Mrs. Squarepants

Seeing as how I never update this, and all I do is teach and talk about my students, here's some more of their writing. These are both from a test I gave a while ago to 'Twinkle' class - a lively and bright group of 5th grade girls. A few weeks ago, Jenny stuck a Spongebob sticker on a worksheet about your 'Perfect Husband'. The jokes about her marriage to 'Spongie-bob' have yet to grow old for the students, or indeed their teacher. I think my mental age might have regressed somewhat in Korea.

This first one is from a student who has since left the academy. She was always rather sullen in class, and the Korean teacher described her as moody and dramatic. Put simply, she's an emo kid at the ripe old age of 11. Her writing was often very difficult to understand because she directly translates a lot from Korean, but she is very creative, and always put in a lot of effort. Here's her story about "The beach on a summer day":

I go to the beach on a summer day with my friends. We are play very exciting! In beach, many people play the sand. We use parasol, and we sit our under the parasol. Suddenly, one boat go to the ocean. Many people are screaming. Yes! One person stay at the ocean. Who die, or everyone life together. In beach, very quiet. Who doesn't speaking. After 20 minutes, brave human come to sand with stay water person together. We hit our hands. He is very brave human.

This second one is from my favorite and most adorable student. If I steal a Korean child, she's first on the list. I have added some full-stops to this because she doesn't really use punctuation yet. Her story is about "An old attic at night":

I'm went to my grandparent's house. That house have old attic. I'm seelped at grandparent's house with only sister I woke up and sister woke up too. We went to old attic because we are hungried. There are so many food. We were ate this. We came back and sleep. Next day we wake up and we are very full. My grandmother know the we ate old attic food. I'm looked my grandmother. She smiled.

A successful teacher?

Yesterday, I had one of my classes write questions to interview each other. One pair used 'What job do you want to do?' So I overheard little Brenda (E5) saying she was going to be a 'successful teacher':

Me: Ok Brenda, what do you mean by 'successful'?

Brenda: Good.

Me: So what is a successful teacher? Am I a successful teacher?

[pause]

Brenda: A little, teacher.

[much giggling from both of us]

Me: Ok Brenda, what does successful mean?

[more giggling]

Brenda: Students can understand teacher every word.

Lesson learned: Don't ask students questions like this. They actually tell you what they think. Glad to have learned that lesson with the cute little ones, rather than the awkward middle-schoolers.

Eventually I will post some photos from Christmas. But now, its time for work.