This morning I experienced a time warp. I was teaching the first graders and they were filling in the date on our worksheet. They were asking each other if it was the 28th, and I scoffed knowingly and pointed to the 21st on the calendar. How could they forget what day it was?!? Then I realized I was wrong…it really IS the end of November! How did it pass by so quickly?
It was also a morning of frustration. I was so angry at my second graders that they were finally shocked into silence. I was sinisterly pleased; however, I know it can’t go on this way.
This afternoon I experienced an unsavory mixture of boredom and guilt. I had to attend a workshop in Buyeo on English co-teaching. Korean workshops are an interesting breed—there’s really no workshop component as I’d think of it. It’s really just a series of mind-numbing presentations that are usually repetitive and usually obvious. Even if I can understand—which I usually can’t, as 98% of them are in Korean—they really break no new ground. I fail to see how they are useful in any way, except getting us out of school for a free meal. Even then, it’s not worth it—4+ hours of tedium for dinner?!? No way!! But anyway, this one was for all the English teachers in the area, and it turns out there are about five other native speakers in the county, all with the EPIK program. I don’t know where they’ve been hiding—I’ve never seen any of them! I get the feeling they’re all pretty new arrivals, though. The workshop was mainly geared toward fostering co-teacher-native speaker relations and promoting the EPIK program to all the schools. Not so interesting to me. It was interesting, in a way, to see a bit of their enthusiasm. I get that vibe from the new ETAs, too…they’re motivated, shiny-faced, eager to do well, while I…I am despondent, weary, counting down the days to Christmas. The workshop made me realize I perhaps have not been doing my best by my students. My lessons tend to be unimaginative, repetitious, and boring. The poor kids. But I don’t think I am willing to undertake all the work that would be involved in changing this. I like my bare-bones schedule. I did find out at we’re getting a full-time English teacher next year, though, so I might have a real co-teacher. I hope I become the kind of teacher that is just a pronunciation box.