Teacher, Teacher.

After a week's worth of training, I began teaching at the Global Education Center on Monday.

The GEC is a very recent school, having opened its doors in September 2006. As such, it's a pretty state-of-the-art building; better equipped, even, than some Universities. Every class has a multimedia projector! The GEC also has something over other private schools (hogwons) in the region: Experience Rooms. There are a dozen rooms, all with different themes, which each class gets the chance to visit. The themes range from Science to Drama to Quizzes, with each room being more than adequately decorated. It's basically another way of exposing English to the kids - in other subjects that they're already familiar with.

Now, as far as what I 'do' when i'm teaching.. It varies. I can teach anything from Phonics-leveled kids (Usually 6 or 7 years old, who understand nothing but the pictures you're showing them) to Stars (The highest possible level - fluent enough to converse freely in english). It's nice to have a mixture of both in a day, that way you're not completely starved for a conversation with people who understand what you're saying. The material is silly enough, but that's to be expected when you're teaching kids of that age group.

I'll make sure to post an audio, at some point, of myself singing the smash-hit 'I Have Blue Pants', or the one I sang today, 'I'm a bug, I can't hug'.

As the kids go, from what I read before coming here, I expected a complete different experience than in Canada. And honestly? I just haven't seen the difference so far. Some are well-behaved, some are disruptive beasts. The higher the level of language class, usually, the better-behaved (from what i've seen). Younger kids who don't understand a teacher tend to be a bit more fearless, since they figure that they can't really be disciplined. Joke'll be on them, of course, once I start picking up a bit more of the language, but that's at least a couple of months away.

For the most part, though, just like in Canada: They're good kids. My silliness with kids seems to translate, thankfully, so they pick up on it pretty well. They address me (and most other teachers) as 'Teacher, Teacher!'. So as we were playing hangman today, one kid looks at me as i'm pretending not to know the word and she says 'Teaaaaacher knowwwwwws'.

Yes, Teacher knows.