Sometime before winter break Gi Seon told me that a camera would be coming to my story time. I had no idea what that meant. But eventually it came out that there was to be a news clip on Dong Cheon Elementary School because the school had won the best rating during the annual country wide school evaluations. The filming was on a Thursday, when I'm normally at Yong Dang, my second school, but they changed the entire school schedule around so that I could be there. So, I plan out this elaborate series of games and activities to go along with the story (usually we play one game or one activity and call it a day) and I'm all prepared for them to tape parts of my 40 minute story time.
When I walked in there were over 20 kids there - terrifying because normally I have 8 and my activities were designed for that many, but I thought the show must go on. So I sit down and start saying hello to the kids and asking them some simple questions when the librarian comes in and says "STOP STOP!". I thought it was a strange way to conduct a class, but what do I know about it? So I stopped. The camera wasn't ready and I thought maybe they really wanted to get every second of the experience on film. The sweet librarian doesn't speak much English, so when they were ready she says "Don't stop!" and motions with her hands for me to continue. In the between time one kid that's always in my story time pointed out the camera to me with a big smile on his face like he was letting me in on a secret. So sweet and cute, what a cupcake.
So into the story and I'm reading and going along wondering what I'm going to do with 20 kids when it comes to activity time when on page 3 the librarian again with the "STOP STOP!" and now I'm thinking this is kind of an awful way to have a class when she says "BYE BYE!" (she speaks really loudly to me, trying to muscle through the language barrier, thus the caps). OOOoooooohhhhhhh, it was all just for show! No one told me that part (This is a common move in Korea, not as annoying somehow as you'd think it would be. In face, it'd be worse at home because you have your expectations, but in any other country you can just write it off as a cultural difference and it's no sweat). So 3 minutes after it started it was all over. But I do have a clip with about 3 seconds of face time on Korean TV! So as our Korean teacher friends are want to say of other teachers, I now rank among the "very famous teacher(s)" of Busan. If you click the link below a pop up list will come up in Korean. Click number 11, the last one (it translates to Dong Cheon wins best ranked school, roughly) and the clip will come up. I'm only in the beginning, but the whole thing's my school.
******** 알려드립니다 ********
Jess
No comments:
Post a Comment