It looks like a Kindergarten again!

Obviously, I love art day.

Anyways, so for the past few weeks, the 2nd floor hallway has been looking a little bare. Prior to Christmas, Katey (the other teacher on my floor) and I had that floor pretty well decorated for the holidays with Wish Lists and Letters to Santas and everything, but we had to send everything home for Christmas.
Today, the kids made a "Winter Scene" with penguins assembled out of different-sized hearts. I taped them up in the hallways first thing and was struck with the thought, "Hey, it's beginning to look like a Kindergarten again!" Somehow, arts and crafts in the hallway just bespeaks Kindergarten and childhood creativity at its fullest to me. I feel like hallways with no artwork are akin to ghost-towns, but seeing drawings shows you, oh yeah, little hands are working hard here.


That's right, taking up both sides of the hallways!

Here are the kids with their Winter Scenes. Obviously, some of them got it better than others....



Cathy, Aaron, and Cindy. Aaron spent an exorbitant amount of time
making the background. He has a whole other Winter Scene on the back
of the paper. I felt bad when I told him, heyyyy, you gonna make the penguin?



David, Julie, Brian, & Steve. Brian kept squinting his eyes, and I kept saying,
"Brian, open your eyes." So this time he made sure to make his eyes really big. Also, about David's penguin:
David was so concerned with coloring neatly, he colored right over the eyes. He says, "Jillian-Teacher? Nice?" I say, "Um, yeah, but where are the eyes?" But never fear. David simply takes a white crayon and makes new ones. I don't know why I worry. 



Emily, Jonah, Abby, and Anthony. Anthony's like the Benicio del Toro of the 2nd floor. He was also very excited about all the ice mountains and hills he had made.

Also, they love to sing. So here's coloring and singing:




Mixing colors, making worlds...

SO, today I realized that perhaps my Kinder are a little too close to riding the train straight to "Type-A" personality-ville. I mean, I love them, but maybe several of them would be Alex P. Keaton's best friend if they met him.
In art today, our project was to draw/paint your fantasy world. To help them understand and plan out their picture, we did some brainstorming:


These are their ideas. Really. Maybe I suggested the unicorn.
They are evidently really in love with modes of transportation, as noted by
the presence of a "train" and "mini-train" in fantasy world.


What made today's art really special is that I let them paint, which I almost never do. But they get really excited when they realize that paint and crayons don't mix, so those projects always bring like 500 twinkles to their eyes.



Almost every painting contained a train. This is Cindy's.
She got really exited about making that yellow-grayish color...but
then got tired of painting.

I think I enjoyed watching them paint as much as they enjoyed painting. I couldn't really find a good paint set, so their color palates were kind of limited, but they got so excited as they mixed cobalt blue and dark blue and golden-yellow and so on. When they figured out that white and blue make "sky blue," it was like Santa just walked into the classroom. Little synapsis firing all over the place!



This is Anthony's. What I love about Anthony is the way the world must
look to him. Sometimes he's quiet, but you know there's always more
going on. For instance, at first he was really proud of drawing a KTX (think
Korean AMTRAK) train. Then he throws in some dragons, just for good measure.

 
One of my favorite parts of watching my students paint was their favorite part. Their favorite part was not painting the picture, it was the way the paint mixed and swirled in their water trays. Seriously, it was like a whole new world was opening up to them. I guess some of the paint tubes were different types of paint, so when they put them on their brushes and then put their brush in water, they would get these wonderful swirls and layers. They were shouting across the room to each other, like, look at what it's doing now! And then they would add in another color and again their eyes would light up. It was amazing just to stand back and watch them discover so much in an action that seems so little.

This is Ethan's. He clearly pointed out the 3 objects in his painting to me.
Several times. There is a house. The blue creature at the bottom is a unicorn.
The red flying creature is a dragon. Ever since Paren'ts Day, back in the fall,
Ethan has been overly concerned with doing a fantastic job. So he always
makes sure to point everything out 3~5 times, just so I'm aware of well he is doing.

It was also great to watch them mix colors. Everytime they made a new color, it was broadcasted across the room. "Hey! We made gray!" Then another table would be like, "How did you do that?" And back and forth. It was like a half hour of gleeful shouts of "SKY BLUE!" and "BROWN!" and sometimes just truly joyful giggles when they ended up with blue-green or something in between.

This is Steve's. He had a very nice beach going until he discovered
how to make gray. Again, notice the recurring theme of trains and dragons.

This is Cathy's. Cathy is a very small girl with a big mind and (sometimes) shrill voice.
Today, though, she was totally engrossed in her fantasy world. She worked very concen-
tratedly on her rollercoasters and rides. I think her pictures has an almost Dali-esque quality to it.

When we brainstormed, I was a little concerned that the kiddos weren't thinking "creatively" enough...but then again, who's to say what is creative and what's not. We automatically classify unicorns as being creative, but trains as being normal. My kids had a lot of fun today, and were totally elated by the ability to make and mix colors. Today was their chance to put a little bit of their minds onto paper, and I am so thankful *as always* that I had the chance to see into their little, fantastic worlds.

Growing Pains

Last Thursday, I had two different students coming to me about their teeth moving. Jonah, in traditional Jonah-fashion, faced this new development with excitement and wonder. And being the boy that he is, just couldn't wait to make his teeth move more. Every 5 seconds, he was touching his teeth, touching his teeth, touching his teeth. At one point, I threatened to tie a string to his tooth and yank it out then and there if he didn't get his hands out of his mouth (I practice tough love in the classroom.)
The other little tooth-mover was Cathy. Cathy is small, and while very lovable, also prone to whining, especially when faced with ways of the world that she just doesn't understand. Everything that happens is like the end of the world because she just doesn't know any better. For instance, "I'm hot!" Well, dear, it's because your grandma makes you wear 3 layers of long-johns before putting on your real clothes and then adds a sweater on top of htat. "Tummy hurt." Well, dear, that's really your intestines and you're probably lactose intolerant..just give it a while. "Tooth moving!" Poor gal, teeth are supposed to move. But she was not aware of this, so she was pretty sore about her moving tooth and the fact that Jillian-Teacher was not doing much to fix it.
Friday, 3 students came to school missing teeth! Jonah & Cathy both lost a tooth from the bottom and Aaron lost both of his front teeth. (Aaron tends to be a little out of touch with reality, so his teeth were probably also wiggling on Thursday, and it just never occured to him that something was happening with his body or that he could share it with the rest of us.)
Anyways, as a teacher, this is the first time all year my kids have started losing their teeth. I felt really proud of my little Kinder, losing their baby teeth AND realizing it's not a bad thing, but just a rite of passage into the big-kid-world. My little monkeys are growing up!!!


Jonah



Aaron





Cathy

The Awkward Bathroom Situation at LCI

The 2nd Floor bathroom during lunchtime.

I just want to take a moment to introduce one of the more awkward parts of my school: the bathroom. Our school has 5 floors, 4 of them have bathrooms. Each bathroom is similar to this one. That is: notice how it's 1 ROOM? Notice how girls and boys are separated BY A WALL? And ONLY a wall?
I call this the Awkward Bathroom Situation. For the little kids, it seems to not be a huge problem. Or, maybe they just get used to it really quickly. At first, I think some of the girls would try and peek behind the boys' wall and the boys would try to line up on the girls' side...but they got bored with that after a while. Apparently, the mystery has worn off already.
For teachers/adults, this is where the uneasiness comes in: when I go to the bathroom, if there are Kinder around, they all rush over to the girls side and start yelling my name. Also, for teachers, what if I have to go to the bathroom at the same time as a male teacher? That's just weird. It has happened only twice, and that was several months ago. What made it even more awkward that one of the times, one of the male teachers tried to talk to me. And I thought, I know you are over there, but that does not mean we need to acknowledge the fact we're in the same room. You pretend you don't know what's going on, and I will do the same.
This is not Ally McBeal. We do not need coed bathrooms to create more interesting social situations.

Silk Worm Failure

Occasionally at LCI, we get classroom science projects that are more of a "long-term" responsibility. They like to give us some sort of living organism and watch the teachers try to keep these things alive. So far, I've experienced a jar of mushrooms and snails. The snails by far have been the most successful, last longer than many other classroom snails due to a natural resiliency I think they must have embodied. Unfortunately, they met an untimely death when I left them on the classroom windowsill over a weekend and forgot about them. (See Sorry Snails) 

Last Friday, the teachers walked into the office to meet their new class pets: silk worms.  

We were each given 2 silkworms and a bag of mulberry leaves to feed them. I knew I was in trouble from the get-go because 1) I think these are gross creatures and cannot for an emotional bond to them. 2) One of them was pretty much already dead. I say pretty much because I thought it was dead, so I took a tissue to pick it up out of the case. Then I noticed it attached itself to the tissue and wouldn't let go, so it was not soooo dead. I put the worm and the tissue back into the case. 3) My worms did not seem to be eating as voraciously as the other teachers' worms.

I decided to keep my chin up though. I dutifully pinned up the science poster, packed the case with extra leaves for the weekend, and left the worms in a shady spot (as instructed by the poster).

Monday morning I went to check on them and give them some more leaves. Pretty much dead worm was now almost completely dead; I shook the case a couple times to make sure and it maybe moved and seemed well-covered by leaves, so I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt. However, it's body also seemed to be drying out and cracking...so I thought I would give it 1 more day just to make sure.

Tuesday morning I come in to check...and Almost completely dead worm is now officially dead. The other worm, live worm, somehow also managed to die over night. It's neck was all shriveled and the tail looked all powdery.

So that means in less than a week, I managed to kill off 2 (mostly) thriving silk worms and end a science project that I'm sure is supposed to last 1-2 months. Oh well, at least we didn't give them names....

Love Letter from Daisy

This morning, there was a pretty pink envelope on my desk in the classroom. It was a letter from Daisy. Daisy writes:

Dear Jillian,

Hello! It's me! I like you. Do you like me too? I like LCI because you are there. Your the best one in the class. I like you even when you be scold me. I have so much fun in LCI. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I will go to LCI. Are you gonna teach me? I go to Elementary school on Tuesday and Thursday. It is near my house. I hope I like my Elementry School. See ya on the second page!

Hi! This is my second page. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I was in O2 resort. I started to learn ski on Monday. I leard with my dad on Sunday and I did very well! That's how I started to learn ski from a teacher. Happy Valentine and have a good lunar New Year! When are you going to U.S.A back? I'm sad. It's almost time for you to go. :( I won't forget you in my whole wide life. I will write it in the diary when you go. Cause you the best teacher I've ever had. Send me a letter soon! GOOD BYE!

Year-End review for Jillian-Teacher's Class

I haven't shared much about my school life lately, so I thought I'd give a brief update about what school's been like this winter.

We had a week off for Christmas break; classes were supposed to start up again on January 4. However, because of record snow-fall in Seoul the night of January 3, January 4 became a "teacher work day." A lot of teachers groan at teacher work days, since it's us, all sitting in our teacher office for 12 or so hours...but I have a quiet appreciation of teacher work-days, b/c I'm always falling behind on getting copies made or being organized for the new session. I was glad to have a day to get everything really organized before the kids showed up. Plus, I was able to clean my desk :)

Through the month of January, our school held "Winter Intensives." These were early morning classes for students to take. The elementary school students, who only come to LCI in the afternoon, were on break all throughout January from school, so Winter Intensives provided a way for them to just keep on learning! I taught a reading class every morning starting around 8:30. For my class, we were reading through the Marvin Redpost series by Louis Sachar. We read 1 book a week and covered several deep life questions, such as: "Well, do you pick your nose? Do you think you will turn into a girl if you kiss your elbow? Does dog food really taste good? How would you dress to meet Obama?" I had 8 students total and really enjoyed teaching the class. Even though it was early (ohhh so early), we were able to have some pretty good conversations and I think they enjoyed the more-relaxed pace of the class. Plus, Marvin is just a silly  kid. I laughed out loud reading those books.

In Kinderland...it's been play practice and more play practice. Our "school year" ends in February, and all of the classes will be doing a presentation. The 7 year olds, though, have to perform a play. My class is doing a play called The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. I thought this up after teaching them a few Veggietales songs. We pretty much practice the play all day, every day. Sadly, my class will be "graduating," and I'll start with a new class in March. I'm really going to miss my 7 year olds!!!

Oh yeah, we're also getting ready for Valentine's Day. I kind of slacked off and apparently did not build them up enough for Peppero Day, but that is not the case for Valentine's Day. :) Apparently, some of my children love Valentine's Day more than others...

Look at our beautiful art!

After a long week of play-practice and more play-practice, I decided by Friday my Kinder needed a break. Friday afternoon was dedicated to art, and my Kinder did a wonderful job, so I wanted to share.We had 2 art projects Friday: marbeling paper and coloring CDs to look like Mark Chagall's Opera House Ceiling (it was the artbook, so I said, ok.). I was a little nervous about the paper marbeling, because it involved paint...and I don't trust my kids with paint, but I thought it would be a fun treat.

SO, I set them to work on their Opera House designs, filled a tray with water and dropped in some oil paint. Well, first, I managed to get red oil paint all over my hand, but after that snafu, the rest went into the water.

Then, I swirled it around with the end of a paint brush and called back the first kid. Every few pages or so, I'd drop in a few more colors...red, purple, yellow, blue, orange.

THEY LOVED IT! It went so well. I had my kids working on the CDs because I wwas worried they would get bored watching their classmates dip paper into water, but 1 by 1, they kept coming to the back to watch each other marble paper.

It sounds cheesy, but as a teacher, my heart just boomed. Here are my kids, making beautiful projects and LOVING it. They were so excited to see how beautiful the paper kept turning out. Everytime someone dipped in paper, a few of the girls were always there to say "Oh, that's going to be so beautiful...OH, this is going to be the most beautiful...This one is going to be the best!" Everytime I added in a new color of paint, they just couldn't wait to see what design would come out. I kept sending students down to the office to get us more paper! more paper!

And our hands got messy, and there was wet paper everywhere, and the doorhandle turned blue, but it was a wonderful afternoon. I loved watching them make art and really appreciate how beautiful it can be. 

Sorry kids, fun time is over!

So, about a month and a half ago, the kids' lunchtime changed from eating and then going to the Big Room to play and watch movies with all the other kids to eating and then staying in the classroom. This was done to prevent the spread of the flu and originally was only supposed to last a few weeks. As teachers, we are supposed to make worksheets for them to do during this time. Usually, I give them a few to color and some puzzle pages, because, I figure, it's lunchtime, I want them to enjoy it!
Today, my supervisor said, I'll be giving them worksheets during lunch, so don't make any for today. In fact, I had spent much of my previous evening finding activity sheets about Christmas and also the rainforest (our theme this week), and had come to work early to copy these worksheets before all the other teachers started using the copiers, but oh well.
Apparently, the classroom-lunchtime will be continuing indefinitely, and my supervisor is tired of them coloring. "They are 7 year threes; this is a really important time for them," she says (7 year 3s means they are 7 years old and this is their 3rd year at Kindergarten). So she is giving them grammar worksheets from now on. This means less work for me...but still, I was a little sad to see that "7 years old" = no more coloring.

Sorry Snails

R.I.P. to HappyKatieSuzie and Sausage. You were good classroom pets. Sorry I left you on the windowsill two weekends in a row and the day it snowed. I hope you find lots of lettuce leaves in your resting place.

Welcome to Jillian-Teacher's Room!

I have several pictures of my Kinder online, but not so many of our classroom! I've been decorating a little more lately, and with Thanksgiving coming, my kids have been tracing their hands like crazy! I wanted to share what our little learning-corner of the world looks like. ^^

This is outside the classroom. I like the flower.

                                                Welcome to our classroom!

This calendar took me awhile, so I'm pretty proud of it. On the evening I finally put it up, somehow, I was missing "23" and had to quickly remake it. The skeleton is Mr. Bones.

I divided the class into 4 "wizard houses." Each time a student gets a good grade, their wizard house gets a wand. Can you tell which house is made of over-achievers?

My first bulletin board. I'm pretty proud of it.

Here are our "hands & feet" turkeys. Obviously, some of the students are more adept at putting a turkey together than others.....

Our class plant: mushrooms. They are probably dead, but I just tell the children I pruned them. "Pruned" being figurative for snapping off all the dead mushrooms.

Our class pets: Sausage and HappyKatieSuzie. These snails are resilient!

Here is another turkey craft. Again, some children show more potential for successfully assembling birds than others....

The New Flu: LCI Takes Action!

So, before I came over, people asked if I was scared. If I was worried about North Korea bombing South Korea, or worried about moving to the hotbed of the next nuclear war, or worried about being only a few hours away from a crazy communist dictator. And, really, no I was not worried. In fact, at this moment, I am not worried. And many Koreans don't seem to be worried either...at least about that.
Nope, these days the big scare is the New Flu. Our school decided to do its part this week to help prevent the spread of the flu by cancelling school for two days.....for the children, that is.

OH yes, the teachers and staff were still required to come in for two days of office work. Did I mention we work 9:30AM-7PM? And since the staff was sanitizing the whole school, we all had to stay at our desks in the teacher office. It was kind of like Big Brother, starring 15 North American 20 somethings plus a few witty Koreans. Myself, I had a very productive 2 days of entering grades, making lesson plans, and collaborating with other teachers to create worksheet packets in case the government cancels school for a week. We'll see how the rest of the week goes!

Secret File: Jillian-Teacher

So, I was reminded recently that I have not shared anything about my kids or my school on the blog! In fact, I really haven't written that much on here at all...I guess I don't want to bore people, but if you want details about Korean education, who am I to deny?

I teach at a Hagwon -> private school. LCI Kids Club offers Kindergarten during the day -- it is a 3 year program for 5, 6, & 7 year olds. LCI, unlike some other hagwons, is completely in English. There is a Korean staff who offer supplemental courses, but the bulk of the courses are taught by North Americans (specifically). I have 7 year old 3rd years (they are 7 and this is their 3rd year at LCI, so they are pretty good at English). First, let me explain Korean age. Koreans are automatically "1 year old" when they are born, and they only age on New Year's. So, if you are born on Dec. 31, you are "two years old" by Jan. 2. So saying my kids are 7 is a loose interpretation.
There are 9 students in my class. Kindergarten goes from 10-3 every day. We start the day by WASHING OUR HANDS (as recently mandated by the government). H1n1? Not in my hagwon. Then we have "circle time." We sit on a mat and talk about the date and the weather and how all of my students are feeling. Today, Lisa, one my moodier students, would not tell us how she was feeling...so I let the class decide (they voted "tired"). Then I had the bright idea that we should all make up a story about why she was tired. I started it with "Lisa went on a magical journey," then let each of my students add on a sentence. Well, "Lisa found a bunny. Then she found a hunter. And she gave the bunny to the hunter. The hunter went away. Then she broke his house. She made the house again. Then she found another bunny. She cut it into tiny pieces. She became a great hunter. Then she returned home and went to bed." Next, we talk about that week's theme and try to play a game. Unless our feelings took a long time, then we just go through flashcards. This week's them has been hobbies. Lisa said her hobby was riding a fish.
After circle time, we wash our hands again and then do desk work: spelling, reading, answering questions about the reading, phonics, and math. Plus, every day, one student reads a book to the class. Then it's play time.
And we wash our hands, and go to lunch.
After lunch we wash our hands. Every day, my students have a different afternoon activity. Mondays are Brain Bank (Nonfiction reading...with a CD); Tuesdays are Arts'n'Crafts (this week we drew the Statue of Liberty...why?); Wednesdays are playroom (there is like a big playset with a slide and tunnels and all sorts of things....during this time, my students often act like each other's pets or have turf wars over who gets the best "house") + Manners & Etiquette (this week we learned how to "Resolve Problems in the Classroom" aka 1) don't whine over accidents 2) say you're SORRY!); Thursdays are science (this week we learned about how sound can travel up a wet string and out of a paper cup. It was pretty cool. Last week we made stethoscopes out of funnels, balloons, and plastic tubes. It was worth it when about 3 of my kids were able to hear their hearts beat and their eyes just LIT UP:); Fridays we have P.E. and Kids Excel. This month, I am supposed to be teaching Tae Kwan Do during P.E. As I don't know Tae Kwan Do, this week I taught them how to do the Cha Cha Slide. 3 of my students suddenly remembered that they had hurt their legs the night before. (Later on we had a talk about PARTICIPATION and doing things you don't always want to do). Kids Excel is when I am supposed to find something educational and show it to them on the SMART board...so it's usually like from Sesame Street...but we might start learning VeggieTales songs.
After afternoon activities, we WASH OUR HANDS.
The last part of the day is writing. Right now, they are writing monster stories. Helen, one of my girls, has named her monster Pee Pee Super. It can be really big or really small.

So, after Kindergarten, LCI offers a number of after-school programs for older kids. Once students have graduated from Kindergarten and moved on to regular school, they can come back for English classes! Classes go until 7 pm and are either 80 minutes or 50 minutes long. Right now, I teach a combination of 4 afterschool programs. I have 1 class every day from 3-4:30. The students in that class are in their first year out of Kindergarten. There are 5 girls and 1 boy...the boy can be smart but apparently is already "cracking" from the pressure of too much homework, so he doesn't really talk too much. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I teach 2 more classes after this first one. Both of these classes are for kids who finished Kindergarten 2 years ago. These classes are probably the least-stressful because the kids understand humor/sarcasm a little bit more, and they don't whine over every single thing.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I only teach one class in addition to the one that meets everyday. This class is also for students who are 1 year out of Kindergarten. They like to talk...ALOT...which would be ok, except there is so much to get through during class (spelling test, new spelling words, checking homework, reading, reading questions, writing...), there is not much time to talk about Transformers or Rooney (soccer player). My students like to have nicknames...Daniel wants to be Danielformer (as in Transformers), Tim wants to be Timdinosaur, Sunny wants to be Sun, and Brian wants to be Rooney. Then Tim started crying because I forgot to use his nickname. From that day on, nicknames were outlawed. Sometimes in class we have to talk about things that I feel like I didn't learn until I was 15 or so....like character development. I really do not expect an 8 year old to understand character development...yet they are supposed to give a presentation on it. We used Sam (from Transformers)as our example and talked about how Sam had to learn how to bring Optimus Prime back to life...just like characters often grow through learning something.

One thing I've noticed about my students, and maybe the larger educational theory, is critical thinking is not really an important skill...it's all about memorization. If I ask my students a question, and the answer is not explicitly written in the book, they are so lost. Hence, why "character development" is kind of a problem. If it's not something they can memorize, very few students really understand...or so it seems. On the other hand, most adult Koreans I met have seemed to make it through the educational system just fine, so maybe it works out.
Also, Korean children seem to be extrememly involved. Most of my Kinder are in other activities: swimming, tae-kwan-do, piano, violin, Hanguel (learning Korean), Math Academy, Art School... My older students attend elementary school during the day and then come to LCI afterwards plus whatever other various schools/activities they are a part of. Sometimes I feel bad giving them homework, because I know they already have a lot to do.

So, that's my life Monday-Friday. I tried to be thorough (as per a request), but if I forgot anything, just let me know! :)