Some Great Opportunities : )

Over the past few weeks I have had a few opportunities to participate in professional development workshops and learn more about the Korean education system. The first opportunity was held at my school. My co-teacher and I taught an open class. About thirty teachers came and observed us teach a lesson. Some of the teachers stood in the room, some outside (they took the windows out so people could look through from the hallway) and our school also used a video camera to broadcast the lesson into the school cinema. It was pretty exciting to have so many people watching and critiquing our lesson.

Following the lesson my school held a workshop and in typical Korean fashion, without prior notice, I was asked to speak about team teaching in Korea. That little speech was a blessing in disguise because following the workshop I received two wonderful offers. First, I was asked to make a presentation about team teaching at a conference for all of the elementary English teachers in my province. Second, I was asked to participate in a research study that a professor at a local university is conducting next spring. The professor is a South African lady who has been in Korea for eight years teaching English at the primary level. I have been speaking with her regularly and am very excited about working with her this spring. We will be studying the effects of putting students into reading groups in their English classes. Differentiating instruction is a fairly new concept in Korean education and is very rare in their English as a foreign language education. Differentiation is a concept that I learned a lot about at Dayton and a concept that I will continue to study in reference to English Language Learners (ELL) over the next few months.

This past weekend I made a sixty minute presentation at the Chungnam Province Elementary English Education Conference. I was a bit overwhelmed by the length of the presentation, but it went really well. I was able to show some video clips from my open class and explain how I incorporate many team teaching strategies into my everyday lessons. The director must have liked the presentation because I have been asked to do it again two more times in December!

This sort of opportunity is great practice for making future presentations and helps me to build my professional portfolio. Thank you Korea : )

Meghan Teacher

It has always seemed funny to me that Korean students bow to their teachers, but also call them by their first names. Usually students use the word teacher in Korean (선생님 : sangsengneem) to refer to their teachers, but when there is more than one teacher being refereed to the teachers name is used. In Korea, the family name is said before the individuals name, so the students will commonly say the whole thing. At school, I'm just called Meghan. During student teaching in America I was usually "Mrs. Manning" because my students didn't understand the difference between Miss and Mrs. I can't say that I am really used to either Mrs. Manning or only Meghan. I will just stick to answering to teacher for now.

My school life is the one of the best parts of my Korean life. I have recently picked up extra teaching hours and am teaching a class of mothers. The mothers will only call me teacher, which seems very funny to me. I love teaching my mothers class because Korean women are so enthusiastic and they ALWAYS bring food to class. Before every class they make me a cup of green tea and always bring fresh baked goods that they pick up at a bakery on their way to school. They all picked English names to use in class and love sending me text messages signed Cindy and Nancy. Angela makes me laugh because she always forgets her English name and has me pronounce it so she can remember how to say it.

My mothers have about a high school English ability, but most of them are in their thirties and have forgotten a lot of vocabulary. Last week we practiced talking to a friend on the phone and this week we "went shopping" at a stationary store. We pretended to buy more pencil cases than we would ever need, but it was really fun. I am constantly amazed at how much people can communicate despite having such a spoken language barrier.

A Very Korean Halloween!

This past weekend my host family and I held a Halloween party for the kids, their friends and the local ETAs. It was sure to be a great party, considering we have been talking about it and "planning" for at least a month. I told my host mother that we could eat American food that I would prepare. I thought that this gesture would take the pressure off of her and assure that we would not be eating squid for lunch.

I wanted to include Hee Won and Sungchan, my host brother and sister, in on the preparations. HeeWon helped to make ants on a log. The whole family watched. They tasted celery and said it was their first time. My host mother said we looked funny making it. I told her that minus the raisins that celery and peanut butter is a pretty typical snack that you could find in America. Despite my efforts, I think that dried squid will still top her snack list.

We also made dirt dessert, with mashed cookies and candy worms. Unfortunately I could not find a supermarket in town with pudding. I had to buy yogurt a lot of Hershey's chocolate syrup to create a proper pudding taste. I would say that it turned out pretty tasty.

The festivities began with getting dressed in costumes and my friend Julie applying makeup to the zombies and my host father who wanted to be a dog.

We headed outside where we walked up to a small opening on the mountain behind our house. We put out the pumpkins to carve and each adult took charge of a pumpkin or two. The children were amused for a few minutes, but like typical American kids they spent more time having sword fights than they did helping to carve. My friends were already complaining about the situation like a group of jaded mothers. The children came back to help with the final stages of the pumpkin carving and were really excited to have completed their first jack-o-lanterns.

Next, we played a version of bobbing for apples. I read about this game online. First, you poke a hole through an apple and slip a string through. Metal chopsticks worked great for this. Then you hang two apples next to each other and the participants have to see who can get a bite out of the apple first. It was a challenging game, but it was really fun for both the players and the spectators. We all looked a little silly trying to hard to bite an apple, but it was much better than having our faces in water on a chilly day.

Following a group picture we headed inside for our "American" food. Elijah had stayed inside to prepare the food (I was sad that she didn't join us) and everything was all set out when we returned. We had yam pizza, boiled yams, yam salad, lettuce salad, ants on a log, and dirt dessert. It was a wonderful meal.

I cannot forget to mention that when we returned home we put the pumpkins in the foyer. In our home this is also the place where we have one of our statues of the holy family. Our new jack-o-lanterns were appropriately placed right alongside the statue.

The kids left for church shortly after we returned home and the big kids stayed home to hang out together. My host father accidentally went to church with a dog face still painted on and I secretly thought it was hilarious. We enjoyed some blue jeju soju (my new favorite kind) and spent the rest of our night singing karaoke at the local norebang.