Since my school is one of the largest middle schools in Yeongcheon, and considered an English leader and example school, the principal had high expectations, and for each contest most of the English staff had to stay after school for hours practicing. But the real admiration should be saved for the kids who participated, who practiced endlessly in all their free time. We shared cheap dinners crowded around a table in the English office, flashlight-lit trips to the bathroom in the dark, deserted school, hours of practice interview questions, and even a few occasions of stress-induced silliness. Although I got pretty tired of, say, drilling the same questions over and over and hearing the same speech dozens of times a day, I really enjoyed the chance to get close to a few special students, all of whom are funny, sweet, hard-working and energetic.
This was probably one of the more memorable experiences I had here and definitely an interesting time. While there are things I could complain about regarding the actual contests (some schools' lack of appropriate preparation, an atmosphere too heavily focused on winning, memorization without comprehension, technical difficulties, etc.), I think it was a good experience for the students too and helped form some friendships that probably wouldn't have occured otherwise, as between the mix of 1st and 2nd graders shown above (A-hyun, Je-Gyung, Yoo-jin, Jenny, and Bo-ram).
More photos after the cut.
