Intensively Awful

In Korea, most students have a month long vacation during January. However, for us it was the exact opposite. Since kids have an abundance of free time parents often like to fill it with extra lessons at their various private academies. At ECC that comes in the form of morning "intensive" classes. For 4 weeks we were required to arrive at school by 9am everyday to teach these intensive classes. Afterwards, we had a lunch break before starting in on all of our normally scheduled classes. The days were really long and tiring, but thankfully our afternoon classes started 2 hours earlier so we were able to finish a little sooner every night. That was a major plus, but in no way made up for the early mornings. I'll take a late night over getting up at 8am any day...4 months of sleeping in has really spoiled me!

The intensive classes weren't really all that bad and the overtime was a welcome addition to this month's paycheck. My assignment was a group of 5th grade girls who I normally teach in the evenings. Their English is quite good and we were able to read the book "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in the month's time. Many had read the Korean translation of the book and all had seen the movie, so they were already familiar with the story. They were a lot of fun and I enjoyed the extra time to get to know them.

February is the month in which students promote to a new grade, so our teaching schedules have changed to reflect that. Many classes we have at different times and some not at all. Thankfully, there are no more intensive classes until July (another vacation month for the kids).

Now- a few funny photos taken during the last week of January.

A student from my youngest class of 1st graders. Most kids are very camera shy but there are a rare few that really get into it. This little guy, Donovan, insisted I take about 5 pictures of him making slightly different versions of this face.

One of my 3rd/4th grade classes. Due to the February promotion, the class was split into 2 groups that now come at different times of the day. They were one of my favorite groups so I wanted a picture of them all together. It took me at least 5 minutes to get them all to line up and let me take this. They boys and girls are still very afraid to sit or stand next to each other at their age!