Yet again, I’m annoyed!

Posted by Jimmy on Nov 30, 2010 in korea | 9 comments

It’s four weeks until winter camp.The date for it was set about 3 weeks ago. I handed in a rough plan for it last week so that my co-teacher could send it to the office of education.

Today I was informed that I MUST do another winter camp but this time at an elementary school. Now I have twice the planning and an extra week of work. I can deal with this, although, to be honest, it has pissed me off. Why wait until there’s four weeks to go to tell someone they have an extra week to plan for? Planning a good camp is extremely time consuming. I also have winter conversation classes to plan for.

Again, although I’m pissed off about it, I’ll live. What’s really f@cking annoying is that they haven’t told me the level of the students or where the camp will be held. Knowing the level of the students is stupidly important. Without it, how the hell can I give the students the right materials?

When will they bother themselves to tell me what the level will be? Who knows. One thing I can guarantee is that it’s going to be a seriously shoddy camp if I don’t find out soon enough.

What’s worse is that apparently another EPIK teacher in Gwangju has been asked to do 5 weeks of summer camp. What an absolute disgrace! Maybe I’m just saying this because I’m in a bad mood, but with each month that passes I’m starting to feel more and more negatively about EPIK and the Korean education system.

I met a girl recently at an EPIK training who had been here for 3 months. The girl before her at the same school left after 4 months because the ‘teachers’ at the school acted like a bunch of arseholes. This girl was also having a terrible time and despite repeated attempts at asking for a transfer EPIK refuse to move her.

The school is that shit that the apartment they gave her was so uninhabitable she had to leave and now she’s staying with a Korean family. She has been living with them for months.

When she was telling me this I felt terrible for her. She seemed like a really nice girl. Interestingly, when she recounted her story, a bunch of other EPIK teachers knew immediately what school she was at. It’s that bad a school. Yet EPIK, or the education office, have done nothing about it. I wish I could get in contact with her to write about her experiences.

Enough of my rant. Although, I imagine more will follow soon enough.

Tim

Time and time agian, i hear of these things happening to people that live in big cities.
I’ve not once heard of such things happening to anyone i know that is living in the rural parts of Korea under direction of EPIK. Am i wrong in assuming that this is only a problem in large(r) cities? Working in a smaller school, i’ve been able to select when i take my holidays, duration of summer/winter camps. Is this only permissable in a smaller school/town? I’m curious to learn others’ opinions. Maybe i just got lucky?
http://aaaalexsadventuresinasia.blogspot.com alex

Oh man, the fact that you were given more than a week’s notice seems to be above average planning for Korea. (Not that it makes it okay, I tend to spend about 5+ hours planning and prepping materials for every camp hour so advanced notice would be nice) However, in terms of level–assume that they are very low level for the camp. It’s much easier to make things harder on the spur of the moment than make them easier. My camps weren’t leveled, the school wants to put the 4th, 5th and 6th graders all together at the same time. I tried to make all of the activities leveled or have special challenge or leadership roles for the more advanced students. If you have a co-teacher for the camps (I did) you can split some activities where the lowest level students are with the co-teacher.
http://serenityinchina.wordpress.com/ Jason

Go buy “Projects for Young Learners” Resource Books for Teachers by Oxford, and do the Fantasy Island project with the kids. Unless you’re given kids who are beginners/false beginners you can do the projects with them in the fantasy island unit (about 10, I think), and just make lesson notes for yourself as you go through the camp each day. Actually, considering the fact that you’ve been given such little prep time you might consider doing the task-based project anyways. If you have a co-teacher who can translate, the kids can learn a little vocab, a few useful short expressions/questions-answers, or whatever you choose, and then do the project and while interacting with you they get some experience doing a project and having to try and use their English to communicate….after all, that’s all the Koreans want, right? For the students to learn English by osmosis and proximity to the foreign teacher; this is the embodiment of the general teaching culture in Korea that thinks it’s okay to give a teacher these kinds of teaching and learning conditions….

Also, try picking up “Games for Children” Resource Books for Teachers by Oxford. It’s full of different games with different levels, amounts of time, degree of difficulties in game concepts and cognitive levels, etc.

The cheapest book you can get is this one,
Oxford Basics: Simple Speaking Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800
You can pretty much modify the vocab and language goals for each of the 20 or so lessons found in the book on the fly.

Get some books and then stress will disappear (well, it’ll be less anyways), and your prep is done in terms of before the camp. Photocopy the pages from the book, make some insanely small lesson notes for each thing you’ll use, and hand them to the idiots that ask you to do a camp with no info about location, classroom conditions, resources available, language learner levels, etc.

Other titles you might want to check out.

Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners
Penny McKay and Jenni Guse
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
W30,000

Lessons from Nothing
Activities for language teaching with limited time and resources
Bruce Marsland
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
W25,000

Games for Language Learning, Third Edition.
Andrew Wright, David Betteridge, and Michael Buckby. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers. Series Editor, Scott Thornbury.
W28 000

Oxford Basics: Simple Speaking Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800

Oxford Basics: Presenting New Language.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800

Oxford Basics: Vocabulary Activities.
Slattery, Mary. Oxford, 2004.
W5, 800

Oxford Basics: Cross-curricular Activities.
Svecova, Hana. Oxford, 2003.
W5, 800

Storytelling With Children.
Wright, Andrew. Oxford, 1995.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000

Very Young Learners.
Vanessa Reilly & Sheila M. Ward. Oxford, 1997.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000

Games For Children.
Gordon Lewis and Gunther Bedson. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000

Drama With Children.
Phillips, Sarah. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley
W26 000

Art and Crafts With Children.
Wright, Andrew. Oxford, 2001.
W26 000

Projects With Young Learners.
Diane Phillips, Sarah Burwood & Helen Dunford. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley
W26 000

Art and Crafts with Children
Andrew Wright
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Creating Chants and Songs
Carolyn Graham
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Writing with Children
Jackie Reilly and Vanessa Reilly
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Drama with Children
Sarah Phillips
Oxford University Press
W26,000

Good luck.
Jason
Jimmy

Jason, these suggestions are fantastic, thanks!
I’ll look for Projects for Young Learners when I can. Even if I don’t use it this winter, I’ve got two more camps (at least) next year that I could use it in.
http://teachershannon.wordpress.com Shannon

Hey Jimmy, so typical for last minute camp changes. I do wonder tho if EPIK is blame…? They don’t really have anything to do with my camp, its all my school. My school is saying I need to do 3 weeks of week, while my boyfriend is doing 4 days. I’ts a little strange to me, but EPIK doesn’t even know about this! I am in Daegu so I wonder if its different? EPIK hasn’t had anything to do with me since I was at orientation- are they in charge of your camps?
Jimmy

Hi Shannon,
The extra camp that I’ve been asked to do is at a different school. The decision was made by EPIK and the office of education. I still haven’t heard anything more about it. My co-teacher said that they’ll get in touch with me ‘sooner-or-later’, as if that was a good thing.

Very frustrating.
http://teachershannon.wordpress.com Shannon

so weird! Ugh, thats annoying!! For some reason they don’t understand that camps don’t just HAPPEN, they are planned. I have to make an entire textbook by Friday and just found out about it on Friday. They have strange concepts of what is manageable and whats not. Makes me wonder what EPIK overseas and what they don’t. If you are interested I did my Masters project on English games, I made a compilation of English games (the best ones I could find out there) leveled from ‘beginner to advanced.’ If you want email me and I will send you the PDF!!! shanmoconnor@gmail.com
It may be of some help~

Jimmy

Amazing Shannon, thanks. I’ve sent you an email.

Asdlihy

It’s like that to piss off the yanks so they can’t push their crappy education system on Korea. Aussies and Kiwis (who have a far superior edu. system) get less hassle.