English speakers and on a walk to a temple. It was great to visit a new place and interact with my co-workers outside of the school.

Gilsang-sa Temple

Gilsang-sa Temple

Pizza Night with Professor Lee this week was a good opportunity to talk about some of the similarities and differences between the Korean and American educational system. Students in Korea are all on one track towards the best schools in the country. There is little room for individuality and exploration. Students just study and go to school all day and night and many go to after school institutes where they study more and work on their English skills. I think this is the major difference between Korean and American systems. In the U.S. we have the opportunity to discover what each of our individual strengths are and how we can make a future with those skills. Many students here want to work at corporations, for the prestige of it more than for their self fulfillment and interest in the job. It was almost sad to hear from the Korean students all of the pressure they face getting into the best schools and getting the best jobs. It made me grateful that I have been allowed so many opportunities to try things out and stop things I did not like and try other things out instead. I when I meet with students for counseling sessions (more to come, after I actually have one), I will try to keep this social pressure in mind when asking students about their ambitions and talk to them about why they want to do certain things with their lives. I wonder if they are at all concerned with personal happiness or if it is all for the prestige of being able to say you attended a certain university and work at a particular company.

Cultural Difference: Homeroom teachers are like parents to their students. They help them with their personal lives, address issues in the dorms, help them study and get into college. Homeroom teachers in the U.S. are just placeholders until school begins and just let students know announcements. Sometimes schools have eliminated homerooms altogether.
Sharing is a huge part of Korean culture. Food, drinks, everything is shared here among friends. You can order huge bowls of many kinds of ice cream that come with many spoons so everyone eats out of the same bowl. Drinks come with two straws for both people to share.

Culture Shock: Students were watching TV on their IPod and the teacher came into the class and hit each one on the head. This was a cultural shock!
Cultural Similarities: Family pressure, while in the U.S. not every student has to go to Harvard there are often family expectations to live up to. Many students in the U.S. feel like they have to do a certain job or go to a certain school because their parents went there. While the pressure is not nearly as intense as it is in Korea, I think many American students feel pressure to live up to family expectations.

Challenges: Trying to get teaching time is a challenge. I will be teaching a 5 day unit plan in a few weeks but in the mean time I am asking random English teachers if I can take over their class a couple of times a week so that I can increase my teaching time. Most of my time is spend observing classes and preparing lessons in the library.

What would I change in the classroom? I would have block scheduling and less lecturing. I would have group work and ask students to do projects where they create things. There is so much emphasis on testing here all of the work and energy that teachers and students do is to prepare for tests. I would like to give the students an opportunity to make something like a historical poster or mobile, something where they don't simply have to memorize facts and feed them right back to me for credit.

Classroom Management: While I have not had to deal directly with classroom management yet, since when I was teaching the other teacher walked around and redirected student's attention to me I have observed a lot of it. I have seen teachers hit students to bring them back to attention or scold them, take away their IPods, and just tell them to be quiet. When students fall asleep in class teachers have gone over and nudged them awake. In other cases I have seen teachers just talk over loud students. There are a lot of different approaches to keeping the students attention focused on the task at hand. In general, the students don't have serious behavioral issues and most pay attention and focus on the lesson being taught. Often the teacher speaking does not have to deal directly with the issue because their co-teacher is walking around the class redirecting students.

How would I apply this experience to my teaching in the U.S.? I will try to use this experience as a basis for encouraging students to learn about the world. There are so many things going on outside of St. Louis, Missouri, and the U.S. So many people want to know Americans and learn about our culture. I hope that I can teach my students to have a deep respect and appreciation for other cultures around the world.

On a last fun note, my Korean buddy April invited Crystal and I to go to Lotte World with her family! It is basically an indoor/outdoor amusement park. There were rides, games, shopping, restaurants, and an ice skating rink. We had a great time. I love having the Korean buddies, we get to talk about so many things that we can't with our teachers. It is just an opportunity to share gossip about Korean life, dating, and marriage. We also have a chance to visit fun places that the average Korean visits for fun, rather than just the traditional tourist destinations.