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!

Elizabeth Edwards

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets through.