Orientation Day 5

Well today's the day....I had my lesson demo. Before I get into all the nitty-gritty, I'll take you through the first half of my day.

I started the morning with two lectures. The first covered Korean culture and history. The instructor told us the presentation was 16 hours he had condensed into 4 and would be giving over the course of an hour and a half. Quite the feat for him. The presentation itself was interesting, but there was so much crammed into it. I guess I never truly thought about how old Korea is seeing as how there are artifacts that date back to before 3000BC. There has been a longstanding tumultuous relationship with China and Japan with some Mongolian strife sprinkled in here and there. That then led to the creation of strong familial bonds and the sense of brotherhood all soldiers feel when in the army. The culture itself is beautiful and full of so much pain and sorrow (Han), which they make up for through Heung (happiness and excitement). I am dying to visit museums here and continue my education in Korean history.

The second lecture was about co-teaching. This would have been ideal to see at the beginning of the week seeing as how the lesson demo relies on co-teaching, but oh well! Both teachers were energetic and obviously had a passion for teaching. The native Korean teacher was just adorable and shared with us the story of how she was given her American name, Jenny. This name, it turns out, is super popular, but she said she felt so special to be given a name that she never cared how common it was. I definitely saw some ideas to store in my back pocket for my own classroom.

After a quick lunch I went to meet my partner and practice. I was never nervous to demo seeing as how I had control of a rowdy class of fifth graders just last semester. I was, however, wary of the time we had to hit. The presentation needed to be exactly 15 minutes; no more, no less. The practice went smoothly, and I found myself sitting in the classroom awaiting my doom. Just kidding! My group did have to go first, which meant we got to set the bar super high. The presentation went off without a hitch, and the 15 minutes was over in the blink an eye. The guest teacher watching our demo provided us with much appreciated feedback. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but he did say I have a great cadence in my voice and my pacing was great. All right, I'll toot it. TOOT, TOOT! The only critique he gave in the moment was for the both of us to work on our Teacher Talk. Essentially, some of the instructions and transitions we gave were a little too advanced for the students to understand. Simplicity is key. I then had to watch 6 other groups give their demo lessons before we were finally able to eat dinner. The hardest part of the entire week is now over. Cheers!