Happy Birthday Baes

It was SO HARD to wake up this morning. I made it on time to Dave's academy, but he was late. We got a lot done on the webpage. Euri helped a lot in deciphering the Korean instructions. Get this—the webpage is in English, but the buttons to update it are in Korean, as is the search function on parts of it. At least all of us (Scott, Kendall, and I) can read Korean. We were writing down what the various words meant and memorizing what different keys do. We got all of the "test" posts deleted, added a few announcements, and tried to update pictures (from Roger's wedding, the orphanage, and the bowling tournament). However, pictures aren't working quite right. And we can't do anything about the links that don't go to the right sites because it's somehow incorporated into the template of the page. We also opened up a web address for our church at ulsanchristian@yahoo.co.kr. The USA version of yahoo gives 4 MB of storage; the Canadian page gives 6 MB; the Korean page gives FIFTY!! Dave walked me through the instructions. But then you can sign in from the regular USA site and it displays in English. I might have to get one of those sites for myself for storing larger files online!

When we finished we went to the McDonald's at Save Zone. It was a quick lunch as I had to start teaching at 2. When I was in the teachers' room getting ready for class Penny, Kate, and Danny came in to give me Penny's gift—a purple handphone charm. Later in the 2 PM class Billy gave me a letter, but made me read it after class. The envelope is address to "Baes" (which is how they say my name). The front of the card (printed by a card company) says "Happy Birthday" then Billy wrote, "Hi Baes! Your happy day vary vary thas 2004 5/13 Billy" Wow do we ever need to work on spelling (and punctuation!). But for 2nd grade, that's OK.

Sometime in the afternoon the teachers started talking about tests. The Side by Side book is such a pain since I'm the only one who teaches it. I have to make up 10 listening questions, 15 speaking questions, and 2 writing questions (with example paragraphs). Then on top of that I have to do 10 listening questions for the High Impact book. At first Joelle said 20 listening questions and we didn't think we had tests made for Impact Intro and First. When Sandra asked Julian to help he pulled such an attitude and said that if he had to help me then I needed to help him with filling in the Tactics for Listening book because it's going to take HOURS and HOURS to do that and he's teaching 31 hours already. Sandra pointed out that we're all teaching that many hours, and that I have other tests to make. We found the Intro and First tests before things got worse. It was so annoying, though--I don't think he's even started doing the book to see how fast it goes. (It consists of listening to a tape and filling in the blanks. Whoever made the books can't put out an answer key, too??) Several months ago I did about half a book, and it took less than 90 minutes—it's not as bad as it looks. I didn't make a big deal out of having to do the extra work. In fact, I don't know if anyone besides Kara knew about it.

We also have a meeting sometime next week in the morning to discuss "changes." What changes?! Sandra already knows many of them, but isn't sharing. I did ask if classes would remain 50 minutes long, and she said yes. I know that instead of paper journals, the kids will start doing them on the computer which will be inconvenient because we won't be able to correct them between classes (with only one computer for all 10 teachers to use). We tried doing the journals online last year and the kids have such trouble with basic grammar and spelling stuff that trying to type in English just makes the journals worse. Then some of my beginning students were confused about the purpose of various parts of the site so were typing in Korean or thought it was cute to enter stuff like "I like apple." Both of those kinds of things showed up on my list to correct. At that level they're not supposed to be writing a journal!

The entire 4 PM period I spent correcting journals. There were SO MANY because they didn't turn them in last week because of Wednesday's holiday. Many of the 6th graders commented on this being their last Children's Day. From Jay's journal (with my corrections):

The Worst Children's Day Many children like Children's Day (people who don't like Children's Day aren't children). But this time was bad. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't buy anything. I just played computer and rode bikes. So this Children's Day is the worst Children's Day of my life.

The original was pretty good, if you ignore the lack of punctuation:

The worst children's day Many childrens like childrens day (don't like a childrens day this person was not children) But this time was bad I didn't go to any where Just I played computer and I rided bikes So this childrens day is the worst childrens day of my life

The rest of the day wasn't particularly good. Late students, dense students, loud students, arguing students. The end to another week.