I'm just sick and tired. . . literally. My nose is running, my throat is scratchy, the school's still cold and this week has just been a real piss-off despite not having to plan. Unfortunately, this requires my co-teacher to plan instead. You think finding the right page to photocopy would be easy; apparently not for her. She's your typical space cadet: very academic, but completely out to lunch. As we are fast approaching the end of the Korean school year English class consists of watching "Up" for our promising 3rd and 4th Grade students. There are 7 classes per grade with an average of 28 students per class. In Korea you can't just watch a movie, you need questions to answer and key phrases to learn. Since I picked the last movie before Winter Break (Toy Story 3), she picked one this time and was left to do all the legwork for it just as I was prior to the break. First, she only accounted for one of the grades, which resulted in a lengthy trip to the photocopier. Then what happens? She photocopied the answers sheet as opposed to the questions sheet. Back to the copy room. Alright one week is finished, next week more of the same: keep watching "Up," keep answering questions, and keep learning new phrases.
These question sheets are not made by myself or my co-teacher, there's a book with all of these questions, it has a question sheet for every ten minutes of a given movie. This book has every children's movie post 2000 which reflects the school's DVD library. Although the innovative mind who developed this book of wonders garners a lot of respect its editor is on the other spectrum. I've found spelling and grammar mistakes which can slide, but when a set of questions coordinates with another movie. . . PREPARE THE GALLOWS!!! Sure enough, my co-teacher selects this question sheet. Back to the copy room since Dory asks questions to a school of fish and never bounces off of Jellyfish in Up. Meanwhile, again, I'm left with students stricken with cabin fever and the anticipation of a two week vacation running up and down the walls yelling and screaming. 50% don't even know what "sit down" means, you'd think that would be a priority, wouldn't you? Sometimes I think she makes these absent-minded mistakes just to escape the madness.
Then today happens. First we had the movie book debacle of having Finding Nemo questions instead of Up. So we played hangman while this ordeal was sorted out; they asked for a very hard animal and I gave them elk. They had an L and stick man hanging on the whiteboard by the time my CT returned with the next set of questions. After that class she was obviously rattled and reverted back to what she knew. The first round of question sheets, which we had done 14 times before. The thing that got under my skin the most here was the fact that while she was out of the classroom filling her thermos, or whatever she does, I had handed out the right set of questions. Speaking in Korean she had asked for them to be returned and then gave them the question sheet they had last time. So now we plunge into cramming 30 minutes of film, and 10 minutes of instruction into 30 minutes. Surprisingly enough I had four classes but I only remember two. Maybe its due to being sick.
Lunch sucked too.
But I'm settling down. I have isolated myself, challenged the wicked witch of the English department and now I'm watching the Aristocats, in Korean, but I remember enough of the plot to make sense of it all. The absensce of Phil Harris' voice is a bit of a let down but I'm still happy. I really wish I could blow off some steam playing Frisbee tonight, but I need to get rid of this bug for the weekend, and more importantly the weekend after that. Sorry for venting. One last thing: approximately 1372 pages were wasted. I say wasted because they don't get marked. Ahh, another day in Korea.
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