First Day of School

The first day of school is over and done with.  I am so glad.  Tomorrow is Thursday so the majority of the week is through and I'm starting to get to know the kids. 

The kids are not like Americans, of course.  I am still getting to know their mannerisms, but in general they follow directions fairly well (sometimes they don't understand my English) and listen.  What's different in a good way is that they are all very worried about their grades.  They all want to make an "A."  Today I put up a vocab quiz announcement and they all started asking me what type of quiz it would be - fill in the blank or multiple choice or memorize the entire definition of each word.  I must admit I was impressed.  One of my students has already started reading the textbook.  I couldn't believe it. 

The biggest challenge I face, and I can already see it, is that some of the kids (at least 2 or 3 in each class) don't speak English very well at all.  They don't understand what I'm saying and they don't know how to follow directions.  But I can tell they really want to learn, and all the kids here speak Korean in the hallways and at lunch so it's not like they're left out too much.  Another challenge is that the kids are so motivated to do well in so many different areas, and they have a tendency to show up to school really tired because they've been doing so many activities. 

My favorite thing about teaching is that I get to choose what to teach and how to teach it.  It's so nice to be able to pick the most important thing I think the students need to learn and teach it.  We spend 10 minutes at the beginning of each class journaling, learning how to take notes, deciding on the main idea, creative writing, and doing a grammar question.  Each day we rotate what we do.  I can't wait to see how the students improve throughout the year.

That's it for now.  I can't wait to sleep in on Saturday!