The continuing saga of my unfinished "English Only Zone" classroom, um, continues. Mr Lee Geum-cheon, titular head of the English Dept, told me on Friday that my classroom would be ready on Monday (today).
I smiled, and acted all excited, but I knew it wouldn't be so, even though they had delivered two big boxes that appear to be the SmartBoard and other such paraphernalia. For grins and giggles, I asked Mr Hwang on the way to school today if he thought my classroom would be ready.
"Oh, I think so," he answered, with a level of conviction I would give a 7 on a 1 - 10 scale. Gullible.
Needless to say, though I'm going to say it anyway, the room was virtually unchanged from Friday, when I had hopefully (well, to show them I was serious, and prepared for the new classroom) stapled up a bunch of information on the bulletin board labelled "English Information".
So, today, as I was leaving, I was pleased to see the truck I've photographed below outside my building. I am informed that it contains the furniture for my classroom, and perhaps even the office.
Ironically, I learned today that I will have no classes on Tuesday (tomorrow) as the students are all taking mock-up exams. So perhaps I will be able to put this new classroom, or at least some furniture, in order!
Photo No. 2:
The new unit in the first grade textbook is about food, eating habits, poverty, etc. I dl'ed a powerpoint from Dave Duebbelweiss titled What People Eat, and added a component at the end about restaurants and restaurant foods. The endpoint of the lesson is a student survey of their classmates about their restaurant preferences and habits. In English, of course. [cough, cough]
Anyway, I decided to inform them about YUM Brands, the world's largest restaurant company, which has a strong presence in Korea--and about 80 other countries. KFC is the strongest American fast food brand here. Its popularity after arrival in 1984 is the source of Seoul's ubiquitous "chicken hofs" that pair fried chicken with draft beer--an Oriental Breweries import that arrived soon thereafter. And, as I have mentioned before (just look it up in the label cloud to your right), I am nicknamed the KFC grandfather (AKA Col Sanders) by the students.
At the appropriate point in my presentation, the following photo comes up:
2 comments:
That picture is just grand. How can you contain the students after they totally lose it, though?
It's true I have to give them a few minutes to settle down, but there's always the stopwatch ...
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