Week 2
Thomas:
After settling in, we finally began our first week of teaching at Jiguchon International School. Jiguchon literally means “global village,” and is intended to service children of foreign immigrants. Our day was divided into two parts: in the morning, we would teach elementary school students, and in the afternoon, our time would be spent on tutoring middle schoolers.
On the subway ride to the school, a flurry of thoughts ran through my mind. What if our lesson plan is too boring. What if our curriculum is too hard? Too easy? What if the kids hate us? But among all those thoughts the most prevalent was certainly, What if I can’t communicate with these kids? Among the three teachers that were assigned to teach the 5th grade class, I was deemed the most fluent in Korean and in charge of leading the class. Growing up, I had little need to learn Korean as both my parents spoke English, and as a result my Korean was, to say the least, very sloppy.
As one of our activities I had to tell the kids to pass around the ball. Everytime I said the Korean word for “ball” the kids would laugh and repeat what I said, “kong.” It took me a while to realize what was so funny about what I was saying, until one of the kids, Chris, tapped me on my shoulder and told me that the word for ball was “gong,” not “kong,” which I later learned meant “bean.” My face turned bright red as I realized my mistake, and I was overwhelmed with embarrassment. The kids, on the other hand, seemed delighted to know that their teacher was also learning with them.
From there our time with the 5th graders flew by. They seemed to respond well to all our games, our lessons, the vocabulary we decided to teach, everything. Regardless of our Korean speaking ability, the teachers in our class felt that they had an opportunity to lead the class, and it seemed that all of us were able to win the affection of our students. It was a perfect first impression of the school. I was ecstatic, thinking that I could expect this kind of behavior for the rest of the day.
Boy, was I wrong.
As I entered the middle school homeroom, the first thing I saw was papers fly across the room. After introducing ourselves in Korean and still seeing confused faces, we realized that a large majority of the class was not only unable to speak English but Korean as well. The first day with the middle school was our worst by far. No one felt that they learned anything, everyone seemed bored, and only half the class understood what was going on at any given time. It didn’t take long to figure out that there needed to be a separate class for students who only spoke Chinese. Even after we split up the kids by English level, the struggle continued. The best English students blew by two hours worth of planned activities in minutes, and the Chinese speaking students seemed completely uninterested in everything.
The next two days with the 5th graders went smoothly as expected. A cycle of learning, engaging in fun activities, and playing with the elementary schoolers made the morning fly by. With the middle schoolers, we were locked in a cycle of trial-and-error of figuring out how to teach them in an effective way. This will be our greatest challenge that we’ll be dealing with in the days to come.
Nikki:
The 6th Grade Experience
We fully expected things to be smooth sailing.
The first period passed too quickly, filled with teacher and student introductions. The kids had chosen new names for the week, most different from their Korean names (a little bit of a problem later on when they wouldn’t respond when we called on them), such as Watermelon, K, and Moana. Equipped with several dialogues and teaching only two of them, we decided we needed to be more efficient with time if we were to teach all of the material we had planned and still maintain the kids’ attention and interest.
For the rest of the day, we struggled to make vocab and dialogue lessons last longer than fifteen minutes, and most of the games we set for the third period, objectively, did not work for this class. While most didn’t know the body parts in English, they already knew the song Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, so we sang through it twice and couldn’t force attention after. However, the lack of base knowledge translated into a shaky session of Hokey Pokey — with the kids essentially mirroring our exact moves without learning the body parts or directions — and Simon Says, with the same thing occurring.
Faced with a variety in English comprehension, motivation levels, and interest in our chosen activities, it was difficult to demand attention for long periods of time and the variance in our own Korean language abilities made it so only one person could teach at a time, leading to a confusing role division.
With team moral steadily decreasing, we instead focused our attention more on trying to understand the kids during breaks and figure out their hobbies and friend dynamics. Some of the girls were really into the Kpop groups BTS and EXO, some boys really into CS Go and League of Legends, and other students were visibly tied to their comic books, which they found difficult to put down during class time. Baba spent his time energetically wrestling classmates (and Martin) on the floor, while G couldn’t stop adding fractional expressions (for fun!) and Rafael devoted himself to a chemistry book.
As the week progressed and we got to know the kids on a deeper, more personal level, it became easier to gauge how they would respond to activities and how to deal with stragglers. We adjusted our curriculum to accommodate the new classroom dynamic, planning a music class and math class, and although there were still bumps along the way, we improved significantly in understanding the kids we were given to teach and how to connect with them.
From just this week I think I’ve understood a vital aspect of teaching — meeting kids where they’re at. Whether its using more words and games students are familiar with to boost their confidence, or catering a specific phrase learned to accommodate personal interest to increase applicability to oneself, I think it’s important to teach less from a teacher perspective and more from the student’s. Our mission is not only to teach English; it’s also to interact with and develop relationships with our students.
Once we took ourselves off of the teaching pedestal by either separating into small groups in class to be less lecture-based, or becoming the students ourselves (asking students to teach us about their interests, languages, or cultures), each period became much more enjoyable.
This week was short for elementary school teaching (only 3 days of teaching compared to the 5 day weeks we’ll have in the future) and definitely exhausting, but it was 100% rewarding. The kids’ English skills may not have improved significantly, but they bonded with us and felt comfortable enough with the learning environment we provided them with that they gave us thank you cards, asked for our social media information, and invited us to sit with them during lunch.
The Middle School Experience
Our time with the middle schoolers has been a continuous state of trial-and-error. This stems entirely from the fact that this is the first year that Duke Engage South Korea participants are teaching middle school. Instead of a full week and four class periods dedicated solely to teaching English by grade, we have two periods in the afternoon, two days a week, and a mixed grade class for the entirety of the program. The only information provided beforehand was a piece of paper detailing student names, country of origin, level of Korean and English proficiency, and level of motivation in class (simply denoted as 상, 중, 하; high, middle, low).
The first day, our goal was simply to know more about the students. We had them draw a picture of themselves and add a little information: name, age, and hobbies. Erin and Emily took the lead during the first class, since Erin is the most fluent at Korean, and Emily the only full Chinese speaker. The rest of us walked around the class, trying to make ourselves useful. Martin went straight to the Vietnamese students, Korean speakers worked with those who could speak Korean, and I stayed near the back, traveling between six Chinese speakers who were utterly confused as to what they were supposed to be doing. We quickly realized that too many students in the class didn’t understand Korean at all. After realizing there was such a wide discrepancy in not only English but also Korean proficiency, we came to the conclusion that we needed to split into smaller groups for the next day, grouped by English level ability.
Emily and I were set to teach the lowest level class and we felt completely overwhelmed. It seemed that the students had absolutely no interest or motivation to learn English, especially since most of them were already struggling to learn Korean and adjust to their new home. Every question was met with awkward silence and we felt like there was no way to connect with our students. Our only reprieve was a game we planned at the end where the students would move desks in a maze and lead a blindfolded friend through by shouting left, right, go, stop, and turn. They participated in this, at least, so we tried to find a way to take advantage of hands-on learning. This week with the middle schoolers left us desperate, wanting to understand and forge relationships but having no idea how. Although I could converse in Korean and Chinese and therefore communicate verbally, I left feeling like I might as well have been speaking in Russian and having no clue how to proceed.
~~~Afterword on the Middle Schoolers (Week 3 Thoughts; Read Week 3 Blogs First!)~~~
I don’t have power over the blog post next week and didn’t want to end my thoughts on the middle school class in such a pessimistic way, so I’m throwing in some thoughts after the second week of teaching has finished.
The amount of love these kids carry between them in silence is incredible. Before we taught again, I went to the middle school teacher with Erin and asked for advice on what to do. When I listed the students on my roster, her first comment was “this will be hard.” She affirmed what we already knew: the students had no motivation. But this came from a lack of understanding and connection and not necessarily a lack of wanting to know. The continuous conversations in the middle of class the previous week were not an indication of boredom, but instead were translations between students to help their fellow classmates understand. When asked what to do, she said to talk about the things they loved and to understand the 눈빛 (light in their eyes; way of conveying emotions).
So instead of teaching English as we could have, we spent our first hour teaching on Monday sitting in a circle and simply talking in the languages they were most comfortable with using. We learned their favorite songs, movies, characters from Avengers, people they liked, and random English or Konglish words they know like “hamburger.” To our great surprise, they responded. They were excited to type their songs into my phone so they could share with us, and one of the students in the band was more than willing to whip out his guitar to strum “Way Back Home.”
This was another reflection of how we were meant to interact with the students. We met them where they were at and stepped out of the teacher role and just became a fellow person. Although the atmosphere was still a little awkward, we became much more comfortable with each other, and for the first time I felt like the class was something we (the teachers) and they (the students) could handle.
After discovering the power of a deck of cards (Go! Fish is a lifesaver) to teach and make students willingly use English, we played a game with them and they finally (hopefully?) learned our names, which felt like the first step to creating real bonds in the future.
Outside the Classroom
On Friday we went on a cultural excursion to two major museums in Seoul: the War Memorial of Korea, which exhibits and memorializes the military history of Korea, and the National Museum of Korea. We spent hours exploring the halls of the War Memorial, walking past models of turtle ships that were used to defend against Japanese forces in the Joseon dynasty, and through tunnel-shaped sections that recreated the war environment of soldiers in battle and villagers in the midst of fleeing from invading forces. At the National Museum, we went through numerous floors exhibiting Korean artistic tradition and expression that included celadon (jade pottery that originated in Korea), stone tablets with proverb engravings, restored portraits of kings, and watercolor tapestries that had been created during times of Chinese influence and Japanese occupation.
Thoughts ~
- Teaching middle schoolers is much different in practice than with elementary schoolers
- Peanut butter is really expensive in South Korea
- Kids are crazy energetic and love asking questions
- Skipping breakfast and teaching all day is a recipe for disaster
–THOMAS AND NIKKI
