Being in Jochiwon for the first 3 weeks was great but seemed a bit monotonous at times. However, we did have practicums (teaching practices) which I think were helpful. For our first practicum we worked in groups of 2 or 3 and we prepared a lesson plan and we taught it to real kids in a real school. We ended up with 3rd grade and the kids were actually very well behaved. It turned out better than we expected. Kendall actually ended up teaching 6th grade and he had a fight in his class and afterwards he was a little traumatized. So I got lucky I think. It was good to get a feel of what a real classroom was like.
Here's me teaching. These are the other 2 scholars I taught with. (we taught animals, hence the cat whiskers)
We had 2 more practicums but for those we just had to teach each other and pretend like we were teaching real kids. They were still pretty stressful though because we were graded and judged on how well we did.
The first one was solo teaching and the second one was co-teaching. Here is me during my co-teaching lesson:
At this point this was the longest/thickest i had ever grown my beard. (I'm pretty sure the ladies dug it)
The worst part about practicums was that we weren't teaching real kids so it was hard for it to be realistic. Also it was very tiring trying to act like a little kid when other were teaching (we had to be their students). It sounds like fun, and it was for the first few lessons, but it got old pretty quick.
Other than practicums we did try to have some fun.
For one of our lectures we had 20 minutes to make an English video and the group with the best video from each class won a prize. Our group won! I wasn't able to upload the video, it was kinda lame anyway but still pretty good for coming up with the idea and shooting it and editing it, all in 20 minutes.
Anyway our prize was 2 tickets each to the "Color Me Rad" fun run! So when the run comes to Gwangju sometime this summer I will get to go for free. The reason we got free tickets is because that lecturer is actually the one who brought the "Color Me Rad" fun run to Korea. (Sidenote: She is Mormon and graduated from BYU).
Anyway, another group in our class made a really funny video about a dictator type teacher. So we decided to make a longer version for the talent show that was upcoming (That's why it is called Mr. Kim is back). Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzay3WI2I_s
A girl (Cheryl) also asked me to sing with her in the talent show. She had been looking for a guy to sing the male part of A Whole New World from Aladdin. So I gave in and said I would do it. I even got my K-pop teacher to help us out on our parts.
The talent show was on our last night in Jochiwon. I was pretty nervous and we had a few hiccups in our performance but it turned out ok. First, they had my mike turned way down, then once they got that fixed, I was worried that Cheryl was going to trip over my cord and I totally forgot one of the lines to the song. Anyway here is our performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGjjepfz5vU
(Oh btw: I shaved that night because I wanted to look nice for when we met our provincial coordinators).
The next day we had a closing ceremony and we all said goodbye to each other and everyone was crying. We all jumped on our various buses and headed to our provincial orientations. My province is called Jeonnam or Jeollanam-do. Our provincial orientation was more of the same. Lots of lectures and practicums. We stayed at a business conference center that had a cafeteria and dorm rooms. It was in Gwangju, the 6th largest city in South Korea. Out of the 120 TaLK scholars that were in Jochiwon, 25 of us our assigned to the Jeonnam province. So there were 25 there in Gwangju. It was about a week long and we mostly just stayed in the dorms and worked on lesson plans and things. We did go out a couple times and had some fun. I'll write about that in my next post!
Ethan, you wouldn't have been caught dead doing something like this back in the states! Glad I got to witness it! :)
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