First Impressions

This is actually an old post that I wrote up, but never posted. It's from last Tuesday:

Today I was thrown into a Middle School Grade 1 (American Grade 7) class with no preparation. Well, they did say to expect this sort of thing. Fortunately, I had a few resources at my disposal. I told them my name and where I lived. There was a map, so I showed them where Minnesota was and told them a few facts about it. Incredibly fortunately, my mom had just emailed me some pictures of our family, so I threw them up on the screen and did some questions. Who is she? She is my sister. Etc. Everyone was naturally surprised and interested to know I had an adopted Korean sister. I just went on in this way with all the photos I had. The kids did ask me some questions, though not many. Mostly “How old are you?” and “Do you have a boyfriend?” Although, I've also gotten "Do you like candy?" and "Is Obama handsome?" Around that time, I ran out of steam and there were five minutes left in class, so Mr. Lim let me go.

There were a couple of important things I noticed. First, I noticed that, while a few students were brave and spoke out, many students didn't say anything, even when we were repeating words as a class. And several were sleeping or chatting. It was hard to get their attention without disrupting the rest of the class. I have to find a way to get everyone more engaged. I also noticed that while I try to engage specific groups, I’m leaving the rest of the class with nothing to do, so I have to find ways to keep the other kids working while I make the rounds. Group work is the obvious solution, but I’m worried about keeping them speaking in English. Maybe it’s better, though, to keep them occupied than worry about whether they are speaking English 100% of the time, since the level is fairly low. Also, they may be braver if they don’t have to worry about shouting out answers in front of everyone.

In happier news, Dong Yun is never in the teacher’s office, so I haven’t gotten to be friendly with her, but she happened to come in for a second today, and I made a point of stopping her and asking about her weekend. She asked what I do after school, and I told her I sometimes hang out with American friends, then I suggested that she and I hang out sometime. She looked very happy at that, so we set up a meeting for tonight in a nearby café. I’m really glad it worked out. Everyday I feel more and more how kind the people in my school are.
Also, I noticed how the students all gave me the canned “Fine, thank you. And you?” answer when I asked how they were. So I think my first lesson for Grade 1 will be how to answer that question with a bigger variety of answers.