2010 Teacher of the Year

UPDATE: Korea Times profiled me on Wed, Jan. 5, 2011, click here.

Just to make it official, I had to go in to school today for the final faculty meeting and a free (delicious) lunch. I was one of five NSETs (Native Speaker English Teachers) in Seoul to receive the award.

It snowed again last night,so there was a fresh coat of snow on everything. Here are two views out of my classroom window:

Laura Ingalls, Lousy Teacher

I found this clip from "Little House on the Prairie" where Laura Ingalls, played by Melissa Gilbert, (unintentionally) showcases about six terrible teaching techniques in the space of about three minutes.

1) Although "cold questioning" can be useful as a way to open a lesson, it becomes immediately clear that she's asking questions about material to which they've never been introduced.

2) Her impatience mounts after one kid lucks into an answer; she seems to think that if one student has heard of one borough of New York, they clearly should all know all five boroughs--as if they are just refusing to answer out of obstinacy.

3) She allows the minor disruption of the spitball to take over and sideline the class activity, such as it is. Furthermore, she singles out and punishes Willy without actually knowing he did it--all the more reason for Willy to act out, if he knows he'll be punished anyway. (Self-fulfilling prophesy, anyone?)

4) Willy's question is a legitimate one, one for which teachers should have a ready answer. And she does have an answer--but does she have to be so mean about it?

5) When Willy confuses 'borough' with 'burro', Laura passes up the chance to conduct an interesting side-trip into homophones, so that she can instead belittle him and goad him into further acting out. Good choice, Laura Teacha!

6) It might occur to the students that the Brooklyn Bridge goes to Brooklyn if they had, say, a map; the bridge also goes to Manhattan, so why isn't it called the Manhattan Bridge, then? A map would also help in identifying the three rivers in question.

It's well and good to have high expectations for your students--I use the TESA model myself--but clairvoyance is a bit too much. Give them some tools, Miss Ingalls! A hand-drawn map on the board would suffice, since you probably didn't have a textbook in the 1880s.

Well do I remember the maps of Mr Ferguson, a big beefy guy who taught history at Chaplin School in the 1970s. Four color works of art they were, beautifully lettered, bold arrows illustrating troop movements, mountain chains so real you felt your chest tighten in the thin air. We were expected to copy them down in the first minutes of class. The rest of the period, Mr Ferguson dictated, and we wrote everything down. 45% was the passing grade in his class; I never knew anyone who got over an 80. He wasn't perfect, but he didn't expect us to know things before he taught them.

He set up his classroom with a big open space in the middle, through which he would pace, droning his dictation, with rows of desks on opposite sides, facing in. Dale M--- and I would spend most of class trying to look up Janet E---'s dress. I've never used that desk arrangement, and still blame it to this day for why I don't understand how the von Schlieffen Plan led to Germany's defeat in WWI.

Bragging Rights

1) Norfolk & Chance earned the "Hat Trick" last night at 3 Alley Pub's Quiz Night, first place three times in a row. Well done, us! Unfortunately, we have to take a miss the next couple of weeks--at least under that team name.

2) This week's class activity is "create your own superhero", something fun and relatively easy with which to end the year. So far, my favorite superhero is Whassup Man. Students name and provide the characteristics of their hero or villain by fillng in the blanks on a worksheet I stole from Simon and Martina and fixed up for my purposes. I take (or sometimes choose) volunteers to read about their superhero/villain aloud at the end of class. It's generally a humorous, nice way to end things up.

Most classes have one or two students that take shots at a disliked teacher or the principal; and a couple who make me into the superhero, angling for brownie points on the last day. I felt pretty good today that one student actually tried to describe my traits as a teacher: "TuttleTeacher can freeze students with his stopwatch", "TuttleTeacher can make students pay attention without using corporal punishment", "His television shows interesting videos".

3) My teaching--or my ego--got a more official boost today; the principal showed me a certificate naming me Seoul Office of Education 2010 NSET Teacher of the Year. My co-teacher said there are five teachers receiving the award; I don't know if she meant total, per division, per region or what. Anyway, recognition is nice. And the monetary prize is nice, too--don't know how much it is, but it's nice.

I don't know the criteria or the process that was involved, but I do know I was asked a few weeks ago to put together some sample lesson plans, and I gather this was at a late stage of the selection procedure. I also know that the evaluators of my "open class" gave me a perfect score; and that my school's English Department gave me an "A+".

So, those are some nice laurels to rest on over the holidays!

A Day in the Life ...

... of a Korean High School Student:


Thanks to But Different.

An eloquent eleven seconds, indeed.

Education News Roundup

First, and unsurprisingly, a analysis of data acquired by Dong-A Ilbo found that teachers are "more generous than students or parents in assessing their colleagues." The paper studied the results of the first-ever national evaluation of tachers conducted by the Education, Science and Technology Ministry:

The data suggested that the average score given by teachers to their colleagues was higher than those from students and parents in all categories.
A discrepancy of up to 1.85 times characterized the evaluation scores of teachers and students and up to 2.54 times between those awarded by teachers and parents. [...]
Jeon Je-sang, an education professor at Gyeongju University who conducted a joint study with the regional education research center at Chungbuk National University, said, “Efforts are urgently needed to correct the practice of teachers granting high scores to their colleagues due to sympathy.”

The aticle did not provide information on the basis by which Jeon was able to determine that higher scores were due to "sympathy" or why efforts to correct the practice are needed urgently, since the ministry has not determined any policy procedures that would be impacted by the study.

Second, another story on the so-called "English-teaching" so-called "robots" being pushed by KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology) as the solution to the native-teacher so-called "problem", this one from Korea Times, never the brightest pap in the rack:

"We learned that Engkey [the "robot's" nickname] should be able to fare well in markets based on the first phase of experiments. We are poised to conduct more pilot runs before commercially launching the robots in 2013, [said KIST spokesman Park Young-ho.]"
Engkey has arrested the attention of students in the English-language classes in Masan elementary schools this year thanks to her cute penguin-like shape, tender female-voice pronunciation and ability to interact.
However, the robot was found to freeze if a student goes off the scripted dialogue.

In other words, Engkey is a CD-ROM on wheels, in a plastic shell that looks like what children think a robot should look like. Utter shite, as my Brit friends would say.

Finally, and quite disturbingly, JoongAng Daily's story carries the header: Seoul high schools to eliminate P.E. classes "for third-year high school students next year to give students more time to study for the university entrance exam."

Wow! Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick! If anything, what these kids need is less time with their noses in the books, and more time in the fresh (well, you know what I mean) air, exercising their long, skinny bodies. PE teachers' jobs, of course, don't face elimination (which is purpose of those robots in the story above for English teachers), as the number of PE hours will remain the same. The reporters explain:

Schools are currently required to give students 272 hours of physical education during their three years of high school, with 102 hours each for first- and second- year students and 68 hours for third-year students.
Starting next year, schools will be free to divide the number of class hours in any way they like, following the passage of a new regulation that also stipulates that schools offer classes in just eight subject areas.
According to statistics from the Seoul Office of Education, half of the 178 high schools in Seoul that offered physical education classes this year say they will reduce or eliminate the number of physical education hours for third-year students and allocate all of the physical education class hours to the first and second year of high school.

I asked around at my school about this, and they have no plans to make such a change. In fact, they're still hoping to find money for the new gymnasium project despite the big budget cuts for facilities in next year's appropriations.

KidPower ToyCon

Last week was the much-anticipated KidPower ToyCon (batteries not included), the annual convention of the Classic Toy Manufacturers and Retailers Association.  And the Exhibition Hall is right there in my classroom!

Better-speaking students man booths inside the classroom as representatives of toy companies, intending to hawk their latest new product; the rest of the class are "store buyers", the people that choose the merchandise that will stock their stores' shelves this Christmas season.  Each store rep. has a unique identity and set of requirements, given on his worksheet; each toy manf. guy has information he wants, too, in addition to selling his toy: store name, contact info, number of outlets, age range, etc.

Okay, so it's a conceit for an interview/information gap activity, but the two co-teachers repeating from last year claim it was their favorite lesson.  I mentioned previously the ways I've tried to improve it: a) simplifying the Q & A (too much information takes too much time and decreases the contacts); and b) increasing the number of toys, or booths, from 8 to 10.  Both moves were successful, so the average "interviewee/store buyer" got five or six interviews compared to three last year. 

It was a massive amount of work last year, mainly finding appropriate toys (no guns, swords or other violent toys, no movie or pop culture tie-ins, and ... no batteries required), then building a corporate logo, brand and promotional materials.  This year I did three new toys, but I kept the Scholas Pop Out World stuff intact, because, though it is a Korean company (owned by LG), the English was acceptible. 

This lesson does promote a good amount of English speaking, though vocabulary covered in the textbook, like retail (as in retail price) and promotional (as in flyer) were sometimes less understood than I hoped.  I also used my "teaching stick" to threaten students who said their email address AT (@) was pronounced dalbaengi 달뱅이, though I swear before I looked it up I heard it as 골뱅이, golbaengi.  However you say it, don't!  달뱅이 is a marine snail, a popular anju food, whose spiral-y shape resemples the @. 

To conclude the lesson, students look over their contacts and compare them to the specifications for their particular search--"Did you get a match?"   A student who visits five of the ten booths is almost certain to have at least one match.  One further change I would make is to add a column on the far right of the worksheet, to check off Match or Not a Match.

The Nice Catch Suction Ball Paddle Game from Whizz-O, above, was a popular addtion this year (though two broken paddles do not bode well for its longevity in the market, or indeed the KidPower ToyCon).  The Puzzlebox sets from IQ+, Inc. were also a hit, and were solved--in one sitting--by Yours Truly:




Okay, so I'm a big kid at heart.

School Budgets

About two weeks ago, I went to the annual SMOE NSET workshop, which I barely mentioned here because there was not much to mention. However, during the sharing session, a couple of people (these are all high school teachers) talked about their candy budget.

I had two responses to that: a) that much candy you need a budget? Seriously? For high school students? Whatever; and b) you have a budget?

So, this got me wondering, Do I have a classroom budget? Before I go on, let me clarify it's not that the school I am at is niggardly (with apologies to David Howard), as whenever I've asked for teaching materials they've always been very accommodating--but that's not the same as having a budget!

In any case, I pretty much have what I need: enough desks and chairs; heater and air conditioner; loads of lockable storage cabinets; a modern computer and sound system; and even a large touch-screen display. In fact, it's a rather nice room. Still, I buy things for my classes occasionally, like those witches' hats for the Harry Potter pictures. I generally just out-of-pocket the expense, and don't worry about it--what's a few thousand won here or there, right? (I know, I know, I'll never be a millionaire thinking that way ...)

But I also generally save the receipts.

I've wanted a presentation pointer for a while (the kind of thing that lets you advance Powerpoint slides and so on from anywhere in the room), but Miss Lee had told me that Korean teachers should buy that for themselves. At 75 to 100 KW (kilowon), I didn't want one that much. Well, I did finally break down and buy one just recently for use in my public speaking class.

Anyway, I asked around about my classroom budget, and got an answer today: 500,000 W. About USD 450. This does not include paper and printing costs. So, I go to my room and tally up the receipts I've collected since March 2: 88,420 W.

Yikes. Coming out of my pocket, that sounds like a lot, but coming out of a 500,000 won budget, it's not much. Therefore, I went to the nearby Daiso during my free period and bought twenty bucks worth of marker pens and plastic tubs to put them in, so there are enough for each of my student tables to have their own. (For a first grade lesson I'll blog around the end of the week.) 111,420 W. 388,580 W to go.

Serendipitously (with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke), when I looked through the papers this evening, what did I see but a story carried in both the Korea Herald and the JoongAng Daily about next year's budget from SMOE (my employer). Sez KH:

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will almost quadruple the free education budget next year, officials said Monday.
The office unveiled its final budget plan for next year, which amounts to 6.6 trillion won, a 4.7 percent increase from this year.
A total of 249 billion won is to be allocated to free education, a 376.7 percent rise from this year’s 52.2 billion won, according to the budget plan.
Of that amount, 116.2 billion won is to be used for free meals in elementary schools,

The article continues:

The education support fund for low-income family preschool children has been raised by 51.4 percent from 29.5 billion won to 75 billion won, officials said.

Hmmm. Actually, 151.4% of 29.5 billion comes to about 45 billion. This would presumably be a typo by the Herald, as the JAD account gives the current budget number as 49.5 billion.

So, where is all that money coming from, if the net effect of these increases only raised the budget by 4.7%? Cutting back on native teachers, perhaps?

Maybe, but there's no mention of it. No, the big loser appears to be school facilities improvement, which KH calls "repairing and exchanging deteriorated buildings and facilities": down 27.1 percent.

The upshot is, then, that it is my school's plan to build an elevated gymnasium, rather than me and my measly 500 dollar budget, that will suffer from the cuts: click here and scroll to #4.

Purpose of This Blog

In this weblog, I will focus on sharing my more successful ESL lessons with students in a Seoul high school (a boy's school, though I think that only matters sometimes). I teach "English Conversation". My classes generally have 36 to 40 stdents, and a Korean co-teacher. Classes last 50 minutes, and meet once a week.

I have been teaching in Seoul, at my school, since September 2008.  My school was chosen as 2010's "Seoul City Demonstration High School for English Education" which might sound more impressive than it is. Three or four teacher groups (including one group from Australia and New Zealand, and one group from Singapore) have traipsed down my "English Only Zone" hallway for a Q & A session, and that's about the extent of it, in my life, anyway.

This blog will also summarize and discuss news media reports (and whatever other sources I can find) of education news and policy, particularly in Korea but also in the US and elsewhere, especially in the area of ESL.  And especially if I can be witty, ascerbic, and/or devastatingly insightful on the topic.

Before coming to Korea in 2008, I labored for long years in the semi-rural environs of sub-suburban Atlanta as a science, math, computer, drama, debate, etc., teacher in a couple of small independent schools serving students from PreK through 12th grade.  I was also varsity and middle school soccer and sometime basketball coach, athletic director, State administrator for Soccer and Literary, summer camp director, webmaster, school photographer and probably other stuff I can't remember.

In Korea, I teach English Conversation. Period.

It is just as challenging as anything else I've done, but it is limited and defined: I do two or three lesson plans per week, with 20 or 21 classes, and I am finished by 4:30 every day.  YMMV, but I do not do grades or exams, I do not do speaking tests, and I do not go to faculty meetings--except the ones held in restaurants, where beer and soju accompany the food, rather than budget reports and curriculum notes.

I am fortunate to work with caring professional educators; my classroom has a large touch-screen display TV, a PA system with a mic, and a modern computer with Microsoft Office 2007.  Still, I think the best lessons I do can be taught in less technology-rich environments--indeed, some of my favorites involve only pencil and paper, or not even that!

Nonetheless, one cannot ignore that our students live in a hyperactive world of TV, computer games and full-color images.  The plain whiteboard and some markers is good for a change, but is no longer our meat-and-potatoes; I recall I went home covered in chalk dust each day for many years.  I'm still looking for better ways to reach my students.

I can't say I adopted the computer into my classroom from the start-up, but I was earlier than most at my school--I was quickly made webmaster.  The internet is a powerful tool for educators--it has its flaws and vulnerabilities, but you are using it right now!  These days my computer acumen is mostly known by the sweet, sweet Powepoints I produce (some co-teachers have mentioned they'd rather have me teach an extra class in making PPTs over one helping them with English!)  

My plan is to choose one or two of the six or eight lessons I do each month and provide a detailed breakdown, and all the materials (at least the digital ones) needed to make it happen in the classroom.  In the hope that someone out there can use them.  Or take some kernel of pedagogy from them, and apply it in their own ESL classroom.

If you do find something here useful, let me know by commenting with the form after each post--if you know a better way, or find a useful modification, please share it!

Size Matters

... at least when it comes to your score on the SAT essay section.  Didn't know the SAT has an essay section?  You're not alone--my informal survey on this question found one out of two people didn't know the SAT even has an essay section, which is 50% of the sample.  The other 50% couldn't remember what SAT stands for.  Mind you, this survey has a margin of error of + or - (whichever the case may be) 15,000 per cent.

My survey is slightly less scientific (but only slightly) than that performed by a New York high school student and reported by ABC News: Has Teen Unlocked the Secret to a Better SAT Score?  Nebbishy fourteen-year-old Milo Beckman has taken the SAT twice, and found that even though his second essay was factually inaccurate and generally inferior, it earned a higher score.

It was longer:

"My hypothesis is that longer essays on the SAT essay component score higher," he said.
So he asked his fellow students at New York City's Stuyvesant High School to count how many lines they had written on their essays and to provide their scores.
"I thought, 'This ought to be interesting.' I've always wondered about this, too," said David Sugarman, a classmate.
"This was something directly related to the SAT itself and the means by which, you know, we were being graded," another classmate, Yana Azova, said.
Milo says out of 115 samples, longer essays almost always garnered higher scores.
"The probability that such a strong correlation would happen by chance is 10 to the negative 18th. So 00000 …18 zeros and then (an) 18. Which is zero," he said.

Me?  I kinda wonder what are the chances that it's really an 18 after those 18 zeroes?

Another thing I wonder is, why has a 14-year-old already taken the SAT twice?  I only took it once, as a high school senior, and that was under duress.  Back then, the top score was something like 23.  Today, you can get 14 million on your SAT.  And you still might not get into Harverd. 

The ABC News story follows up Milo's research with some MIT professor's insane blathering about how to do well on this (largely imaginary, according to my research) essay section, including such advice as memorize some big words and sprinkle them randomly throughout your writing, and conclude your paper with a quote by a famous person, even if it is totally unrelated to your topic, and even if you don't really remember it well enough to get it right.  I hasten to add that I am NOT making this part up.  

Which explains why I didn't get into MIT.  As the poet Sherman Helmsley said, "I am the Captain of my Fate, I am the something something here in Seoul."

N.B.: My first post on this blog is a copy of a post on my other blog, The Seoul Patch. This will be the way of things for a while, to some extent, as I migrate my education/classroom/teaching stuff to this--more serious--blog address.