An apple for the teacher

I'm constantly surprised at the respect that teachers, even the pretend ones such as myself, are given. Almost every week one of the parents has some kind of treat (usually edible) delivered to the school for us all to enjoy. On one occasion one of the five year old's was sick at lunch time, not really a big deal I thought. By mid afternoon we were all noshing down on fruit waffles sent in by the mother to apologize for us having to deal with their marginally ill child.

Chuseok - Korean Thanksgiving is being celebrated this week, which for me simply means three days off work, but for Koreans its about as big as Christmas. All day Friday and Monday gifts from the parents were flowing into the office, usually large gift baskets/boxes filled with foodie items such as rice cakes (see above) or yummy smelling soaps and things. Feeling overwhelmed and amused, as I was handed a huge box of dried seaweed, I was told by one of my co-workers that if I thought this was something  "I should wait for Teachers Day". A whole day dedicated to honouring teachers? Now that really is something you wouldn't get back home!

Photos are go

It took me most of a night to figure it out but I did it! Photo albums from my trips about are now available by clicking on the tab to the left. They're largely unedited and I'm still in the process of adding captions - bear with me I'll get there.

Rocking the Hanbok

Next week is Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, so this week we had a Chuseok party at school. All the preschoolers and teachers dressed up in Hanbok, played games and made and ate song pyeon (steamed rice cakes). By the end of the day the kids were about as excited as we were exhausted aka the party was a success.

Korean traditional dress - Hanbok consists of a poofy petticoat with a long over skirt/dress (usually pink for unmarried girls and red for married women) on top you wear a little fitted jacket. The great thing about Hanbok is that the quantity of fabric means that its comfortable and flattering on all. The downside of which is that its quite hot and somewhat cumbersome to wear when entertaining 45 preschoolers during an unusually hot autumn day.

Laughter is the best medicine

The great thing about teaching young children is that it reminds me to laugh. One of my favourite classes I have is Saturn class (all out pre-school classes are named after planets) they're a group of eight, 6 year old boys. They're boisterous, loud and cheeky and I usually walk out of class feeling like I've just survived a natural disaster. But I love them. Every time I teach them I laugh. One of them is always doing something that is, usually unintentionally, hilarious. I can be having a rubbish day, fed up with lesson planning, report writing and questioning why I decided to do any of this at all. But, after 40 minutes with Saturn, I may still not be feeling like a box of birds but, I would have laughed at least once, which does wonders for the soul.

One of 'my boys' is a really good drawer. He likes to draw 3 things, jets, guns and dinosaurs. The other kids are great, they'll look at Sam's drawings and go nuts, pretending to be scared of one of his dinosaurs, they'll shriek and hide under chairs. Either that or suddenly I have class full of fighter pilots and machine guns. I love this, their imagination and creativity is fantastic. I feel like such a task mistress having to pull them away from their imaginings. I remember playing 'pretend' for hours as a child, we were everything from forest animals to French war heroes, the lunch bell ringing or home time at the end of playmate was always such a disappointment.

One of the things that I really like about Arche - my school is that its reasonably well rounded with an emphasis on play and creativity. By comparison to NZ standards there are a lot of expectations put on the kids and by proxy their teachers to work hard and achieve well. I am constantly stunned by the amount of home work and extra curricular activities my students do. Its nice to work in an environment that gives me a degree of space and freedom to make the lessons as enjoyable and creative as I can. I'm sure my kids will agree that I don't always succeed but at least I'm giving it a go.

Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts.

~Author Unknown