I Owe You an Apology

So it this is what it feels like to be homesick…then I owe people an apology if I ever belittled you about being so. It doesn’t help that I am sick (sore throat/cough/sinus etc…), there is a ton of mold in my apartment; the air quality isn’t the best, nor the weather, and that I am attempting to work with kids when I have never had any interest in kindergarten or primary school education.

That being said you can guess that my first couple of full days did not go well. I was afraid of failure, expected to barley make it through and my expectation were met as were my fears with my kindergarten class. I am assured by the veteran teachers (who are taking very good care of me) that “it is all in good time.” I might have mentioned that I was assigned first year 7Yr. Olds. Which means that they are 7 (5/6 by American ages), but this is the first year to study English in a formal setting. Meaning that I have to make them stop speaking Korean in this class; I have to give them (or in this case they chose) English names and lastly I have to make them see me as a teacher without the benefit of corporal punishment like the Korean-teachers use.

I have ten 7Yr. Olds in the kindergarten class; they mostly named themselves while I and Winni-teacher (the Korean-teacher assigned to my class) called out random ones. A little boy decided to name himself Obama; I think it is really cute, but it might be a “had to be there moment” as he said it all shy and such, yet with conviction.

I know it will get easier. I know that it has only been a couple of days and that we are unorganized and such. I just wish I understood more Korean and had a better understanding of how to teach kindergarteners. That is partially true for the afternoon classes as well, but the afternoon classes are much easier to handle and deal with. I have 9/10 Yr. Olds and 10/11Yr. Olds and 12-14/Yr. Olds. Of course they are also making me learn with them; example: five minutes after class is supposed to begin the Korean teacher hands me the article that we are supposed to read and discuss in class that night; which means: no preparation time. No time to pre-read and see if there might be any difficult words that I may have to explain to the pre-teens. My synonym capability will be amazing within the next year. Some of the things I had to try to explain: destiny, fate (and the difference), clinical psychology, neurotic, sludge, and grammar. And those are just a few examples of the 50+ words we actually went over.

On a slightly separate note, I need to find a copy of the hokey-pokey to play for my kids. I think they would enjoy listening to it to music and not just doing it. The older kids really like Duck, duck, Goose, but trying to teach it to the kindergarteners was painful. It got me thinking about how I was taught and for the life of me it seems it is something that I just have always known how to do; just like: Mother-May-I; Red Light/Green Light; Red-Rover; Simon Says; Heads-up 7 Up…Etc etc etc…