Park Ah Ron Teacher

With "intensives" finally over, Katie and I are looking forward to a more relaxed schedule this term. Last week I said good-bye to most of my students. This term it is possible that I could be teaching a few of the same kids, but the majority of them will be new.

Here are a couple more videos I shot of my class that does skits. In this skit, a CEO and the chairman of the board are arguing over whether to hire a woman or a man as vice president. The woman is more qualified, but the director thinks people will be angry if they hire a female. The first video features Daniel and May (seated) and Jenny and Nick as the candidates.



The next video is of Hea Saun and Patrick. As you may gather, Patrick is a bit of a spaz, but hilarious.



Here are a few pictures of an elementary class that I had. In the first picture, Roy is in the middle, flanked by Danny (left) and Andy (right). Danny is quite a little patriot. According to him, everything good originated in Korea. I even had quite an argument with him one day regarding the word "sofa" (Koreans say "sopa"). It was useless to try to explain to him that "sopa" is a Korean corruption of an English word. "Sopa", he was proud to inform me, was, and always has been, a Korean word. Roy is a smart kid and usually a bit quiet, and Andy is the class-clown, always trying to get a laugh.


The next photo is Kevin. Kevin had had some real behavior issues in the previous term, and I was originally a little bummed to see that I had him again. But miraculously he really came around and I ended up having a lot of fun with him.


This is Jenny. She is one of a number of students who call me "Park Ah Ron", after Korean swimmer and gold-medal champion Park Tae Won. She is convinced that I can speak Korean by virtue of my ability to read Korean words and say things like "nay" (yes), "aniyo" (no", and "babo" (crazy). More than once she has asked me, in all sincerity, why it is that I can speak Korean but the other teachers cannot.


Little Jessica was absent from my class for the first few weeks of the term due to her being in the U.S.A.. Chicago, I think. One day she brought a bag of goldfish crackers as a snack and told me they were from America. They must have been, because you can't buy them here.


Near the end of this term, all the teacher were required to hand out evaluations for the students to fill out. I was happy to find that, with very few exceptions, all my kids liked me and wanted to have me again. Here are a few examples:


I knew that my "now" was a little weak, and I will definitely be working harder on it this term. I suspect the student meant that I'm already really good "now"... This next one was pretty honest about what I could do better in the future.


This student clearly liked me, but was not as impressed with my Korean skills as Jenny...


I just thought this one was sweet.


Finally, I thought I'd post one of the few negative ones.


During the last couple of weeks of intensives I made a habit of going downstairs to the 7-11 and picking up a Coke during my brief interval between classes. I think someone was a little jealous.