Intensive Classes

So in Korea, there are two major semester. One starts in the fall and other in the spring. The fall semester starts in September and spring in March. From January to February, hagwons have a period call Intensives. It's basically when the students no longer have public school and parents enrol their kids into more classes at their hagwons to increase their ability. Since a lot of these students already come on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they signed up for more classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This time, we had a lot of the younger students that signed up for Phonic classes. 

Normally the Korean teachers teach phonics so it's the first time for all the foreign teachers. And only foreign teachers have these extra classes. Since I already had four classes on Tue/Thu, I only got one extra class so I have five classes in total. Neil on the other hand had three classes, he got an extra four classes so he has seven classes in total. Poor guy. 

In my Master Phonics class, half the students are in my regular classes so it's not a surprise for them to see me. Teaching phonics is interesting because I hardly remember taking phonics when I was a kid. And making those sounds is silly outside of class and at the beginning some of the older students felt embarrassed when I make tell me what sound "A" makes. And sometimes I forget what that letter is suppose to sound like too! I'm glad the students participate and seem genuinely interested in it. 

Neil has seemed to let himself go during these intensive classes. He's developed a game where he gives a word like "crazy" and the students have to act crazy for a few seconds and then he'll shout "serious!" and they can't laugh, move, or say anything otherwise they don't earn their points. All the while, he desperately tries to make them laugh by doing chicken dances and going through his Jim Carey repertoire along with impressions of asian stereotypes (i.e Five dolla!). There's an instance where kids slam their faces in their books to hide from him. He's usually exhausted on these days however he has a lot of fun. Some of my students that he teaches have started calling him "Nail-teacher". In fact, one of his students in the writing class wrote about him: