Cheonan City.
Thanks to the arrangement of Mrs. Chae and my former TEFL student, Grace Soong-Woo, I had the wonderful opportunity to give a teacher training workshop to a 100 or so foreign English teachers who teach at the elementary, middle, and high school grade levels.
That's a long sentence.
The day started out taking the KTX from Seoul to Cheonan. Let me break it down for you: hotel/taxi to Seoul Station/KTX to Cheonan/taxi to Baek Suk Middle School.
All this in POURING RAIN.
Door to the classroom
At the middle school, I met Mrs. Soong-Woo at her English class. I also met her students. Since it was a special day with little instruction and lots of recreation the middle school boys and girls were in rare form. Actually, they were in common form. Middle schoolers.
I was asked to do an impromptu English lesson. It's been a long time. I love their enthusiasm. I taught them about snowmen, snow women and snow cows.
(It won't hurt them that 'snow cows' don't exist).
This is a snow cow.
The Cheonan Department of Education was the location of the workshop for the foreign English teachers. I did a two-hour teacher training workshop. Go to Tefl.posterous.com and search for "Engaging ELLs with Style" for the presentation powerpoint.
The workshop began with an amazing performance of kayageum (a stringed Korean harp) and chang-gu (drum). The middle school female singer BLEW ME AWAY. I have never heard such power from such a young person. Young people have a certain kind of power.
I really enjoyed sharing with these teachers. The feedback was positive and specific. I was happy to hear that They asked me back next year. Could this be a regular thing? I hope so. There was even a suggestion to have a similar workshop for the Korean English teachers.
Why not?
After this, and a brief tour of an Ear, Nose & Throat Clinic, I had the most wonderful dinner with Mrs. Soong-Woo and her husband. It was like a little bit of Italy in Korea. The owner is the chef who trained in Italy. The food was exquisite. I was really pampered. We talked for 4 hours.
Then it was a hurried drive to the windy KTX station, where I took the second to the last train home.
Did I just say 'home'?
-Roger