Nic Trips

Back in August, when I thought I would be leaving Korea, my students threw me a bunch of surprise "goodbye" parties during our last week before summer vacation. There were lots of tears, gifts, letters and pictures. The next week, while all the students out of school on vacation, my co-teacher came to me with a special offer that the program was willing to let me change my contract to stay 6 more months (this was something that usually doesn't happen), and I decided to say "YES!" Lo and behold...a few weeks later when school resumed, all the students were surprised and ecstatic that I hadn't left and school life continued as normal again. Since I didn't leave Korea at that time, I didn't end up putting the pictures from the goodbye parties on my blog. But since I'll be leaving in 11 days now, I suppose I'll add them now... I actually woke up late the day that my 4th graders threw a surprise party for me and arrive to school about 5 m...

The first classes I ever taught independently (with out a co-teacher or any sort of guidance for subject material), in my first few months in Korea back in 2014, were a mess. I had lots of big ideas for sure, but I know now my execution of them was poor and overall they were generally unorganized. After a year of teaching regular classes, after school classes, 2 camps, and several Saturday classes, I was ready to make my last Winter English Camp the best of all. Not only did I collect a plethora of great ideas for this 2 week camp from my year of experience and from my other teacher friends, I was able to finally put everything I've learned about teaching together without any outside assistance and create a camp itinerary, system and syllabus I was proud of. For starters, the theme of my camp this year was "America". I wanted to take the students to the USA in terms of teaching about the country, culture and language. I told them that while we were in English ...

Christmas is my favorite time of year. So of course, I brought the holiday into the classroom as soon as the holiday season rolled in. I set up a Christmas party class, the same as last year, on the days before Christmas for each of my grades. This school year, I have WAY more students than last. So this meant spending my entire Sunday baking 400 cookies and mixing up several sets of colors of icing to decorate them with. I spent hours with my after school class making decorations for fill the classroom with some Christmas spirit. All this work? TOTALLY worth it. I had so much fun, the kids had a blast and all around everyone enjoyed the week. Same as last year, I tried to take as many pictures and videos during the classes as I could to compile a fun music video! Merry Christmas~! I would begin each class teaching the kids a little bit about how we celebrate Christmas in the USA. In Korea, Christmas is celebrated as a "couples' holiday" (more similar to V...