Intensives (and Winter Term in general)

I didn’t really post about my winter semester, now did I? Slight oversight on my part, I assure you. As ever, I exist to serve and aim to “strike!, balance!, redress!” all manners of informational deficiencies. Well, let me start by saying that as of right now I only have around 1.5 weeks left in the Winter Term… so… uh… better late than never? There were some significant changes in my schedule, which led to significant changes in my daily life that I am sure resulted in my unfortunate inability to keep you updated on my every errant thought. For such a grievous error, I humbly implore you to skip these sentences and begin the following paragraph.

As you recall, my Fall Semester educational buffet consisted entirely of Avalon fare. While nutritious for a growing boy and greatly aiding in the digestion of turbulent agitators, it was rather like a child having the option of “All you can eat” and just picking pizza, ice cream, and mashed potatoes because that is all he knows. Well, for my second pass, I was gifted with the broadened knowledge of a little salad bar I like to call LangCon. Now, I mentioned last time that LangCon is generally for the younger kids – from kindergarten kids just learning the alphabet all the way up to later elementary kids who are near-fluent. When they reach late-elementary, they either have to go to Avalon or find another school entirely, although we do like to keep kids in the family for their middle school years. My schedule, as such, reflected a much more sophisticated palate:

Oh yes, still with the color coordination. I am boss!

Now, you’ll notice some small changes between my fall and winter schedules. First, my hours are slightly different. Well, tally-ho! my good friend! You are ever the astute observer. Indeed my hours have changed from 2:30-11:00 PM to 1:00-10:00 PM! Earlier in the day is nice and all, but it does make it a little more difficult to communicate with you in the evenings or make myself an extravagant breakfast in the morning (or recover from late nights…). Also, you’ll see that my first two classes of every day are the same. Again, you always were a bright one, which is why we’re friends, you know. Now those two classes are LangCon 5D classes (the “5” stands for “5” and the “D” stands for “day.” Look at you learning!) and they are for the youngest kids I teach. The Nina-g (“g” stands for “green,” meaning first semester at that level) class is hit or miss, but the Nina-p (“p” stands for “purple” and means second semester at that level) class is always hellacious. I mean that in the most respectful of terms for a class where the kids routinely kick me in various manly places, yell over me, draw on the board with their own markers, use their cell phones and video tape class, don’t do their work, and generally disregard any attempts at education that humans have developed since the stone age. I’m sorry, I think those were inside words… These two classes actually perform the most interesting punishment ever exacted upon a teacher: the dreaded “poop rocket.”

I’m traumatized right now… the flashbacks… Courtesy of ViaKorea (Click at your own risk)

Oh yes, my dearest confidant, that is exactly as its name implies. Whilst the teacher continues in perfectly executing each and every responsibility and requirement so charged to said august position, a fiendish young devil hiding within the cherubic bodies of the children will suddenly seize control and manipulate that child into forming “the rocket.” The rocket is a simple achievement where the child clasps his or her hands angelically, but then extends the pointer fingers of each hand together much like what we in America would call a “Finger Gun.” Then, with the little devil fully in control of the under-developed child’s mind, these hands will be thrust into the backside of the teacher (who is either walking between rows to check homework or ask other students to please stop eating tape), producing an indignant squawk from the teacher and raucous peals of laughter from the entire class. The humiliation is bearable, but only barely so as it is considered improper to scream at the kids or beat them severely as such a violation would warrant. (In all seriousness, WTF?! This is a country that thinks “crazy” is tantamount to a swear, and “raspberry” noises are considered incredibly unclean, but shoving fingers into a person’s butt is completely acceptable? I guess cultural diversity really is a wonderful thing.)

Well, that little tangent aside (Haha, tangent! Aside! Woooo…. nerd!), I’ll finish with: Pinta-g is the next level above Nina-p and I really like my class. They are really good kids (no poop rockets) who know a decent amount of English and we can have some fun. I used to teach two sections of Pinta-g, but that second one got switched to a Navi-p. Now, the reason behind that was: Alice (one of the Korean teachers) has been forced into taking some extra responsibilities in LangCon and does not have time to teach all of her classes. So, there was a big shuffle of everyone’s schedules a few weeks ago and I was placed in the curious position of teaching the subjects typically taught by the Korean teachers (Social Studies and Science). So, I am now the “Korean” teacher for that class and have absolutely no idea what I am doing. Yay. Luckily, I had 3 of the 4 kids in that class in my Intensive Debate Class (getting to that soon) and they are all very smart kids (it’s the 2nd highest level I think). Hooray LangCon! Otherwise, my Avalon classes are very much the same as last semester (HA and MB and JB) and I see many of my students from last semester in my classes. That is a very interesting feeling, knowing that I taught these kids last semester and to see how a new class dynamic affects them. So, that’s the schedule! I have earlier hours, I work more hours, I have more work to do outside of class for my LangCon kids (journal grading and whatnot), I am settling into being a teacher, and I’m learning more and more every day.

Now I mentioned something about an Intensive Debate Class. That was no mistake. There is a curious practice in these private academies where they add extra one-month-long classes to the standard schedule. These classes are offered in the second month of the Winter and Summer semesters to coincide with school vacations. Back in the middle of December I was asked to develop and implement a debate class for the month of January. “All well and good,” I thought to myself as I stroked my beard. “However, you said ‘develop’ instead of teach. Why the verb change?” Well, as it turns out, LangCon has not done a debate class in quite some time (if ever) and I was tasked with creating a course. Now, I have little experience in debates and less experience with kids, so of course there is no way that this could go poorly. Oh, it also turns out that they wanted to offer this class twice. The catch being that one of these classes would be the normal “twice a week” for 4 weeks (8 classes) and the other would be five times a week for four weeks (20 classes). Well, I’ll be darned if I wasn’t going to make the best debate class I could for both those classes and teach them both myself! Mostly, I was excited about how all of it was overtime pay and the chance to maybe try to teach kids something not in a book. So I put my own spin on it! Made up all the materials, handed out packets, made them do research, and had them do some debates. For the 5D Debate class I even did a whole week on public speaking. It felt fantastic to teach material I had designed myself. And you know what? It wasn’t a total poop rocket. It wasn’t the best thing to come out of LangCon, but it was fun, the kids learned stuff, and I learned stuff too. Hooray for learning! (Hooray for 28 hours of overtime!). Ah, and I did all of this while entertaining Lindz for company! True story: I’m awesome.

Well, I seem to have exhausted your eyes from just solid text for the past 1400 words. I’m so sorry. To you and your brain. Consider yourself fully informed about what my schedule was like this past semester (considering that it changes in two weeks, it really isn’t worth that much). I’ll have more for you soon. I promise!