The times they are a changing

It's true, ECC is becoming much different than it was when I first started. It's been nearly 9 months now and the sudden rash of tweaks to the system is frustrating everyone involved I think. Our new head teacher for the afternoon elementary classes Kate, has instituted a number of reforms to the way we do things that are challenging everyone, teachers and students alike to step up their game. The first major change was class times. Instead of having two hour long classes to round off Monday, Wednesday and Friday we now have three 40 minute classes. This is something that I like. Hour long classes are hard to deal with, it's a lot of time to fill and in the case of some of the books we work with a teacher may find themselves stuck with 20-25 minutes at the end of a class period in which to either play games or force more work down the throats of the already absurdly overworked students. Neither of these options are good for the classroom dynamic. If games are played everyday the students come to expect them and they lose their novelty. In this case games become a form of work that the kids despise just as much as the lessons. On the other hand after 30-40 minutes of English lessons to attempt more seems to me to be a sure way to lose any and all momentum, trust and enthusiasm for learning your students may have. The fact of the matter is the kids give up. They do nearly 12 hours of school a day in some cases and hour straight sessions seem to exacerbate this problem more than anything else. 40 minutes is really the perfect time, the kids don't get to tired and after a five minute break they come back ready to work.

So good riddance to hour long classes, they hurt more than they helped, but they weren't the last changes to be made. There are some relatively minor changes that have been made, class names for instance were streamlined. There is now a system for naming rather than having the classes be called whatever animal the first teacher liked the most on that day. GELE and PICO now dominate my afternoon schedule rather than cow, elephant and tiger. Some of the books are also being dropped in order to modernize the FIFTEEN year old material some of us have had to use. These are both good things and will do more to help than anything else, so these are more changes I am happy about. Besides these it starts to get a little more complicated.

The first major change of course was the new students who sauntered into school in March and cheekily demanded a quality education, for the low low price of about $1,000 a month, how dare they! For the most part the kids are great but in some cases the parents have been a real handful. Most of the new afternoon students have come out of the classes who graduated kindergarten at the end of February. The jump from kindergarten to elementary school has been difficult for the parents though because ECC's afternoon section is handled much differently than the kindergarten is. For instance all the children in kindergarten are given daily reports written by the Korean teachers to take home to their parents. These let parents know all of the little issues that pop up and the progress their children make every day, which is very good I think, for kindergarten. Elementary students do not get anything like this because at this point it is starting to be up to them to know what they are expected to do. Makes sense right? Not to everybody.

As I think I've told you before we've gotten a lot of complaints and most are centered around the differences between kindergarten and elementary. Kindergarten is very heavy on vocabulary interwoven with basic grammar rules. Elementary is more based on comprehension and expansion of speaking abilities. The children are expected to pick up the vocabulary much quicker and begin using it almost immediately which, assuming they've been learning English for a year or two, they should be able to do. This change has proved problematic for parents to understand. Many expect that their children will have the same answers as the other students in their classes but when it comes to comprehension and opinion questions this isn't always the case. The questions that accompany the Storytown text and others are meant to encourage different answers, of course there are some general questions the answers of which should be pretty uniform but there is much more room for interpretation in these afternoon books. Parents don't understand this, some have insisted that their children have the same answers as the rest of the class whether it be a factual question or opinion based. Ben in particular has suffered as a result of this. While his students nearly always write grammatically correct answers they do differ and in one class the parents have demanded answer sheets to every homework populated with stock answers which they force their children to write in despite their own ideas.

Example:

Question: Do you think the toad was angry or sad when he lost his ice cream cone?

There are two possible answers, three if you count both, and all are equally correct. I've been angry and alternately sad after having lost an ice cream cone, sometimes I've been angry and sad.

Stock answer: Toad was angry because the ice cream fell off of his cone.

TOAD CAN BE EITHER OR BOTH!!!!!

Fortunately for me I haven't had to deal with this.

I have had to deal the new video presentation class we are tasked with preparing all of our afternoon classes for. The idea was to film the children using their English and post it on the school's website where parents could track the progress they were making. The kids would talk for up to two minutes about a topic decided in advance. NO MEMORIZATION allowed. Kate wanted the kids to be able to utilize vocabulary without having committed a script to memory. That's fine I was and still am behind this idea. I think that speaking is one of the best ways to practice English, if not the most rewarding one. The problem with this is that there is almost no room in our schedule to prepare for it. I lucked out this month as I finished a book and the school didn't order the next book in time for the new month. I've been using the class period left vacant by this missing book to prepare my kids for the presentation. We've discussed the question "What kind of game show do you want to go on, would you win and why?" for two weeks now and the presentation was today. My kids passed with flying colors, they didn't talk for long but I think it was because this was the first time for them in front of the camera and they were nervous. Kate really liked the presentation though and I was really proud of my kids for the effort they put into it.

First one down, I still have two more classes to do, topics being "What are you going to do in May?" and "This is my monster." I think both will do well enough, but the main issue again is time. This is where we could've used those hour long classes, but they're a thing of the past. In their absence I've taken to bumping the schedule back to in order to make time for a preparation day in both of my other classes. It is working nicely but some of the other teachers just can't find the time. This comes back to the parents again as any deviation from the original schedule tends to cause immediate uproar and unwanted consternation. So some people have had to try to rush through an already tight class period and force quick conversation at the end of the class. This is a much more difficult way to prepare, but there's nothing that teachers can do about it for fear of the wrath of the parents. Needless to say this has caused a lot more stress than anything else but I do think it is a good idea just wanting in the planning department. Things like these do take time to prepare, the kids will need a little time to get used to it and we need to figure out what the best way to teach this is. That being said I have faith and I think that this can be a great marketing tool for our company if it is perfected.

One major change down, three to go. Science experiments ugh. Possibly the worst part of teaching kindergarten is now being prepared as a mandatory part of all afternoon classes. I'm not excited about this. It's hard enough to get these kids through a science lesson as it is with the time frame we're given and all, now we have to cram an experiment in also? Luckily this will probably only happen once a month as opposed to once a week in kindergarten but it will still be another addition to an already topped off work load. Some of the experiments should be fun but some will probably be a real pain in the ass. Oh well such is life.

The next change is that our school will be getting a 10,500 book library in May, AWESOME!! I am excited about this, I'm going to make my kids read the Illustrated Classics and do book reports, yea. I requested Dinotopia books too and Goosebumps, along with the Hardy boys. I didn't say anything about space brat but I should have those books are awesome. This should be pretty cool we've been asked to incorporate this into our lessons and I know exactly how I'm going to do this for the afternoon, cool beans, no problem there.

The final change is that we will finally be having school dinners again. I have never once eaten with my Korean coworkers and I'm excited to do so. I very nearly demanded them at a planning meeting for the video presentations and I was surprised when the answer was an immediate "oh yeah, we can do that." Cool, free dinner at a nicer restaurant, it's about time. The first one of these is next week at a place called Jessica's Kitchen. We joked that it was actually going to be at our boss Jessica's house and that she would be cooking for us but no, the poor woman has enough on her plate. The restaurant is free beer on fridays too so our school might be biting of more than it can chew because lord knows we certainly enjoy a good beer. On a similar note we will also be having teacher's outings the first of which will be tomorrow barring any weather related issues. They are also bringing beer to this get together, which should certainly make it interesting.

That's enough for today I think, I'll fill in my social life a bit later but I'm spent now, sorry for the long entry, this period of upheaval has really been something.

Love

Pat