선생님 Ben (Sonsaengnim)

So today was my first day in the classroom for Camp Fulbright--and to be honest, I think I felt really comfortable. I mean, I came here to teach English to secondary students, so I better get used to it. I can definitely improve on my lesson plan and maybe spice up the material a bit (I was teaching "music" to beginners to I put together a lesson on rhyming), but I still felt good handling the class. They were very quiet and, since they were at the "beginner" level, could hardly put together a sentence, I think of the 15 or so classes, mine was the lowest one--but I'll be teaching "intermediate" students next week and I here they're quite advanced.

They tell us that most Korean students have trouble with speaking since the school system demands rote memorization and little speech, but my students seemed to be at the bottom of the barrel in both departments. If anything though, they were just tired and unmotivated. Unless I had them actively engaging in some work--writing or talking--they seemed on the verge of falling asleep. My goal next class is to come up with some activities that they can really wrap their attention around, or at least get their energy level up.

Also, it's hard for me to remember back to the 12-15 age bracket, but I guess I wasn't very motivated back in middle school either, especially if I was forced to speak a foreign language 24 hours a day. My next class is over "literature" (I didn't get to choose the subject, if I had it my way---> chemistry, physics, biology...), so I'll be working on haikus, limericks, and Shel Silverstein poems--poetry is literature, right? Maybe I'll get them up and out of their seats acting out some of the poems. Oh, and in case you were interested, the word sonsaengnim (sawn-sang-neem) is "teacher" in Korean, so I guess I'll go buy 선생님 Ben for the rest of the year...I kind like the sound of it.