Stressed to the Max!

Alas!!! The work of the portfolio is finished!! I have put a lot of man hours into collecting work and writing and now it seems likes it’s over. Yesterday I submitted my portfolio and now I can clear my mind a little. That might have been the most mentally abusive project I have ever experienced, but I am proud and happy it is complete.
This has not been the best week. It was suppose to be a week of relaxation because there was no school this week due to “Children’s Day”, but of course I spent most of it making changes to my portfolio and added some last minute artifacts and just not feeling satisfied with my work. Then…I had been having such a good time at the school. I was coming to school early, I was creating great lessons and they were all going really well, and I was starting to feel like I had dug myself out of the hole, but then Thursday came. There was no school this week except for on Thursday. The fourth grade was going on a field trip to tour the city of Seoul. My CT asked me last week if I wanted to go. She gave me option of either coming along on the field trip or taking the day off. I thought it would be a good experience first of all to see how Koreans run their field trips and also because I had yet to have a tour of Seoul. So I said I would love to go. On Thursday I left about 20 minutes earlier than I usually do and I took a taxi to school and guess what!? There was apparently an accident and it caused a lot of traffic and I was stuck right in the middle of it. I tried to contact Ms. Lee to let her know I would be about 15 or 20 minutes late, but she never responded. By the time I got to school it was 9:10 and the whole fourth grade and all the teachers had already left. So I left Ms. Lee a message on the school communication system and worked on my portfolio until about 11:00, then I went to Korea University’s library and finished working on my portfolio. Later that day I received some text messages from Jen Kang saying that Ms. Lee was very upset with me for missing the field trip and not letting her know and I hope I can resolve this when I return to the school on Monday. I want to apologize to you and Ms. Lee for this incident. I hope this doesn’t send me deeper into the hole.
On a better note, my personal life here for this past week has been good. Last weekend three of my friends and I went on a trip to the sea. We left a little late in the day so instead of taking about 3 hours to drive there, it took 7 hours because of all the traffic. Seoul is a crazy place for traffic!!! However, it was a fun trip and was completely relaxing and just the pick me up I needed for the previous drama that I have been experiencing. On the trip we walked along the beach, it was a little too cold to go swimming but it was still very nice to just look at the ocean and watch the sun set. Later that night we shot off fireworks on the beach along with about 50 other people. It was just a one day trip but it was very nice and comforting.
Tomorrow I am going on another trip because we don’t have school on Monday. This time 6 of my friend and I are taking a train to the northern part of the Han river to stay at this amazing resort and do watersports. Apparently they have some things called banana boats and fly fishing (which is not fishing at all) and I am so excited to go. I think it is going to be a great time and I hope it will ease my mind from the stress I have been through this week.
Next week I am not too excited about teaching. I will be teaching Physical education. I like PE, but I don’t really think I’m qualified to teach it and I am concerned because I will be teaching 2 classes at one time. This means I will have about 70 students in each session that I teach. That is way too many 8 and 9 year olds to teach and watch over. I really hope that the homeroom teachers can help me out, because I worry about the rambunctious-ness of the students and if I can control them. My classroom management plan really needs some adjustments to teaching a P.E. class.
One thing I am getting excited about is the drama class I working with. Our play is coming up in a couple of weeks so we only have about 5 or 6 more rehearsals and these students are working so hard. They are all 5th and 6th grade students and their English levels are great and they are completely dedicated to this play. I am excited to see how the performance goes. Next week we will be working on their costumes and I just think it is a really fun aspect of this student teaching experience. These are the students that I get to work with on a one-to-one basis and therefore have been able to first of all learn their names and secondly form good relationships with them. In my other classes I have 34-40 students who I see in a class twice a week, it is difficult to learn everyone’s names or get to spend real time getting to know them and developing a teacher-student relationship. I think I have rambled on enough for now…til next time….