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English Festival (Updated!)

Last week the Samcheok Office of Education hosted an English Festival for all of the Elementary and Middle Schools.  This 3 day event was mainly a competition consisting of speeches, skits, and quiz games.  Our school participated in all of the events and Kate and I judged a few of the events as well.  All in all it was a fun few days and a nice break from being at school :).  Here are some pictures from the event.  For the full album visit this page.

I’m also in the process of uploading videos from the event.  They’ll be up soon. UPDATE: They’re up now!

As always – click the image to see a larger version.

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This is MinJae – one of the students in our skit.  He’s amazing… and has the best smile around!

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Our 2nd grader, Hanbit, reading an English story about his mom.  Be sure to check out the video of this… adorable.

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This is Miguem.  Kate wrote about her speech a few weeks ago here. She did a great job!  Again – a video will be up soon. is here!

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These little guys were from another school and they sang and danced to a song called “Do the Elephant!”.  Pretty amazing!!  Check out the video soon!

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We did “Who’s on First” for our skit.  It was pretty great – at least we thought so.  They did a great job and I think they understood it which was great.  This is Who, What, and I don’t know – the players.

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This is Jaeook and Minjae – the fans going to the baseball game.  They’re both really sweet boys in the 6th grade and they did a great job in the skit!

Throughout all of this – Kate was more nervous than any of the students.  But they all did a great job and Kate made it out alright too :)

-Chad

November 21, 2009   Comments Off

See Mom, that voice degree wasn’t for nothin’! :o)

A few weeks ago we got an email from our coordinator Chance that read, “Some of you may have heard about a planned “Korean Performance” that is to be put on by us EPIK teachers. If you haven’t heard, this is being planned by the Samcheok Office for December 18th. I don’t want to influence any judgements, so I’ll try to keep my language neutral and unopinionated here. They want us to put on a Korean performance, singing songs or giving speeches in Korean.”

A long string of emails between the other EPIK teachers followed… complaining about how we signed up to teach English and not dance and sing like English monkeys and about how if we don’t do a performance they might take away our banana privileges (as English monkeys) and how we wish we actually were paid in bananas because they’re probably worth more than the won right now… etc.. All said, no one was pleased with this idea.

Over the next couple of days, reports came in from other EPIK teachers about their schools asking (or telling) them to perform. Two Fridays ago Teacher Kim came to our house after school to give us our subpoena to the dreaded performance. She understood how awkward it was for us but said the Principal would be very sad if we didn’t do a performance.. (so, we had to…) We talked with some other teachers and came up with a plan to sing only the choruses of a few Korean pop hits and dance like fools. We put it together last Monday, rehearsed it on Wednesday and had the performance on Thursday evening. Here are two videos from the evening… try not to laugh too much. :)


All in all the evening turned out to be just fine. Everyone who performed was nervous and everyone messed up a bit, so it was entertaining. Although we were in a nice hotel conference room, with round tables and glassware (with forks/knives!!), and the entire administration and other school principles were there… it was fairly laid back and everyone understood how hard it was for the EPIK teachers to do this. So, our humorous rendition of k-pop songs was greeted warmly. (Thank goodness!!) And hey, we each got 20,000 won in gift certificates and two boxes of traditional Korean cookies for our performance!!

We all were dreading it, but it turned out well and now I know the words to a few choruses of Korean songs. It’s strange coming from singing classical music in foreign languages everyday (in college) to this… but I’d like to think everyone could hear all the training over the terrible sound system :)

All for now…
-Chad

Here are some links to the songs we covered in our mix…
“Arirang” (Traditional Korean Song.)
“La La La” (SG Wannabe)
“Nobody” (Wondergirls) — (the youngest girl in this group is 16.. oldest 20. whoa!)
“Ochada” (Brown Eyed Girls)

December 20, 2008   2 Comments

Tell us your feelings meetings…

Last Thursday I left school at 2:30 with my Vice-principle to go to the Samcheok Office of Education. Kate had left earlier that day at around 1:30 for a volleyball game against some other local school teachers. The volleyball game happens about once a month and it’s usually a lot of fun. Picture 30 Korean teachers playing volleyball (surprisingly well) in a cold gymnasium with the office staff and other teachers (mostly the women) watching and cheering for their teem. It is always followed by a full out Korean meal experience, which we’ve grown to enjoy, with our school. Naturally I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to go play volleyball, no – scratch that – I was pretty darn upset that I didn’t get to. Not only did I not get to go and Kate did, but I had to go sit in a meeting at the office of education for some reason that I had yet to learn.

The drive to the meeting took abnormally long. Maybe Kyo Ka Sanseinim (VP) was driving extra slow because we had left a half hour early for a meeting that was at most 15 minutes away. Maybe it was his odd choice of music – a strange mix of teenybopper pop and 80s garage band… all in Korean except for one song with a chorus that went something like “Ooh I really want you, I really want you.” Or maybe he just loves awkwardness and driving around in silence. More likely, he’s an upper middle aged man who drives slow and it only felt longer than it actually was.

We arrived at the Office of Education – a stately new building situated near the Chungsol Apartments (high rises) on top of the hill in Samcheok. I had been to the building before so this wasn’t new, but it always means an adventure… Never quite sure who will be there, what the meeting will be for, or how long it will take.
We walked in and up the stairs to the Education offices. I was told to wait in the hallway as VP went in to take care of some sort of business before the meeting started. Meandering through the hallways I was struck by the long sterile hallways of white and grey. All the doors were closed – presumably to conserve heat (as each room is individually heated). I couldn’t help but equate the space to the bureaucracy and the false perception of efficiency that were the hallmarks of the education system in Korea. Everything here was clean and eerily tidy out here, but behind the doors. . .

Other Weigooks (foreigners) started to come up the stars with their administrators or co-teachers and we all exchanged glances of confusion and sympathy. It’s always amusing to see other foreigners at these meetings because we’re almost always in the same boat – we were told of the meeting either 5 minutes before or if we’re lucky the day before, none of us know what the meeting is really about, we’re all hoping there isn’t a dinner afterwards because it’s always just kind of awkward with the supervisors, we’re hoping the meeting will be short, and we hope we can understand at least part of it. We all entered the usual conference style room to see the tables and chairs arranged in a U pattern to facilitate conversation and debate. It looked like a council meeting in some small town in the states – except for the banners. Koreans are obsessed with banners. It’s really quite odd… Every event or meeting or activity is accented by a bright colorful banner. This meeting, of course, was no exception. A large banner across the front of the room displayed some Korean writing and the date and time of our “summit”, if you will. The head of EPIK in Samcheok was at his desk at the top of the U and would oversee the meeting (with his own banner/poster next to him – in case we couldn’t see the big one behind him :). After everyone was seated in their appropriate seat behind their colorful name plate, the meeting began. The opening ceremony was short for this one (luckily). We stood for the national anthem, did the usual introductions and listened to Korean for a while. William, one of the foreigners in the TaLK program (Teaching and Learning in Korea) translated parts of the meeting into English (usually this does not happen and we are left to decipher on our own…).

Now we know what the meeting is about – a forum to discuss our feelings about any issues/problems we’ve had or ideas we might have about how the EPIK program could be improved. Our schools would each present how they have decided to structure their English programs and then we would each speak about our experience so far and any suggestions we may have. We start the presentations and an hour and 15 minutes later (of solid Korean) we start the discussion.

Here is what I find so odd about the Education system here. The foreign teachers are told to come to this meeting with all of our bosses, with free treats and drinks, and fancy banners, and nameplates – and then we’re expected to tell them everything that we don’t like about our experience so far. ? Although all of us have some problems with our schools or problems with our apartments or problems with some students etc… we’re not going to say these things in this kind of meeting. So, instead, we all go around the circle and say the same thing – “I’m happy here. My school has been very gracious and I really appreciate it. It has been hard to adapt to some parts of the culture but overall it’s been a great experience so far. The kids are wonderful and I enjoy teaching.” Some people throw in a few legitimate suggestions like offering more substantial Korean language lessons to teachers, or teaching more sentence structure to the older students, but none of us really express what we are all thinking – Stop making us go to pointless meetings like this where we usually don’t understand anything – Teach your Korean teachers more English… it’s the only way this is really going to work in the long run – Standardize the experience between schools for foreign teachers by developing (or buying) a curriculum and teaching plan to be followed in after school and co-taught classes and by enforcing more structured standards for living and working environments – Require that the administrators in charge of English education have at least some grasp of the English Language and an even better understanding of Western Culture. All of these are legitimate concerns that should be dealt with but they won’t ever get heard in meetings like these. It’s frustrating more than anything. This byproduct of the Confucianism that is still a part of everything here (although less in the younger generations) is so backwards from the way most of us here think. We are do-ers, thinkers, debaters, and for the most part tolerant people. We like to be challenged and made to accept other views or ideas. We like to get things right by working with everyone involved to perfect the system. This is of course at the core of what the administrators are trying to do, but until they understand how foreigners react to these meetings and how much more could get done with smaller groups and conversations from the bottom up, not just from the bottom to the top, the system will remain as it is.

Now, this isn’t to say a lot of great steps aren’t being taken. This fall Korea increased funding for foreign language education in elementary schools by some amazing amount and started requiring that there be one or two full time teachers at almost every school (hence why we are here now). In recent years they’ve started teaching English to first and second graders (although I’m not sure if it’s mandatory) which is crucial and already obviously working. But at the same time, more teachers are here and more problems have arisen – like schools who have never had a foreign teacher not knowing how to deal with them and leaving basically on their own, or teachers having to travel an hour or more to get to their school everyday because there isn’t enough housing in the small town. Without all the pomp of these meetings maybe they could get down to fixing some of these issues too.

With all that said- Kate and I are truly happy with our school. The teachers are all amazing and open to trying to talk to us, the administrators are all friendly and really want to make sure we are comfortable, the students are amazing and inspiring, our commute is never more than 20 minutes, we are usually told when things change in the schedule or meetings/events are upcoming, and most of all we’re treated like part of the Geundeok Family. We are extremely lucky. Many others here have not been as fortunate as we have and we are thankful for our school. I just hope that the system can be fixed even just a little bit so that more people can have the experience we have had. After all, we’re here for the students and the happier we are the better teachers we’ll be. Kate always says – “If we can leave here in a year with the kids feeling more comfortable and excited about meeting foreigners and learning English, then we were successful.” That part is easy if we are happy to come to work everyday.

November 28, 2008   1 Comment