Today was a tough day.

It was hard enough coming back from a week of holidays, but I was also being observed by my councilor (that is what they call the Korean staff who overseas me and my classes). My first two classes were not too bad. The basic 5 class is just uber loud and hyper. I had to cover my ears today to let them get the point that i'm right in front of them and I can hear them without screaming. Well at least they're energetic and want to read and give answers. They come up with some of the most rediculous things. They love talking about dying and dung, animals and monsters and computer games. I asked them what they did over the week off. "I play computer game" was about 50% of the class' answer.

My senior 1 class is my favourite. They are the happy medium. They still like English and give answers, but they're not screaming all the time. Some are shyer than others, but they'll still answer me when I talk to them. With some of them I have to get right down in front of their face to hear what they're saying. They're just so cute though. The work books are not easy, but they try. They listen and realize that I'm there to answer their questions and help them.

The last class of the day was senior 3/4. I hate teaching that class. I dread it. Its a good thing that its the last class, otherwise it would make the rest of the day bad for me. Its not that I don't like the kids, infact I really like them individually, its just the age I guess. They're 13/14 and starting to get too cool for school. Literally. They speak so much Korean, no matter how much I threaten them. I guess they know that I'm really just a softy and its too hard for me to get them in trouble. I remember what it was like being in french class and having to only speak french. No one wants to do it.

Anyways, Emma, my councilor sat in my class to see how/what i've been doing. As soon as she stepped into the room the kids stopped talking. It was like conversing with a brick wall for two hours. COMPLETELY UNRESPONSIVE. I asked if they understood what I was saying/teaching/showing them....nothing. Not even a little head nod yes or no. I felt like a complete moron. What do you do in that case? I was trying to be a little silly to try to loosen them up, but its difficult when you're being critiqued. It was totally not a real lesson. They should just watch us on the cameras and let that be that. That is the real view of how things go. Instead it just threw us off. oh and then the last day I had that class my timing was off and I thought the class was over later than it actually was, so I didnt have time to give them there story test, which ment that we had to do two today to catch up. Emma was not happy with that fact and interrupted me to tell me that I shouldn't do that and that they should only have one today. To top things off, she left just when I was about to show them the example I had made of a postcard project I assigned for homework. She probably thought I had no idea what I was doing. (She interrupted me to ask if I was going to assign homework [I guess it looked like there wouldn't be much left to do at home]) I wish she could have seen it. I thought it was an interesting assignment that the kids would like and get into.

I'm not looking forward to what she's going to say to me about it tomorrow. I'm just going to do my best to accept and learn from what she has to say about it. I really do want to do a good job, i just often feel like I have no idea what I'm doing!

Luckily Jenn saw me after class and could tell that something was wrong. She took me to get some man-do (dumplings) and talk about it. I soon forgot about the horrible class and relaxed about it.

Well I better get going. Its 1:30am and I still have a huge stack of essays to mark!