A blog? Yes, a blog.

So, after numerous requests, I have started a blog.

You may have noticed already, that if you are on my e-mailing list, you will have already read the first four posts, which are just recycled e-mails.

This will continue, along with other odd random things that I'll only put in here.

Anyways, continuing in the rant from yesterday's e-mail, I have too much planning time. I am currently at Yeongam Boys' Middle School, which is my home school. I am here on a Friday because the school I usually teach at is having a picnic today. So, there's no calsses there today. So, no need for me.

And so I get sent to my home school. I have not been given any extra classes, so I literally have 8 hours to just sit around today. How much planning should I do, considering that all I will be doing is taking away legitimate things to do during planning time in the future, meaning that more work time will be dedicated to reading the onion or typing e-mails in front of my vice-principal. I teach the same lesson 14 times in a week people!

Also, I have a couple theories as to why the curriculum here is so advanced compared to the students' comprehension level. Maybe they do have more comprehension, but it's only for English spoken with a Korean accent, as their teachers all have (some worse than others, mind you, most of the teachers I work with have little or no accents). Jessie said once that she could say something, and no-one would understand, but when her co-teacher said it with an accent, all the kids would suddenly comprehend what was being said. So maybe that's it...

Another theory is actually Jessie's and probably makes the most sense. Basically, here in Yeongam, there is NO english. None at all. The texts were probably written or approved in the provincial capitol, which is a larger city, and has more english exposure. Thus, the kids actually see a reason to learn it, where as the kids here don't see any use for it.

My last theory is that the teachers who are Korean and speak Korean can better understand the problems the kids will have, and thus they can coach the kids better. Like in OAC calculus, where the teacher would keep coaxing you until you said cosine, and then be satisfied that you knew what you were doing. Well, I didn't know what I was doing Mr. Williamson! I just read a word off the board and got lucky!

Anyways, It's easy to teach a compound sentence if you can explain in their native tongue why they should say it and what each word means. I, on the other hand, have to struggle to get sentences out of them like "Bill is smiling.". Also, just because they can memorize a word order doesn't mean they understand what it means, which apparently is very difficult to comprehend.

It's raining today, and I got wet on the way to school, and I felt incredibly refreshed.

Have a wonderful day everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.