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.

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!