(Boot) Camp

This week begins (and next week ends) "camp", a regimen of extra classes for the unfortunate, during winter break. And it's all about me! Really. I don't understand why SMOE doesn't do away with our "vacation time" (which we're only allowed to take during school breaks) and just let us travel when everyone else is off school. But that's the system, and so they have to come up with work for the native teachers to do when regular school isn't in session. In the past, there were EEP camps, or district camps, but this year nothing was slated, so my school (or, more precisely, one of my co-teachers) was forced to create a program to keep me busy.

Things I'm grateful for regarding camp:
--Small classes! Each group has 15 enrolled, and only about half that show up each day, so it's a much more congenial and manageable situation. I can actually tell who's thriving and who needs help. It's actually reasonable to have the kids make nametags and for me to use them. I really enjoy this size.
--No co-teacher. I feel much more relaxed without anyone looking over my shoulder. I feel free to try things and see how they go. I feel more in authority because I'm running the show, and the kids' behavior isn't going to suddenly change if someone else decides to leave the room.
--Half days. Classes go from 9-12:15, and then that's it. I've gotten home a little earlier each day this week. I was planning to go to a museum today, but I'm worn out and intending to visit one on Saturday, so I put it off. Hopefully not for too long.
--It only lasts 2 weeks. Most of my friends have 3-4 weeks, but with me going to Jeju and Cambodia, 2 weeks is all we could manage.

Things that make me keep repeating what I'm grateful for:
--Half days. I'm still teaching 4 classes/day, they're just all compressed, with only 5 minutes in between, so once you start, there's no time to organize, revisit, finish up, or draw breath. There's also no lunch, so the difficulty of devising meals for myself has been doubled. I'm actually starting to miss rice.
--No co-teacher. Terrie's not involved with this at all, so I'm totally on my own. Questions, problems, confusion? Too bad, sucker.
--The preparation is intense! Suddenly, the school year seems like a cake walk. I had picked the books I wanted to read ahead of time, but after the first day, it was apparent that those plans were (to quote Dumbledore) optimistic to the point of foolishness. 3 of the 6 classes were not ready for sentences, let alone a whole story (though one has a kid who lived in New York for 3 years thrown in, just to make sure I don't get too complacent). I'm settling into a trajectory now, but the first few days were each taken up with hours of reading, searching, agonizing, and rejiggering. I've gone through more objectives than I can count in Korean, and I'm back to the panic and anxiety that dogged my first days here. I have 3 different books I'm working with (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Dr. DeSoto, and the third is actually a website of news articles), and each group progresses at a different rate (the 1st graders are doing well with Dr. DeSoto, and are poised to finish it next class, while I can only drag the 2nd graders through 3 or 4 pages at a time), so, like kittens, my "free" afternoons are anything but. And since I'm doing all the work at home, I have to sprint to school every morning to get things printed & copied before the scrum at the copier gets too impenetrable. The really scary part is that if I were teaching in the US, the whole year would be like this!

In other news, it's REALLY cold here. -6F yesterday morning. 0 today. The Weather Channel's 10-day outlook doesn't promise anything different. I don't think this is typical. Cambodia's looking pretty nice!