Starting Year Three I'm back in Korea, back at my desk in the grade three teachers office at my school on top of the hill I have to climb every morning. Back to daily alerts from the government that is air quality is so bad you shouldn't go outside, and back to my tiny…
It's not your fault. As teachers I know it's easy to think that is, but it's not. Well some things are, of course. We are responsible for ourselves and responsible to always try to make the best lessons we can and do right by our students. But for anyone teaching in a public school,…
The Good Stuff Recently I had to end one of my grade one classes early to tell them I was disappointed in their behavior. The next day I had to hold 4 students back after a grade two class to tell them that their lack of effort was disrespectful. Doing that in terms that…
August Update: Summer Break August was a very transitional month. We finished English camp, I got my eight days of summer vacation which I spent relaxing at home, and we started the second semester back up at school. Everyone seems to finally be falling back into their regular routines and as we do the…
An Open Letter To My Students (Because that's never been done before...) To any of my students past or present, Should any of you ever find this by accident, hello! I hope life is treating you okay. I am writing this to you because there are some things that I want you to know.…
What Korean Middle School Students Are Worried About (Or: What my kids wanted to tell me when they had 2 minutes of my undivided attention.) I'm just about finished with all of the speaking tests for this semester and as always it's been the most fun I've had with my students so far this…
Continue reading ➞ What Korean Middle School Students Are Worried About
May Update: Warm Weather and Good Vibes May has been a good one. I finally feel like I'm really past that weird funk I was in at the beginning of the school year and the strangeness of starting again has worn off. I'm still as busy as ever but exhausted after a long…
5 Types of Classes You'll Have as an EPIK Teacher Every class I teach has a distinct personality which is the puzzling combination of all 30 something personalities in the room. And despite the fact that often those personalities are each perfectly pleasant on their own they can sometimes combine into something truly bizarre.…
Continue reading ➞ 5 Types of Classes You’ll Have as an EPIK Teacher
Since I've been slow on posts lately I thought I'd do another day in the life! This particular day was March 8th. I think it's possible that I'm still not over my jet lag since coming back from America because I found myself wide awake before my alarm had gone off at 6:00. No complaints…
I arrived in Korea two days before school started and that, of course, meant that when Friday morning rolled around I was still recovering from the jet lag. So the morning of the first day of school found me wide awake at 4:30am with plenty of time to chill a little bit before school started.…
Hours and Miles 