If blogs could talk, what would they say?

By request I am making a blog about my day to day schedule with work at my Hogwan (Private school) J Language. I have been reminded at the fact that most if not all of you are interested in how I spend my days here besides what ventures the weekend may bestow upon me.

Monday/Wednesday/Friday are all the same schedule. I start out with a class of 4 seven/eight year olds. They are all boys and they are really silly and energetic as I am sure I was at the same age. I teach them very basic stuff from a book called English Land that was made by none other than the Disney corporation. Even here in Korea I cannot get away from Disney invading my life. I proceed to teach this book two more times throughout the day to two more classes. I also teach another English Land book to two different classes of students who are only a couple years older than the first group. Each of these classes are only 40 minutes long so it is not hard. I only start work at 2:10 and end at 10. These are just the grade school classes. Each day I teach about two pages out of the book per lesson. It sounds a lot harder than it actually is only because two pages does not present a lot of content to work with. Once you get the hang of it it can actually be quite easy and sometimes fun. After the five English Land classes I move on to a class full of ten year olds and we use a really ridiculous book called Superkids. This book is not that great and offers less content than the English Land books. As long as you look at what you are supposed to be teaching for the day before you teach it you can usually improvise a great lesson. Seeing as I love improvisation this is truly up my alley. After the Superkids class I get a forty minute break to regain my posture and to plan for the next classes. After the break I proceed to a class full of eleven/twelve year olds and this class is structured to be mostly a speaking class but has proven to have a fair bit of writing in it as well. The book I teach out of for this class is called Boost! and out of the three books mentioned thus far it has the highest content making for super easy lessons. Also the two higher level English Land classes and the Superkids class get vocabulary tests each day. These vocab tests I only have to proctor. All the kids have to do is fill in as much vocab as they know from Korean to English in these premade booklets provided by the school. After about five minutes of the vocab tests I collect them and bring them back to the secretary. This makes those lessons even shorter and makes my day pretty easy. The hardest part of any of these days is just dealing with the kids. Getting them to pay attention, not speak Korean, do their homework, and just be good students is a task sometimes. After these elementary level classes I then have two junior high classes where I teach them out of a book that is just a listening book. I make them vocab sheets to study and then I put on the CD that they listen to as they answer multiple choice questions. Then when they have completed one section we go over the answers and I explain the English behind it. Those are my Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays.

Tuesdays/Thursdays are different. I have to be at school by 1:30 to do a private lesson for a guy that works with J Language. Then we usually have a teachers meeting from 2:30 until 3:30. Classes start at 4 pm and I teach three classes right away from different levels of the same series of books called Listening Juice. I start with a bunch of ten/eleven year olds who do not like to pay that much attention but its no big deal. These classes I usually teach three to four pages and the classes are each an hour long. After the ten/11 year olds I move on to the higher level with eleven/twelve year olds. They are the class that pays the most attention but needs the most work. After them I teach my favorite group of students with the cutest little girl in the class. They are great and granted we all goof off a little in the class the lesson always get finished and they absorb what they need to learn. Not only are they my favorite bunch but I think they are the smartest. After all the Listening Juice classes I teach two junior high classes but with an hour break between. These are just two more listening classes where we listen to a CD, answer questions, and I go over the answers. I make them vocab sheets as well to look up on their own.

That is pretty much my day to day schedule here at the ranch but it can change once every few months. There were the summer courses that were a month long and soon there will be the winter program that is five weeks. We also change books when we finish books. This means that every time a new book or class starts we have to make lesson plans and homework plans. This can take a lot of effort because we have to individually go through each book and then figure out how to separate everything to the allotted amount of lessons for that class. Also the homework can be very hard when their book does not have a work book associated with it. Then we have to come up with writing homework. All of this may sound harder than it is, so no worries. One thing is for sure it really has helped me with time management and so on. If you want to know any more details about my day to day school schedule then ask me. Please leave me some comments. I really do love them like a fat man loves cake.