Destination: Seoul, South Korea!: "Congratulations Erin Teacher!!!"

So, my week was spent in the Science classroom! This means I had to spend a week with the teacher that everyone is trying to set me up on a date with. Awkward. It actually went rather well. Science is easy for me in Korea because I can see what the students are learning. I only observed and taught 5th and 6th grade. These are the students that I have English with so they all know me rather well. It also made it a bit easier to manage the students in a classroom. Monday and Friday was spent with the 6th graders. On Monday they were learning about fulcrums, load, and effort. It has been quite awhile since I have studied this so I had to give myself a refresher before I went into the classroom. The teacher likes to include real clips or movie clips into every class so students can relate it to their lives. The movie clips this week were from the movie Tangled. If you have not seen the movie Tangled, please do so! It is adorable and loved by all kids. The scene was when Flynn Rider was catapulted into the air and landed on the horse, Maximus. He then quizzed the students and asked if this was possible in real life. Every student said no and then another video was shown were a similar thing happened in real life. The reaction was "AHHHHHHHH!!!" So, the basic format of every lesson is to engage the students with some movie clip(s), quiz the students to get their brains thinking, explain the goal for the class, explain the experiment, and allow work time for the students to finish the experiment and write down their predictions, observations, and explanations. I think this is a good basis for science classes but altogether it is very predictable for the students. They could walk in the class everyday and guess how the class is going to be structured. I am glad to see that the students are given a significant portion of the class to conduct experiments. The teacher does not give much assistance but instead clarifications. On Friday, the 6th graders were learning about the pulley system. Again, a clip from Tangled was used. This time it was when Rapunzel uses her hair to pull her mother up to the top of the tower. It is amazing how a simple Disney movie can portray science in a way that students can relate to it. The 5th graders were learning about crystals. On Tuesday the students figured out how warm water can hold more material inside of it. Then on Thursday, they used this knowledge to make a crystal. I always liked making crystals in science class so I was happy to experience it again.

Most embarrassing part of my week!! I walked into the Science class on Tuesday. One of the 5th graders shouts "Congratulations Erin Teacher!" I had no clue what he was talking about so I asked him "For what?" and he responds with "Science Teacher is in love with you!" Now what do you say back to a 5th grader who says this??! My response was "Shhhh, class is starting!" That is the best I could do in this embarrassing moment. Also, apparently my English is "real" English according to the students. They all said that they want to speak like me and that the teachers speak "fake" English. My students are something else!

Overall, the students really like the science teacher. He has a great rapport with them and always uses some humor throughout his lessons. He just got done with his military service so I was told that he addresses them like they are in the military. I can tell that he has a real passion for teaching science and enjoys what he does. There are some definite differences between American science classes and Korean science classes. First off, the kids here in Korea run around the classroom, tackle each other, and rough house during class, before class and after class. In the US, none of this behavior is tolerated. This is how accidents occur, people get hurt, or things get broken. A beaker of chemicals was broken during a 5th grade class. I was glad that the teacher took it very seriously and the students knew that they had done wrong. The group that broke the beaker was being careless and not concentrating on their experiment. Another difference is how the chemicals in the science classrooms are handled. Generally, students are not allowed to handle any chemicals with out proper eye wear in the US. In Korea, the students are not required to wear any eye wear and none are provided for them even if they wanted them. Finally the students are allowed to handle the raw chemical. If the students need more of a certain chemical the teacher just puts a huge container of it out and they pour it for themselves. Students are also careless with the chemicals. They pretend to eat it or pour it out on the tables. I was a bit scared during some of the experiments. Personally, I do not think this reflects on the teacher because this is how kids act throughout the entire school. I think it is just how science classes are in South Korea. There may be more trust in the students and I think the US has taken more precautions.

My English classes for the week were pretty routine. Every 4 units, or about 2 months, the students are allowed to either level up, level down, or stay at the same level based on their test scores for the units. So in my Ocean Level English (high level) I had some new faces and some students who were no longer in my class. The classes are still about the same size. I am still not sure how I feel about separating students by their levels but it is what the Vice Principal of our school thinks will work best for all of the students. It is up to the Vice Principal how classes are run in each school regarding separating by ability level, having homeroom teachers doing PE, Music, and Art, the length of the school day, etc. In 5th grade English, the students are learning about families. I started each class by introducing my family. I allowed the students to ask questions such as "How old is your (brother/mother/sister)?" or "What does your (father, brother, sister) like to do?" The students really like to hear about my family and it gives them a chance to practice English. We also discussed the different members of a family including mother, father, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew, and niece. Nephew and niece were definitely the hardest for the students to understand. I am not a fan of the Simpson's but it is a huge thing over here so I introduced all of these words using the Simpson family. Before each member was introduced they had to unscramble the word and guess the persons name. Literally every single student knew every single member in the Simpson family. Shocking? I'm not sure. The sure fact is that I now know every single member in the Simpson family. The 5th grade classes were ended by playing a board game in each group that utilized the new key phrase "What does your ____ like to do?" In 6th grade English, the students were learning new vocabulary for different kinds of sicknesses. They learned words such as fever, dizzy, cold, bloody nose, runny nose, backache, stomachache, headache, etc. I also taught them some words to go along with these sicknesses such as thermometer, crutches, band aids, cast, etc. Apparently thermometer is a rather funny word mainly because it contains the words mom and meter so they pronounced it "mom-meter" instead of thermometer. Ah, I love my English language learners! We played a few short games like Bingo and Charades to work on the newly learned vocabulary.

Miss you family!

That was my school week in a nut-shell. Next week I am moving onto 2nd grade. I am a little nervous about it because these students do not have any English instruction during the school day. We will see how things will go but I am guessing that they may be my biggest challenge.

I was very excited for this weekend because instead of staying home and doing homework all weekend I would actually be out and about experiencing Seoul. I am trying to pack my weekends full with all of the things that I want to do before I leave. Hopefully I can fit most of it in.

Friday night was the first night of the Seoul Lantern Festival 2011. It was held down at Cheonggyecheon Stream by Seoul's City Hall. It was absolutely beautiful! There were so many lanterns and we were there for about 2 hours. This stream is 8.4 km long so just imagine how much we were able to see. It was packed full of people! Every single lantern was handcrafted from Korean traditional paper called Hanji. They were all very delicate, intricate, and colorful. I am so glad that we were able to visit this while in Seoul!

Lanterns that people floated
on the stream

Just me :)

Lantern palace! AMAZING!

Make your own lantern!

Lotus lantern

Seoul Lantern Festival 2011!

Lantern drum show

In front of the lantern drum show

So crowded!

Saturday was my day out in the city with my teacher, Joy. She takes part in a Korean music class called Pansori and she invited me to go with her. I thought it would be an interesting experience so I decided to go. There was a total of four people there; myself, Joy, the teacher, and another man. They encouraged me to sing even though I knew none of the words and there are no musical notes for these songs. They are simply tunes passed down from generation to generation so you learn by listening. I just made sounds that sounded like what they were saying. The teacher had an AMAZING voice! Her voice is very big and beautiful and she is only 24. Joy told me that she studied at one of the best music universities in Seoul. After the class was over, the owner of the music school invited us to have some fruit with him. I guess I was the first foreigner to ever visit his school so he was very excited. He was taking pictures of me, showing me every musical instrument that he owns, playing some pieces on the Korean flute, having his students sing and play instruments, taking videos, and asking me to play the instruments. Apparently I am a natural at every instrument I tried because there was tons of clapping at my skills. I told him that I used to play flute so he had me try the Korean flute. I made a sound the first time and he was shocked. He told Joy that no one ever makes sounds on their first try! :) The owner even tried to create a "perfect match" with me and his student... who spoke zero English... and is a famous singer in Korea... who is 26 but looks like he is in high school. This was definitely an interesting experience.

The four of us!

Haegeum

Pansori music.. without
notes

The owner playing a Janggu

Korean flute called Danso

My "perfect match" playing
the Geomungo

(Yes, I know this video is black. I did not want to videotape her because she was very shy.)

Next we went to Changdeok Palace. It is very beautiful in the fall and it is one of the best places to visit at this time of the year. To me, all of the palaces look very similar. They have the same types of decorations and painting. Still interesting nonetheless because you cannot find this type of history in the US. I was actually surprised at how many foreign people were there when we went. I have come to the conclusion that foreign people make appearances at night and on Saturdays. The history of Korea is so amazing and they have really come so far! They have a lot to be proud of!

Keeps the evil away

In front of some palace buildings

Beautiful trees at Changdeok
Palace

Such attention to detail!

The main palace building

Fruit that acutally looks
like little pumpkins!

Finally, we ended our day by meeting up with her sister, Na-young, for dinner. They look so much alike and this is the first time that I have been able to tell that people are related! We went to Sinsa and ate at a famous Makgeolli and Korean pizza restaurant. Makgeolli is Korean rice beer. We had Chestnut Makgeolli, which is sweet, and Citron Makgeolli, which is a bit sour. Both were good. They are served chilled and out of a teapot. The glass is more like a small bowl. Korean pizza is not pizza at all. It is good but instead I would describe it to look like a potato cake. I loved having dinner with Joy and her sister. Na-young speaks English very well and is studying to be a neurologist! She rode a bus for 4 hours just to have dinner with us! I definitely enjoyed my Saturday! Everything that we did was fun!