Category: Week 3

Some reflections from the first two weeks:

In many ways, my time in Korea so far has challenged me. Going into this summer, I was really excited to teach English to the kids at Jiguchon. I imagined the kids learning new vocab, having fun during our classes, and chatting with them during lunchtime. Yet, the first few days were incredibly frustrating. Because I’m not fluent in Korean, when Erin or Thomas would explain things to the kids in Korean, I felt like I had nothing I could add. During lunch, when Annie and Martha (two of our cutest 5^th graders) and the other girls in our class would talk to each other in Korean, I felt unable to join their conversation. When I tried to talk to Nancy (one of our lovely 4^th graders) in English and ask her what she was doing over the weekend, she just looked at me with a blank stare and a confused face. I felt isolated and useless, and worse of all, I felt like I had failed as their teacher.

But as time has passed, I’ve slowly began to realize that maybe these frustrations are what are allowing me to think about the kids and what some of them may be going through. Particularly in the middle school, there are so many kids who speak only Chinese. Their Korean isn’t advanced enough to understand what their homeroom teacher says when she gives instructions, and as a result, the kids who can speak both Chinese and Korean translate for them. The teacher says something, and there’s almost a ripple effect of whispers as the students translate to their Chinese friends what she’s saying. Seeing this during the first few days of middle school has really made me start to think about these kids beyond their education. How do these particular kids feel not being able to speak Korean? Not just restricted to during school, but in their day to day life. In some ways, feeling so isolated and confused all of the time helped me understand the kids.  I know that for me, it’s been really hard to not be able to talk to people or understand people. This influx of feelings from these past few days really makes me wonder whether these kids who can only speak Chinese or Vietnamese or Russian feel the same frustration and isolation that I sometimes felt. And while I will only have to get through the next few months in a country where I don’t speak the language, some of these kids will live here the rest of their lives. Thinking about this has made me realize that this Duke Engage trip is more than just teaching English. It’s also about helping the kids adjust socially, and helping them feel more comfortable in the classroom. Talking to the homeroom teacher, we realized that that was exactly what she wanted us to do. Rather than focusing on teaching the middle schoolers English, she expressed the hope that we would be able to connect with the kids and act as role models. She wants us to inspire them and nurture their hopes and dreams.

With all of that background info, here’s how week three went.

In terms of elementary school, the classroom dynamic was so much different. Last week, I taught 5^th grade with Thomas and Shey. 5^th grade was a small class—the kids were energetic, but not too rowdy. This week, I taught 4^th grade with Erin, Martin, Daniel, and Nikki, and it was a lot (to say the least). It was only eleven kids, but I felt like their energy bounced off each other and amplified when they were all together. They always want to play games, and they’re so competitive. We used that to our advantage though. The kids pick up vocab really fast, so we played lots of games like Pictionary and bingo and charades. I think one challenge has been the fact that the kids are at such different levels. They’re all in the same grade, but some kids have trouble reading, while other kids like Wendy and Calvin seem to already know what we’re teaching. Seeing how different their English (and Korean) abilities were really made me wish that there were some better way that we could cater to their individual needs. Each kid really learns in such a unique way that it’s hard to find activities that engage all of them. The boys (like Hanshin and Junhyun) only really love playing games. Otherwise, they’re not really interested in other things (like drawing, or writing). The girls (like Wendy and Lili) have the patience to do more challenging activities like one of the writing games that Daniel came up with. It really made me wish that there were more classrooms, or some other way to split up the class more effectively. What we ended up having to do was split up into small groups to do activities so that there were more one-on-one teacher and student interactions. It worked out fine, but sometimes I wish that there was more that we could do somehow.

In terms of the middle school, it’s been a little better. Nikki and I (being the only two Chinese speakers in the group) have been teaching all of the kids who only speak Chinese. Last week was pretty rough. The kids weren’t really interested in what we were teaching (or learning English), and it’s been hard to get them excited. We didn’t really know what their homeroom teacher wanted us to do either, so that was a big problem. But after talking to her and hearing what she had said, we’ve tried to adapt our curriculum to try to connect with the kids. Particularly with the class that Nikki and I teach, it’s been difficult. The homeroom teacher herself told us that the hardest children to work with were the ones who spoke almost no Korean and no English. Because they don’t really understand what the teacher is saying most of the time, I think she feels like they’ve gotten used to not participating in class since they can’t understand. Hearing this, it became Nikki’s and my goal to simply get the kids to participate. I started teaching and speaking to the kids in Chinese so that they would feel more comfortable. Slowly, I think it’s worked. Yahan and Boram definitely seemed more comfortable after they realized that we were explaining things in Chinese. They’ve gradually been participating more in Chinese, and as the days go by, they’ve been using more English. For last week’s class, we taught them how to play Go Fish. It was the first time that I saw them so excited for any of our activities, which made me so happy to see. They got to practice their numbers (Yahan struggled a little, but we wrote the numbers on the board), and they also got to practice their English (it was really funny when Boram asked Jooeun “Do you have a ___?” three different times and he had all of the cards she needed).

In terms of how I’ve been doing this week compared to the beginning, it’s been getting better. Not being able to speak Korean has challenged me to find other ways to communicate with the kids. I’ve been picking up a lot more Korean (I can kind of speak now? Maybe?) and I’ve learned to just gesture and find different ways to explain things. I’ve started to teach lessons (instead of just floating around the room and helping individuals) and it makes me hopeful and excited. Every day gets a little better than the day before. I’m doing my best as their teacher, and that’s all that I can ask for.

It’s definitely a learning process. Not just for them, but also for us.

-Emily

Third grade!

This week, Sheyann, Thomas and I worked with the 3rd grade class, a group of five eleven-year-old kids. Angelina, Jack, Jordan, Mandy and Tony welcomed us with bright smiles, and they seemed as excited to meet us as we were ourselves. On the first day, we introduced ourselves to the kids and vice versa (“What is your name?”). I remember talking with our peers about this — we for sure knew that 3rd grade was bold, but as our time with these five kids continued, we realized how shy they initially were. Since then, they never stopped transmitting positive energy to us, and we tried our best to reciprocate by enthusiastically planning our lessons and having fun with the children.

We noticed that the attention span for some of these kids was perhaps shorter than we had expected. By the end of Monday, which was mostly speaking-based, we realized that the children were struggling to retain the material. We needed to engage the children in different ways too, encouraging reinforcement by switching the focus to reading and writing. For Tuesday, we prepared some worksheets. These were really helpful; they served as a break from the dynamic group activities. We gave the students space to focus on their own worksheets and test themselves. The small nature of the class allowed us to work with them one-on-one, adapting our instruction based on individual needs. On Thursday, we taught “activities” through recitation, dialogue, worksheets and games like charades. The kids were visibly more engaged when a variety of activities were prepared.

By the end of the week, our students were much more comfortable introducing themselves in English. Our goal was to familiarize them with some everyday English vocabulary, too. Most importantly, we developed relationships that will hopefully last long. We hope that our short-lasting presence in their class will give these children something to talk about in the future, that we leave a positive mark on their journey of learning.

Third grade students and teachers on the last day of the week

Middle School!

On Monday and Tuesday, Martin and I worked with a group of six middle schoolers in the afternoon. Due to the varying language backgrounds present within this group, communicating ideas to the students was a challenge. We have noticed that within middle school there are some who refuse to speak up or are simply too shy and their limited language reduces their confidence. As we took the initiative by showing more determination in communicating our ideas, the students themselves were more open to conversation and made an effort to respond. In order to facilitate this, the topic we chose for the first hour on Monday was “movies”. We watched a clip from the animated movie Up, which had no dialogue. The students told us their favorite movies and Martin, who knows a lot about film, introduced some interesting facts about them. For the second hour, we went upstairs and played soccer and dodgeball with a different group of students.

Most of the middle schoolers have been in Korea for a very short time. According to their teacher, many of them are not planning to pursue high school education, and intend to go straight into the workforce instead. While such decisions are to be expected given the situations their families are facing, my understanding is that their teacher’s desire is for us to set an example to the students as peers, by exposing them to our own experiences. Ideally, we would motivate the students to pursue their education further. Since we are working with the middle schoolers in Jiguchon after school, our main goal is not to introduce new material for them to learn and study. Through our small group discussions and activities, we do not only intend to build relationships between teachers and students, but also between the students themselves.

Teachers and middle schoolers singing “Happy Birthday” to 끄엉

By Leandro