English Festival

Wow this month sure flew by. I mean it seems like my birthday was just a couple of days ago. Work has been really busy and it's only now that I have the time and energy to sit and reflect on the last thirty days. As most of you already know, Korea is an education-obsessed nation. Why else would there be so many jobs for English teachers? Ironically, this obsession is increased during public school vacation. Korea takes two months for school vacation: January and August. At these times parents seem to think that their children now have the time to take intensive studies. So of course our school (and most other schools) cater to this demand and offer extra classes. Instead of students learning English for an hour and a half, three days a week, they can be in school for as much as three hours, five days a week. I have students who also take intensive classes at special science and math schools as well. All of these extra classes of course turns into extra work for me, which is one of the reasons January has been so busy for me. The other reason was preparing for English Festival with my kindergarten class. Basically, English Festival is an event our school organizes for parents to come and hear their children speak English. Our job as teachers is to make this event as interesting as possible, for both parents and students. Fortunately our school hired out a separate company called Musical English to take care of half the load. This company taught the students two short musicals, "The Jungle Book" and "Beauty and the Beast" for the students to perform. This was actually really adorable and it was awesome to watch the students act and sing in their costumes. It was apparent a lot of time and effort was put into the production, about four months if I'm not mistaken. The stressful part for us teachers came two weeks before the festival. Our director told us to add another twenty-minutes to the production for each of our classes. This turned into extra songs and speeches and memorizing. To put this into perspective, the students had four months to memorize a twenty-minute musical, and two weeks to memorize another twenty-minutes of material. Needless to say we didn't do anything else in class for two weeks, and my students DESPISED every minute of it. I will forever have burned in my mind the whine of "Ahhhhh, teeeeaaacheeerrrrrr!" every time I told to students to get out their scripts. All of us foreign teachers felt the burden of this added work and we were quite frustrated that we had not been informed earlier what was expected. My school has not done a good job of planning ahead for things and we are always scrambling to complete a task in a short period of time. I'm not saying I can't roll with the punches that are thrown my way, but I don't have to like it. All in all the performance was pretty much a success and I'm sure glad it's over. It was also nice after the show to meet my student's parents and take pictures with them. Although my students rarely show their appreciation (and my director never does), it was apparent that the parents were very grateful for the education I provide for their children and that felt good. So that's where I've been for January and I apologize for the lack of posts. Thank you for checking and I promise there is more to come....I've still got many months to go.

Free Dance Recital

It's time for a little Korean culture. Ann, one of the Korean teachers I work with, invited a few of us to her seven-year old daughter's dance recital at the Cultural Centre in Seoul on January 5th. At first I thought it was going to be similar to an elementary school performance, but then she showed us the advertising pamphlet and the tickets and I knew that it was going to be much more professional. The hall itself was quite nice and there were of course many parents there to see their children perform. I think that Erin, Kristina, Michael and I were the only white people there. The recital itself consisted of a wide range of styles (from traditional Korean to classical ballet) and age-groups as well as group and individual dances. I was most taken by the Korean dances for a number of reasons. First, each girl looked so much more graceful and sophisticated compared to the ballet style. The Korean costumes were also much more colourful and interesting as the cloth would flow beautifully with each movement. Many individual dancers also had a special prop to work with such as hand fans, small lanterns, and even a drum. To me this style of dance is much more appealing because it seems so much more natural and soothing. I later learned from Ann that her daughter practices at the dance company two hours and day, five days a week! Keep in mind that the majority of the girls in these pictures range from five to ten years old. After the recital Ann invited us all to eat with her husband and the rest of her family which was really nice. As you can see from the picture of her daughter that even the make-up for the performance was professionally done. It just goes to show you that Koreans are very serious about everything that they do.