Just before bed

So I'm back in Korea, and have been for almost a week. I've settled into my apartment for the time being, though I still need to do some shopping to get things set up. You'd be amazed at how much things like drawers, dishes, sheets, or horizontal space are taken for granted.

My kids don't start until tomorrow, so even though I've been working since Monday, I haven't been teaching. I was a bit worried at first about tomorrow, since I wasn't left with any lesson plans for the week or the month (both of which were due today). I've managed to trip over a step and bruise both knees as well as cut up my toe rather nicely, and today I sliced my finger while stupidly trying to clean some gunk off some scissors.

I'm pretty sure I'm all set for tomorrow, but I'll know for sure in less than 24 hours. I found out today that I won't have afternoon classes - I'll be doing R&D instead. (Which stands for Research and Development, which basically means I'll be doing lesson plans for classes and lessons that I'll never teach.) I suppose for now I'd rather do that than plan the lessons and teach them as well.

My co-teacher and I are on the same page, which is wonderful. She seems really nice, and though she's only been at the school for a month, we both agree that some changes need to be made to the way the classroom is run - i.e. set up a Standard Operating Procedure for the kids, so they know what's expected of them. There's no school wide reward/consequences system, so I'm gonna start with a sticker board and treasure box and go from there. I like my three rules, though I've pretty much just stolen them from my parents:
1. When the teacher is talking you are silent and listening
2. Never hurt anyone physically or emotionally
3. Leave things better than the way you found them
(The last one is because the classroom was an absolute mess when I got there, and I spent more than a full day cleaning, re-organizing, and re-arranging. Re-decorating comes next, plus the kids need to take responsibility for the room - it's their classroom, too.)

We're doing a theme unit on animals, and the kids are going to meet the author of a children's book about the endangered Korean moon bear, talk about endangered species the unfair treatment of animals for use in traditional Chinese medicine, and then write about it. They were supposed to write a letter to the president of Korea to try to convince him to make the whole set up illegal. I think I'm just going to stick with a pen pal letter describing what it was like to meet an author and what they learned. And we're doing a KWL chart about Florida, since I'd like it to be a cultural exchange as well.

And now I should be off to bed, as I want to go in early tomorrow and finish setting up some things. (I left on time today because I had dinner plans with friends). I'm surprised at how quickly I became busy when I got back - I've had something to do every night this week, and I've got plans for the next three weekends as well.

So. I shall update again when time and energy become available. Ta for now.