Little blessings

This morning, I had library study hall duty and, as I was checking up on the IB students, I noticed one student who was quietly reading his bible in one of the study rooms.

It brought a smile to my face. :)

Recommendations, September in full swing...

School is now in full swing and the semester has gotten increasingly busy with various things to get done: lesson planning, lab planning, labs/quizzes/homework grading, CAS advising, and something new this semester....recommendation writing!

The students I taught last year, who are current high school seniors, have started the arduous process of applying to colleges! And, although I'm only writing a few recommendations for students who are applying to Korean universities, it's been an interesting process of reflecting back on my individual students' strengths and abilities and writing good recommendations. It is a bit weird because I know that I'm a new teacher, and I never anticipated that I would already be writing recommendations for students in terms of college admissions. But, I guess this is what happens when you teach upper grades in high school :) It's interesting, too..because writing these recommendations brings back memories of my own college application writing process. At the time, it seemed like it would be the end of the world if I didn't get into the specific college I wanted to go to. But, of course hindsight is always 20/20...and one thing I've been continually telling my students is that...yes, it's good to want to and eventually go to a great school. BUT, it's even more important what you do once you get there.

Life is exciting. Although I'm super tired at the end of each day, I feel like everyday is a new learning experience for me as a teacher. My students continually teach me new things~ and I do feel incredibly blessed to be doing what I am doing.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

R&R

In need of some rest and relaxation.

The semester has officially been over for a couple weeks now and I've just been prepping little things for next semester and getting some lessons ready. On Sunday, I fly to the States for a 2 week vacation and because I didn't get as much lesson planning done in the past 2 weeks as I wanted, I've been contemplating taking some textbooks, books, etc home with me. But, I stopped myself.

A lot of people like to think that teaching must be the "easiest job ever" cause you get summers off and a good amount of breaks (although I guess teaching in Korea, the winter breaks are longer and summer break is just a tease). And, yes it's true that teachers do get a hefty amount of time off from work. But, I really realized after this first year of teaching how much teachers need that time off. It's a necessary time to refresh, reflect, and re-collect ourselves before another whirlwind of classes begins. I know that every job has its own issues that create stress and a feeling of being "burnt out" and I can't speak for any other profession because I've only worked in secondary schools. But, by early July I was so burnt out from teaching that I honestly couldn't picture myself teaching another class after my final one. I had run out of patience, endurance, ideas for lessons. All this to say, it's necessary for teachers to "take time off." I'm so tempted to take things home to plan more lessons, because I always want to be MORE PREPARED. Right? There's always more lessons to plan, more things to know, more possibilities for labs....but I keep having to remind myself that there are times when being a workaholic will ultimately be detrimental to my teaching and my students' learning. "I need rest. I need rest." I just keep telling myself that.

Also, I dunno about other subjects but I have found that it's in the times when I'm taking things more slowly, observing nature, just reading up on some new scientific findings that I have the most brilliant ideas for lessons. Yes, some great lessons come from sitting down and working out all the "nuts and bolts." But, other fantastic lessons have also come from a simple trip to the beach or a nature walk with a friend. That's the great thing about Science, and especially Biology...that it's always present in the world around you--so my lessons come from my everyday encounters.. corny..but true.

I know that when I come back to school in mid-August, there's going to be so much work and class preparation stuff waiting for me. But, until then, I'm just gonna pretend for the next 2 weeks that it's "my job" to rest.

Past 2 weeks

The past 2 weeks have been absolutely CRAZY. And, the sad part is that it's not over yet.

In the last week of June, we gave our first round of finals, which included Chem SL, Bio SL, and Bio HL for me. My finals were on the last day, which was Thursday-- so I'm pretty sure the students were burnt out and sick of finals by then.

Last week, we had normal classes for both DP and Pre-DP. It was definitely a ROUGH week because 1. students were not very cooperative in learning new material. they had already had some finals and the next week would be finals again...so they didn't really want to learn any new stuff, especially in sciences since they'd already been tested. 2. i also found it hard to plan and conduct lessons in such a strange week. i didn't know if i should formally start new units in each of the classes but risk having students forget everything during summer break. I eventually decided that I would still try to start new material and it ended up being okay. Of course, some students had already 'checked out' for the semester, but in general the students who cared were still cooperative and interested.
At the same time of continually teaching classes, we had to start grading the final exams from the previous weeks (well, at least the teachers who had given exams..). As I was grading, I started to regret giving 2 papers for the exam. Paper 1 wasn't so bad because it was all multiple choice. But, paper 2 was the killer because it was short essays and extended response. It's been taking me forever to mark the exams--and I'm still working on the last bit of Chemistry. Sometimes, I feel like a detective who's trying to decode answers and find bits and pieces that I can give marks for. Still, overall....the students did relatively well and I was generally impressed with their achievements in the past semester. Because it was their 1st round of IB-style mock examinations, we can't expect them to be perfect (at least, not yet..hahhaaha ^^) and they did well given the circumstances and craziness of the start-up of this program.

All of this made me think about how much I've become fond of this 2-4 class and how I'll probably remember them FOREVER even as I continue teaching for 20-30 more years. I really do feel so proud of this class for the ways in which they're dealing with rough situations. I mean, they (and their parents) are such risk-takers! They could've just chosen to go a much easier route of doing the simple domestic Korean program..or going to an international school for a more established IBDP program, but they chose instead to invest and HONESTLY to take a risk with a new IBDP program at our school... when I think about that, I really have to give them PROPS. These students are such trail-blazers and that trail-blazing definitely is not easy for them! I continually hear from the teachers about how our IBDP students are getting bullied by the other domestic students AND teachers in our school because they think that IB has taken all of the school's resources, time and energy... If you think about it, these students, if they make it out of this program alive...will really be ready for so much that the future throws at them. They've already had to face so much adversity. Anyways, I'm gonna get off my soap box but I just felt a sudden appreciation and respect for my students~ ^^

Tomorrow, we start another week of finals--and that means that I have to finish marking and grading by this FRIDAY~!!! AHHHHH~ I just wanna curl up into a ball on my bed and go to sleep.

Memories and Proctoring.

Yesterday I met up with a grad school friend and we had the chance to catch up over dinner and coffee~ it was weird to think that a year has already passed since the last time we had met up in Cambridge and graduated from HGSE. Catching up with A gave me a chance to reflect on all the blessings and memories from my year in Boston-especially the people God had placed in my life during my time there. And, as I was sitting on the train heading back home last night...I was reminded of the things I had learned about teaching and learning through colleagues, classes, professors. It made me more determined to not become complacent with my teaching pedagogy, curriculum, etc just because things are "working." It is true that everything I learned in grad school was very theoretical at the time--and at certain points, idealistic. But, I'm trying to figure out how I can bridge my practice more with all of the THEORY. Yesterday, I said to A, "I totally agree with the educational philosophy and aims of IB...but it's so hard to put it into practice, especially as a first-year teacher" I think it's a constant battle: bridging and connecting what we believe and expect of our students and about the school environment in general AND realistically what is happening day to day. Anywhoooo, I'm really excited that there are more HGSE alums in Korea now!!

On a completely different note, it's finals week and I spent 2 hours this morning proctoring the English Final exam. It wasn't as bad as I anticipated, but STILL...proctoring has to be one of the most painful and boring tasks on the face of this earth. Because we're not allowed to do anything except watch the students and walk around from time to time, I've become an expert at creatively keeping myself occupied. First, I made a mental list of all the things I need to buy when I go home for 2 weeks in August. That didn't take too long, so I then started counting how many students were: right-handed, wearing glasses, had slippers, wearing socks, falling asleep. Tomorrow, I'm proctoring another exam, but it's shorter so I think it will be a bit more bearable..and then Thursday is my exam--2 hours of Bio/Chem..good luck students!

End of the semester

WOW~ we're already nearing the end of the semester! I know I've done a terrible job at posting about my first year teaching here in Korea....but, I'm determined that I will be more intentional about updating!

This past weekend, I spent 12 straight hours making final exams for my Chemistry and Biology classes. I didn't anticipate that it would take me so long to make the exams, but it did--maybe it was because each of my exams have a multiple choice section and short answer part. Anyways, because of that, I got really bad sleep over the weekend, which is when I usually try to catch up on sleep. I kept dreaming about which types of questions I should include in the final...so glad that's over. The point of all this is that my lack of sleep has snowballed all throughout this week. Every night, I got such little sleep that I finally crashed yesterday after school and took a LONG LONG nap from 5-10pm. It was only when my mom called me that it woke me up from dream-land. BIG MISTAKE...because I slept so much in the afternoon, I ended up not being able to fall back asleep and finally knocked out around 3am...so now, I'm tired again...and the cycle continues.

Whatever. Back to school life...I'm really happy that it's almost the end of the semester. All that's really left is for my students to take their finals, finish up some end-of-semester stuff...and then summer break! I'm going to the States for 2 weeks--1 week in Philly and another in North Carolina for vacation with the family! I'm really excited because we've booked a beach house, which means a full week of sun, rest, and relaxation! Something to definitely look forward to--especially since we've now hit 장마 (rainy) season in Korea..and it's humid and rainy and gross. Apparently it's supposed to rain continually until next Monday...good grief!

Here's a pic of some of my Chem students and lab assistant back when we did a flame test lab!