죽을 것같아!

[dedalusj]

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Things have been a little crazy the last few weeks and I have had trouble finding time to read the journals on my f-list, much less write anything. The way Andong works is that half the teachers teach summer camps in July and the other half teach in August. The camps are usually all kinds from young kids to Korean English teachers to summer classes for university students. These classes are mostly overtime so the money is nice but they are not optional, so not teaching is not an option. For two weeks I taught a class at 7:50, then taught two classes of kids. In the afternoon I taught English grammar to Korean English teachers for 3 solid hours. Those last classes were quite intense as I often had to explain why english grammar is like it is. Moreover, since my background is different from theirs, I often explained things in ways that were vastly different from what they were used to hearing. (They were really pissed/confused when I told them that English only has two tenses. They had difficulty understanding that Perfect and Progressive are aspect, not tense. Given that Korean often substitutes tense for aspect, this was hard to explain.) In return, they asked me highly nuanced questions ("Is 'barely' negative?" My answer was no, that it was the opposite of almost, e.g. 'I almost missed the bus' v. 'I barely missed the bus' and 'I almost made the bus' v. 'I barely made the bus.') and questions that I have never thought about ("Why is first-person-singular, 'I' always capitalized?" answer: either because of confusion caused by minimal spacing on parchment or because of the Great Vowel Shift.) I really liked the classes because they were so intense and I they forced me to keep on my toes, linguistically. You really have to know your grammar in those situations but you also realize how vague and illogical grammar really is. In addition, EFL teachers/students ask completely different questions than native speakers and I would find myself with a list of things to look up and explain for the next class at the end of the day. It was very fun and interesting but it also left me exhausted.

This week was the opposite sort of classes. All week, everyday, all day I taught children (next week too.) It is ironic that I need to get a background check to teach at the university because not only is the idea of sex with children totally repellent to me, the idea of just teaching them English is, to my mind, not that much of an improvement. I also don't really know how to teach children. Explaining phrasal verbs to children does not exactly help them learn. I also don't like games and hate busy work, as I question their pedagogical value, yet those two things are what most language for children programs seem to be designed around. This week was all of that. I have no idea whether the children in my classes are learning much. Most of the time I just try to get through what I have to. During my lunch hour I go to my office, lock the door, turn off the light and avoid people. I feel like a zombie when I get home; it is just all so exhausting. Luckily, today is a holiday and so I can regain my sanity to make it through another week.  After that we get a week off before the semester starts.