Wait,...What?; Teaching Strategies

I have no idea what is going on with my blog right now. I'm not sure if I have spoken about my weekend. But it's pretty much the same as any other weekend...lots of exercise, etc. Although I'm leaving Friday details out because it just makes me sad...I passed up a great opportunity accidentally...bah. And we didn't bike Saturday because my Coach had important things to do. And my team was recovering from a really fun night which I was supposed to have participated in. Moving on...ugh.

Tuesday. I love singing in class. It's awesome. I'm getting more comfortable with the kids and am ad-libbing more as time goes on, and I think that helps the kids pay attention and also I think it makes it more fun for them. For example, I will give them a rest of listening and repeating to what I say to tell them things like, "In the States, one expression that we use (using the present progressive, -ing verbs, because that is what we were learning that day) is "What's going on?" What's goin on? Wuz goin on man?" And I'll just kind of go into a mini dialogue with myself...they may think I am crazy but they laugh and look much more interested. And I am giving them good information too. They would fit right in. I'm such a good teacher. Haha. But seriously. I will also add in cultural things, like when we are listening to a dialogue, I know it is boring for them, so I will take a break from them repeating me say each line of the dialogue and ask them - do you know what song Jenny was playing on the piano? So they can change their train of thought from -God this is boring- to...wait, what? (That has nothing to do with the title of my blog by the way, it is just coincidence - the title is more about me not knowing the state of the entries of my last week) Piano song? What was the song again? And have them actually exercise their minds in a way which isn't as tiring and frustrating to them. And then I throw in, "Fur Elise" is a very popular piano piece in the States. Most intermediate piano students know this piece. They may not grasp everything that I am saying (although I say it in three different levels difficulty, thus also losing some context with the less involved explainations) but I think they are learning something. And if they aren't learning immense language skills, at least they will take come cultural lessons out of it, which helps the comprehension of language. So there.

Tuesday we had a track workout with new people. Actually one of the students with whom we were supposed to run didn't join us because he had a date with his new girlfriend...PASHAAA! Laaaaaame. No but he seems cool, I met his and his friend and they seem very nice. That is just a lame excuse. Take her to watch and then go out after! Booooo. But we had a good workout and two other students joined us up at the track. They seemed really nice. I felt bad when I pushed the pace on the last lap - although Coach seemed all about it because he ran with me and then got ahead of me for a little bit - I was just putting in the final kick - and then Coach was saying today that yesterday's workout was supposed to be easy but I was going really fast. !!! Haha. He is funny. I hope the other runners weren't frustrated with me for doing that. But Coach went with me! It seemed like he was inciting it too, maybe not as fast as I went - we were running in the 5th lane, and I didn't start to pick it up until about 50 meters into the last lap, and we ran it is 85 seconds...so that is kind of fast for the end of a 40 minute run...equating definitely a sub-80 second lap. Hey. It's cool. But that was fun running with new people. Ah. Everyone is so nice!

I think I may have experienced my first openly critical reception at the track today (Wednesday). It was the end of the workout, and Coach and I pushed the pace the last lap (he definitely started it this time) (we need to get him a new stopwatch...he doesn't know what pace he is going without it...it is really funny actually - he has been saying "today we are going slow - I expect you to keep a steady pace" and then he will bolt at certain moments...haha - I don't know if he means to do it so sometimes I go with him and then die later...haha), anyway - and he was beating me coming down the straightaway - I was creeping up on him but he was still ahead - and someone said in English something like, "Hey, wait for me!" I don't think that was actually the comment but it was definitely in somewhat of a mocking voice. Haha. Whatever. They wish they could run with Coach - they are just jealous. :) Just kidding. But it didn't bother me at all. Sometimes I feel a little self conscious running around all of the Korean athletes but once I get into the rhythm its all just me, Coach, my teammates, and white noise.

Today I also made my first worksheet, on the present progressive. I got some sweet pictures off line to post on the handout. One of the sentences was "The triathletes are _______ in the ocean." (swimming... :) ) And had a picture of the swim portion of a triathlon (I initially was looking for a picture of people swimming at the beach but most of the pictures I found online were like personal pictures and I felt weird about putting a picture of "Katie and Jen at the Rhode Island shoreline" (I don't think that was an actual caption but you get the point...too creepy, having someone's picture that they put online on a worksheet in Korea for the present progressive..) so I found a picture of triathletes...with caps and goggles and water splashing...and then I can also impose my culture on them. :)

Ah. Time for bed. Sleeeeepy time. I can't wait til Friday's tutelage with my favorite Korean... :)