my youngest students.

Not only do I travel, explore Seoul, hang out with friends, and enjoy city life... I work, too. I realized the other day that I haven't said very much about my job, and wanted to write a quick blog post about my life during the week. I'll attempt to write a few entries telling about the different classes I teach each day, beginning now with my youngest kids in ESL 1.

I've been working at GKI School in Seoul for the last 8 months and really enjoy teaching english to Korean children. There are 17 other foreign teachers at the school from America and Canada and I have loved getting to know them. GKI offers everything from a full-day english speaking kindergarten program, to intermediate english classes for elementary school students, to intensive classes for those kids with parents who have Ivy League dreams. I work with the latter group in the ESL department, which means that most of my students have been learning english since they were old enough to walk and they all have a fairly good understanding of the language. All of the students are required to speak only english at school (they are punished when caught speaking korean), complete listening and reading comprehension homework each night, study for weekly dictation tests, and prepare for a monthly exam that test their knowledge of the material learned during the previous few weeks. The school is very well organized with daily lesson plans given to each teacher. Basically, I just walk into class, open to my pre-made lesson, and begin talking. There are still challengs at work...but at least coming up with material to teach isn't one of them.

The youngest students that I teach each day are those in my ESL 1 class. I've never been particularly excited about working with anyone under the age of 13, but I've really come to love these little ones. There are 9 students in the class and many of them attended english-only kindergarten programs last year. Because of this, they have a good understanding of sentence structure and have developed a fairly large vocabulary. It's always impressive to me that these 1st graders can read and write english so well. Last week I gave them a spelling test and one of the words was "gymnastics." I can't imagine that too many 7-year-olds in America could spell this word, which makes it all the more amazing that they are doing it in a second language. In addition to vocabulary we study math, science, history, and reading every week. Each student is also required to write a weekly summary over the book they are reading for homework, and then present it to the class. This has come to be one of their favorite actitives because they love standing at the front of the room and having everyone clap when they finish their presentation. They are a really goofy, smart, eager group of students and I always look foward to teaching them.


a view of my classroom.


hannah (named after hannah montana...yes, they watch that in korea, too). everytime i see this girl it makes me ready to adopt a little asian baby.


esther and lucy.


the whole crazy class.


each day i give the students a topic to write about during the first 15 minutes of class while i am checking their homework. last week they wrote about their favorite things to do during the summer. here is a short video clip of jenny presenting her paper. i love that little kid voice that they all still have.

Coming soon: ESL 2, ESL 4, ESL 5, ESL 6. Since they are all on the verge of being teenagers I'm sure they aren't going to be nearly as willing to have their picture taken!