End of the year Blues

End of the year here is rough. I finished up all our classes the week of Christmas and had to say goodbye to so many 6th graders who are graduating and who I've been teaching for nearly two school-years.

 First was my Thursday school who I treated to some choco-pies and calligraphied Goodbye notes during their last class. During the lesson, my deaf student, Junsu, constructed a little paper heart with a goodbye letter and the other kids decided to make a giant poster for me during their break.

They also gave me this pot one of them made as an afterthought. It's meant for kimchi but makes a wonderful pencil holder. 

They made me wait in the classroom after class while they finished it:













Then we took some pictures and I wished them good luck in middle school. 

I should also mention that they suck at taking pictures.

They're not super happy to graduate. Middle school here is really tough with competitive exams and loads more study-time. The kids probably won't have much free-time now that they've finished Elementary school.

After that we've had some fun assemblies:

And I've been whipping out all my best games as a send-off. Like English olympics:

The boys were definitely using bad form, so we had to redo it.

(there were funner challenges but I failed to record any)

The after-school kids did a human alphabet, which I showed them on the last day.

I also gave them all candy and taught them to write their names in English (they were obsessed and a few stayed after to write down every member of their family).


Oh and these kids organized all of my art supplies when they didn't want to play a game so I told them they could play the game or they could clean the classroom. They chose clean and they took their job very seriously.


We had a teacher's Sports Day the last day which involved games like "make a giant half pipe out of newspaper and run to the end to catch a ping-pong ball", flicking traditional shoes across the gym, playing a game of human wack-a-mole (the rules were explained to me by Mr. Hwang passing me a giant inflatable ball, pointing at the principal standing in the middle with his team, and saying "kill him"). Then we had this peg-leg race:

It was fun and hysterical. I rarely get to spend time with the other teachers so it was fun to be included.

The last day at my main school, I had all my kids do scavenger hunts. The younger kids got candy and I managed to record some of their hunt: (I really wish I wasn't always so annoying in the background, sorry!)

5th Grade

4th Grade

Maybe I'm biased but I think my kids are super cute and hilarious and get such a kick out of watching the videos of their struggle.

The 6th graders scavenger hunt involved finding their graduation presents: school supplies and candy with little handwritten notes and their names in calligraphy. They really had a hard time figuring out the scavenger hunt at first but once they got it, they loved it and were pretty stoked about their gifts:



(the boys were too cool for pictures so I had to snap a shot of their dance party in the corner)
The girls were all really sad when I told them we won't have anymore classes and asked for my phone number and invited me to their graduation. I'll still see them around the school up until February so it'll be a very drawn out goodbye.

They're cute. I love my kids. Next up, Winter Camp.