Why Are We Here?

Today I had the highest level group. They are a lot of fun. I really enjoy watching them interact with each other. We did a lot of interactive activities and they were great. In one activity they had to tell a partner things they had on their papers. One guy had an ice cream sundae, but didn't know what it was, so he said, "There is a bowl, and on top of the bowl there is something that looks like a mountain. On top of that there is some kind of fruit". There was a lot of laughing and real communication between them, but when we got into a whole group situation and I asked them questions they got quiet and looked like they were exhausted. The difference was amazing.

One woman in the class is kind of a pain. She keeps turning off the air-conditioner, even though she knows I am the one who turns it on. I put the white board in front of it so it wasn't blowing directly on them (it's a really bad set-up), but it didn't matter. She also made me give them more breaks. I think she thinks she is kind of special, and among them she might be. I think she's the oldest one in the class, which gives her the most status.

I glanced through their journals after class where they reflect on what we do and several of them wrote that although they enjoyed the activities we did they can't use them with their students. They gave a list of reasons - big classes, mixed levels, no room, etc., etc... It makes me really frustrated because I wonder why we are here.

The Korean Ministry of Education is paying for this program. That means they pay nothing. They may also be getting paid to attend (I'm not sure about that). Between the High School and Elementary School teachers in our program, there are about 108 teachers participating. There is another program at a middle school with trainers from SIT (the School for International Training), a program in Daejon (another city nearby) and a program in San Francisco. All total, there are 250-300 teachers being trained through this one center. That translates into a lot of money. But all of the trainers are reporting the same things - teachers are complaining that they are being forced to participate, and in our program, many of the teachers are not even teaching English, and some can hardly speak English themselves. The whole thing is kind of crazy.

I will suggest to Jenny that in the future she might consider having different programs and letting the participating teachers choose which one they want to be in. One program can be for development of English Language Skills and the other program can be for developing English teaching skills. It seems kind of crazy to have a PE teacher who can hardly speak English in a program like this. I think the logic was that some of the teachers will be rotated into English classes in the future, but some of them told me that they are actually being rotated out now because there are other teachers with better English language skills.

The good news is that in spite of the many problems like big classes, instruction in Korean, etc., it seems to me that people are speaking more English to me than the last time I was here. Actually the last time, I don't remember people speaking English to me at all. But I had two girls in our dorm talk to me a little, even though their English was not that good, we had a taxi driver who spoke English, and downtown several people spoke to us in English. We even get an occassional "hello!" from kids on the street when we are walking.

The most amazing thing is that the Korean Ministry of Education is investing a lot of money into English training because they realize it will make them more competitive in the global marketplace. And in the US education budgets are being slashed because we don't have enough money. Something is definitely not right there.