This morning our debate class was monitored by someone from the office of education. I was expecting a strict government official but a well dressed older woman joined us and refreshingly, made small talk during breaks. She seemed surprised to hear that I teach at an elementary school, though I really felt my roots when I had the high schoolers repeat after me on a few words I had tagged for a pronunciation check. She grew up in Busan and agreed that driving there is not as terrible as people say. “Busan and Jinhae are very old cities so the roads are narrow and there is traffic. Changwon has wide…

This morning Jack said he had a potted hydrangea for me. I didn’t ask for a plant and I didn’t tell him that I am quite horrible at keeping plants alive so at the end of the day he insisted on driving me home with my new terra-cotta friend. I sat in the backseat of his extremely long van because the 4-1 homeroom teacher is apparently Jack’s carpool buddy. I half listened to them chitchat while I tried not to doze off in the backseat. With traffic it took nearly as long to drive five blocks as it takes me to walk home in the afternoons. There was a shift…

On Sunday after class I went shopping for big people work clothes and ended up with only crop tops so mission fail. As I checked out at H&M, the young but extremely tall college boy asked in excellent (and unexpected) English if I needed a bag. I was so taken aback that I immediately said no though I should have taken one to prevent my new purchase from getting crumpled and dirtied at the bottom of my backpack. He was handing me the receipt when I realized I should just tell him. “Your English is really good, by the way.” I like complimenting strangers and it’s really the only acceptable…

Today I was a good teacher and a bad teacher. On Fridays I have fifth grade and tend to forget about my one lingering fourth grade class. Their behavior is normally not anything to write home about anyway given that they’re a bit more immature than the other 5 fourth grade homeroom classes. I’m not sure if some of the distracted boys are special students or have some other learning challenge that I don’t know about so I’m always very careful not to over correct in class. However, we got to a writing activity and all but one boy had begun. I noticed as I walked around the room that…

I took the first letter of each word in our target sentences, inspiration from Yana, and had the students guess, after explaining that the answer was not just a new word made of assorted letters. Believe me, they read “witps” like they were confident it was a real word. (Answer: Where is the police station?) Once they caught on it was a bit smoother except for “Ioyl.” It’s on your left. “Oh it’s I love your… wait.” “Is love spelled with an O first?” I asked in disbelief. “I love your leg!” Came a random addition. “Okay, let’s talk about this,” I said excitedly, gearing up for a brief texting…

A success story! I find that the best ideas for games and activities come from dedicated teaching YouTube channels and not the foreign teacher file sharing website. If I have to see one more “Avengers Speed Writing” game I’m going to throw my (admittedly already terrible) computer across the room. A woman who worked in Japan had a great video about the directions lesson. And so I found myself drawing a giant 16 square checkerboard on the blackboard. I had made arrows, collected a few choice giant playing cards (Joker, ace, 2, 3) and allowed the students to suggest places. One class had me draw a bakery, a gopchang restaurant,…

Me: Whose paper is that?Student: Yeah, whose paper is that? Whose— oh, it’s mine. *Team 1 is chosen to answer, the other teams groan*Me: Hey now, we’re all here to practice. We should cheer each other on.Other teams: start over-the-top clapping and cheering I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: fourth grade is free entertainment.

Whilst I was teaching the sixth graders directions by allowing them to be my GPS in an obstacle course, unbeknownst to me a crisis was unfolding. On Friday I filed a complaint on the post office website. “The tracking for my car title says it was delivered to the post office, but when I visited the post office they staff told me it had in fact been delivered. However, my school doesn’t have it either. Where could my package be?” What I didn’t know, and what would soon trigger a series of events, is that the complaints filed on the post office website go to the government agency. And unlike…

The day started with the quietest seven high schoolers I’ve ever laid eyes on in my life, and it ended with me wanting to adopt an eighteen-year-old boy. It was a gray rainy day but that didn’t stop me from pulling into the empty campus, with Jenny opening the school gates for me, and living out a brief high school K-drama fantasy. The fantasy lasted approximately three minutes, or the time it took to drop my umbrella by the entrance and shuffle into the English classroom. Jenny was still outside waiting for kids by the gate so I was alone in a class with three early birds. Two girls sitting…