Another one from the e-mail box.
*****
Howdy
Last week felt like rainy season came early. It was cold, rainy and gray for the most part. We caught some sunny breaks Tuesday, but that was it. It started raining Thursaday night, and poured until Friday evening. Which made for a nice nights sleep, but it REALLY messed up everyones Friday morning.
We usually take our Kinder Kids to the park for an hour instead of being in the classroom on Fridays. I also have an extra hour with another Kinder class on Fridays. Having the break of going to the park makes the day go by faster. Instead we were classbound. Luckily it stopped by the evening, so going out Friday night was fun.
It was also testing time thursday and friday. We give evaluation tests every few months. This week we do evaluations to send home. Sometimes they are...interesting to write. Most of the parents don't understand English so it can be a bit of a waste.
Next weekend we have a 3 day weekend. I am trying to get to Panmunjom if I can. If not, I might go to Kyeongju. The only problem with going to Kyeongju is there will be hordes of kids on school trips for the weekend.
May 5th is Children's Day here, hence the upcoming 3 day weekend. Kids get the day off of school, which is a pretty major event here. The 8th is also a holiday, it is Buddah's Birthday, or the Festival of Lantern's. So the week of May 5th we only teach 3 days. Well, 2 and a half since Wednesday is always a half day. :)
Time to go watch a movie.
Take care
Flint
*****
Hagwon student evaluations, testing, and report cards, also known as a fucking waste of time unless the student is good. I know I have mentioned this before but what they hey, the horse ain't dead yet. ;)
Except for my good boss, we were NEVER EVER supposed to tell the parents anything negative about the students. They all had to be little geniuses. Nothing with a score of under 70 was sent home either. They were not meant to be an honest evaluation of the students ability. They were just supposed to make the parent believe their child was doing well and progressing.
Before the testing Korea teachers would prep the students, often with the answers. Which let you know just how wrong the level was for many of the kids when they still did poorly on the tests.
I always fucking hated doing reports, too.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I tried to be honest.
BIG MISTAKE.
I was politely told that this just wouldn't do, and the negative comments that I had written about some bad students had to be changed. After that, I didn't give a flying fuck about the reports, and just wrote generic comments for every kid except the real geniuses.
And I would write them, not print them. One of my partner teachers had to go out and learn how to read cursive so she could make sure I wasn't trying to slip something past her.
I did the same thing, basically had generic sentences that really said nothing for most of the reports.
ReplyDelete