a good day of teaching.

Sometimes I feel like I'm really not accomplishing much. Especially the last month or so, with midterms, the kids have been pretty stressed and unenthusiastic about most things I have been doing with them.
But this week I had a great idea.
Munhwa has recently introduced a new rule that says the kids can not speak any Korean in class. Every time they speak Korean, they lose 1% on their Korean tests (because penalizing the tests we give them was losing effect). Combined with their usual apathy, it was brutal combo... they were just shutting up completely!
Anyway, with exams, a lot of kids don't come so that they can dedicate more time to studying. So I can't teach curriculum, and I am left to basically kill time with the kids who do come.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and I got my grade sevens to make lists of words and phrases that they would like to know so they can speak in class without using Korean. We are making huge posters that I am going to put around the room so that the kids can see the words and sentences and use them in class.
The kids LOVE IT! I haven't seen them so enthusiastic about anything in a long time. They're making long lists, and they're really decorating the posters well. We have one done so far, we're doing three more at the moment, and tomorrow I'll have to go buy more paper. They're going to be poorly organized and jumbled, but it'll still be nice for the kids to have it up, and Brooke pointed out that the other classes will be interested and wind up learning a lot of things from the posters too. It'll be the best kind of learning... sneaky. They won't even realize that it's happening, and one day they'll just know all these extra words and phrases. It's also cool because it's really student directed, so I have to assume that they will be phrases that will stick, because the kids in other classes will think "Hey, I wanted to know how to say that too!"
I'm trying to get my grade eights to make time capsules, which I though they would be excited about, but they aren't. It's going so slowly that I have decided to make it a two-week project instead of a one-week one. BUt one student requested a game, and I asked "What kind of game?" He said a game that involved drawing pictures of me.
So today, I made them come up with three verbs, three adjectives and three nouns, and then they have to write a short story about me that includes all of those words, and they also have to draw an accompanying picture that explains/complements the story. But there's one more twist! They have to write those stories within a scenario that I assign them, such as "Matt can fly" or "Matt is a terrible bus driver".
THE LOVE THAT TOO!
So basically, I'm having a great teaching day.
Also, I went out to lunch to day with Brooke and Ryan. It's been a while since I've hung out with them, so that was really nice. And I got a new fridge, finally, my Lonely Planet books for India and Nepal, which cost an arm and a leg and have a combined weight of close to two kilos.
Lots of reading to do before vacation!