Vacation School, the end

Yesterday I completed my last  day of vacation school, at least vacation school at my school.  We had a good final class yesterday. I'd been having them write every morning about various topics and for our final class I had them compare and contrast American high schools to Korean ones.  This wasn't an entirely fair question since they were basing their ideas of American high schools on High School Musical and Step Up, the two movies we watched in class.  But all the students seemed to be in agreement that they would prefer to go to school in America because the students have more freedom.  They don't have to wear uniforms, and they have free time to do things besides study.  Several students wrote woeful tales of studying all day and night so they could go to college.  One girl expressed the one difficulty of going to school in America to be that she didn't have enough clothes.  The other day we had a debate about whether or not Korea was the best place to live.  After a thrilling debate by my divided class I gave them a few minutes to come up with the best reason to defend their side.  The Pro side Korea was the best place to live becauuse their ancestors had died for the country.  The Con side said that students in Korea don't have any free time because when school is over they have to go to the academy and study all night.  In any case, there seems to be some resentment amongst the students about all the studying they have to do.  And I don't blame them.  It just encourages me to spend all my class time doing fun things, since they seem to have the boring things covered.

We had a scavenger hunt around the school as our last activity, which seemed to be a big hit despite the fact that it was rather chaotic and several of the clues mysteriously went missing.  They had no idea what to do because I guess they don't have scavenger hunts in Korea.  And instead of following the clues, several groups would see a clue and grab it.  Then they would show up at my desk claiming to be done.  So I would ask how many clues they had.  "We have three clues!"  "Well," I would say, "You are supposed to have 14, so go look again."  But everyone had a fun time running around and then we had pizza, so the day was a success.

Next week we have another English camp that includes all the best English students in Gunsan.  Jordan and I will be teaching an elementary class together.  Since we've never taught elementary students before and don't know what ages these kids will be, it should be an interesting time.