We headed to the buffet breakfast around 8:15AM. The food was pretty awesome! My plate didn't exactly reflect breakfast very well, but it was very good. I had broiled fish, salmon sashimi, kimchi, cereal, and potatoes.
Workshops started at 9:00AM. The EETAs were separated for the first workshop. There were supposed to be 4 different leaders, but we decided to combine the group; there are only 11 of us. We had a really productive conversation; we discussed what our situations are like, what hasn't been working, what has been working, what we need to do for EETAs during orientation next year, etc. We all have very different schools situations; some EETAs only have 4-8 students per class, while some of us have 40 students per class. Our technology differs, the age of our students differ, and our co-teacher situations differ; hence, we all have very different experiences, but because we are elementary ETAs, we have more in common with one another than with the secondary ETAs.
The second workshop was entertaining, but I didn't really learn a lot from it. We split off in different groups and I decided to go to the group entitled, "Korean Confucian Culture as an American Ambassador." We discussed what situations we have run into being in a confucian culture. Some women have been put in charge of fetching coffee for their host fathers and principals at school, some men have experienced pressure to drink, and some ETAs have been subject to curfews. One of my favorite stories is from a female ETA who on her first day was chased around by her host grandmother who took her shirt right off of her. The grandmother wanted to wash the ETA's clothes, but the ETA was still wearing them. After fighting back and forth, the ETA grabbed her clothes, ran into her room, and jammed her door shut by stuffing clothing and erasers under the door.^^
The next workshop that I chose to sit in on (Volunteering) was not as informative as I would have liked, so I found myself wandering from group to group. I ended up sneaking out and taking a walk outside for a few minutes.
We had lunch, but the vegetarian meal was more like a salad than a full meal. It was okay though. I got to talk to Jen and Nika more which was nice. We have fairly similar outlooks on life and have no intention on settling down any time soon. They, too, love to travel.
After lunch, we headed to a presentation about a program called TALL. It is a computer program that helps students learn English. I had heard that the presentation was going to be slightly frustrating, and that it was! I'm an EETA which means no time soon am I going to be suggesting to my school that they buy a computer program to teach students English, I don't agree with that method of teaching, and it takes a high level of self-motivation to complete such a program. Many of the ETAs will agree with me when I say, students don't have enough motivation to complete a program such as that. Afterward we learned that the program is directed at poorer schools who can't always provide a native English speaking teacher. This helped me slightly change my perspective of the program, but I'm still not a fan of a computer teaching a student. It could work if a teacher were right there to supervise study, but if the program is directed at schools that cannot provide native English speakers, how will non-native English speakers properly supervise and add depth to a computer program.
We briefly split up to exchange lesson plans and game ideas; so naturally the EETAs sat together. There were some helpful suggestions. We then moved into a "cultural activity." Many of us joked around that we hoped that the cultural activity was drinking, because the workshops had not been incredibly energizing. The activity ended up being a traditional Korean game where we are broken up into groups of 8, there's a gameboard, and we throw sticks to move game pieces around the board. It was an interesting game to learn, but we were all ready to get out of there by that point. We stuck around for a group picture, but a few ETAs thought that they'd be real funny by not sticking around. We were all numbered at orientation, and we had to count off to make sure we were all around for each workshop during orientation. Well the number system managed to survive the 2 month break we've had from each other, and the head of the ETAs, Susie, had us count off randomly throughout the conference to make sure nobody ducked out. While we all took a picture, three ETAs were being called for being MIA. They wandered in after the pictures were taken, and we had to do it all over again. Needless to say, there was a little tension in the room.
We had the whole evening off and were in charge of finding our own dinner. Quite a few people wanted to go downtown, and I had absolutely no desire to do so. A few of us stuck around and walked to the Hilton which was nearby. We were going to go to the Western restaurant, but we got distracted by a German buffet they were having. Eliza and Lindsey decided to go to the restaurant, and Christine, Rebecca, Ray, Jenna, and I decided to pay the $35 for the buffet. It was completely worth it. There was tons of meat that didn't interest me, but there was tons of sashimi, cheese, pasta, soup, etc. On top of that, there was unlimited beer! We sat around for about two hours before we headed out. Back at the hotel, Lauren met up with Jenna and I in our hotel room. We sat around and talked for about 2 hours, mostly about religion. I am often times confused by religion. At first I really had no desire to talk about it, which is unusual for me, but it ended up being a good conversation. A guess a part of why I didn't want to talk about it is because I didn't know how my opinions would be received first of all, and second of all I still don't completely know how to put what I believe into words; this being because I still don't completely understand what I believe.
I went to bed around 1:30AM, which is an improvement from last night.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment