My Crazy Schedule

Hi Everyone this is Jenn.

There is another teacher in the school who is Jennifer so I get to be Jenn Teacher. We don't use Mr or Mrs here just your first name with teacher at the end. Its kind of fun. A conversation I have daily with most of my students is

(T) Hi! My name is Jenn Teacher. What’s your name?

(S) My name is Sunny

(T) How are you?

(S) I'm fine thank you. And you?

today I taught my Kinders. that they can say other words beside Fine, thank you. They have fun when I demonstrated that they could say "I'm sad." I pretended to be sad and it made them laugh.

I try to get to school at 9:00 am in the morning to finish up my lesson plan or collect the supplies that I need for the day. I start my day helping the kids with snack time at 10:10 am. Today they had sweetened rice cakes.

My first class is first year Kindergarteners that know a little bit of English. This is the Vancouver class. After working with them for 2 or 3 40 minute classes depending on the day, I switch to L.A. class. They are also first year kindergarteners but they know very little English. I am amazed some days by these two classes.

At 12:30 pm it is time for lunch. It is my job to serve and have lunch with Vancouver class. This is a great way to try many different foods that I normally would not try. However today I was very excited because we had American food. Spaghetti, garlic bread, fruit salad and some type of soup. We think it was creamed sweet potatoes. The kids ate more today than they do when we have Korean food. I enjoy having lunch with them.

After Lunch I have one more class with L.A. and then it is time for the Kinder's to go home for the day. At this point I am usually ready for a nap because it takes a lot of energy to entertain them for several hours. Not to mention that we like to sing and dance together.

I taught both of my classes the Clean up song. Now when it is time to put their stuff away they sing "Clean up, clean up everyone everywhere. Clean up, clean up everybody do your share." Oh so cute.

After they go home I have either 2 or 4 elementary age classes. Two of them are about eight years old and the other two are about 10.

After I am finished with all of my classes I work on my lesson plans for the next several hours, until Chris is finished with his classes between 7:30 and 8:10 pm. Sometimes I grade homework and do other various tasks that are requested by the Korean teachers.

After we have done enough planning to leave for the night, usually around 9:00 pm then we go out to dinner. There is no way we are cooking on week nights besides eating out is really cheap here and it is healthy. Often we will walk into a restaurant and point to a picture on the menu. Tonight was the first night that this was unsuccessful. They didn't have many pictures and I ended up getting Bean Sprout Soup. Luckily they usually serve a whole lot of sides with your meal so I filled up on rice and broth that had tofu in it. Yumm. All the other times we have done this we have been given really yummy food. Often we have no idea what it is called or what is in it. This is part of the adventure.

Often on our way home from work we will stop at the store and buy food or household items. We can only carry a little bit at a time. When we get home I am very ready for sleep. Then we wake up and start all over again. I am tired but it is very rewarding, especially when the students finally understand something that I have been teaching them for a while.

Jenn

P.S. Please send me an email if you would like us to talk about a certain subject in our blogs you know transportation, customs, food, ect.