Rather Proud

So I'm a week late here on the blog, my apologies to any regular readers out there who find it's the only way to be sure I'm still alive here in Korea. Last week was the first time it got and stayed cold all week long, and I've been freezing in my classroom with no motivation to do anything but sit near the heater. I also was a little short on sleep last week too, which made it less enjoyable to get motivated and write on the blog. And why was I lacking sleep? Well, that's what this blog is all about today.

As you may already know, I work on my own without the aid of a co-teacher. It's not a very desirable way to teach from a Korean standpoint, but it gets the job done and saves money for the school. Shannon works with one of the best co-teachers around. Her co-teacher is an amazing teacher, highly motivated, and will most likely be principal of a school one day (still a very impressive and unlikely achievement for a woman in Korea). The two of them have been doing such a good job lately, that their open classes (classes put on so that other teachers can come and learn from them, something many schools will do) have been noticed by the provincial education board and are being done more and more often. Most teachers in a year will do one or fewer open classes - Shannon has now down maybe a dozen.

Anyway, things were going really well with their classes, and they were asked to start traveling to other cities outside of Mokpo to do these classes. In fact, Shannon and her co-teacher (Chu Su Yeong) are now the example for the entire area on how team-teaching should be done, and will travel to schools hours out of town to help them instruct. They were also the ones chosen to put on a demonstration for all the elementary teachers in the city, which, after watching 5 or 6 other open classes, was by far the best teaching example I've been shown. Someone also video taped this class, and sent it off to Seoul to the National Board of Education. And so, from a selection of 40 entries from around the country, Shannon and Chu Su Yeong were chosen as one of the 4 finalists.

Last week, everything seemed to come together all at once. The final travel day for teaching around the province was on Saturday, and the Education Board was coming on Friday. So, everyday for the entire week, Shannon was at school, sometimes till after midnight, preparing with Chu Su Yeong for the big day on Friday. Once that was finished, they spent all night Friday preparing for Saturday. When it was finally all wrapped up Shannon slept for over four hours Saturday evening just to try and feel back to normal again.

So that's pretty much all wrapped up now. The semester is almost finished, Chu Su Yeong is moving to another school in March, and life will be back to normal - except that there really hasn't been a "normal" in life since coming to Korea, which I absolutely love. It's funny though, since Chu Su Yeong is now that much better off when it comes to her career, and will probably be a principal even sooner now. Shannon on the other hand hasn't really gained much other than a new and interesting experience from it all. We talked about how she could probably get her pick of jobs next year with this on her resume. I would bet she could make as much as $60,000 or more next year (legally too) if she played it right and ended up with a job that had her working most of the time. But, she's pretty much done with teaching, so she'll have to be happy with the experience.

Oh, I almost forgot - they gave out awards to everyone involved in this, some nice glass plaques to put on the mantle at home for the hard work the teachers put into everything. Except they never gave one to Shannon. Ooooh, I was (and still am) so mad about that! She was right there in front of them, and they gave these nice plaques to every local teacher as a thank you and not to her!

Anyway, this blog is dragging on here, and I'll end it quickly. Before I go though, the one big bonus that did come from all her hard work is, she's going to get an extra week off in February, which means from Dec. 28th to March 3rd, she only works for two days. I'm in a little bit of a different pickle, which I'll talk about in the blog later this week. Till then, it's back to work for me - the heater's running, I've got a thermos full of hot chocolate, and I've got double the classes to go through till from now till January. So long!