My After School-Class

For the past three months, I've taught an after-school English class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

There were a total of 14 students, although one was almost always absent. Usually, by the end of the school day they were sick of studying and I was sick of teaching, so most days we spent the 50 minutes playing English games like Tic-Tac-Toe-Hangman and Do You Love Your Neighbor.

The best English practice I ever got out of them were the times they'd just talk with me. For example, before my friend Emily visited, I had the class make a welcome poster. They loved the activity and spent the time asking me about her, what things she likes that they could include on the poster and offered advice on what she should do while visiting. One day last week when I wasn't feeling well, the students basically took over the class and taught me some Korean games like 3,6,9 and a kind of water-less Marco-Polo.

At the start of the semester I asked them to write their names in English on the attendance sheet. I expected them to just write "Park Jin Wook" and things of that nature. Instead they made their own names. So I ended up with everything from Henry, to Cortez, to Obama and Gandalf and strangely enough one boy who chose "Jane."

The class wasn't all sunshine and lollipops; there were plenty of times I would have loved to ring their necks. Even now, there are at least a couple of students I hope to bar from taking a class from me ever again. But there are several of the students who I'll miss. These were the kids I saw the most often each week and therefore had the best opportunity bond with.

Here's a class photo I took after our final meeting where we ate pizza and watched Finding Nemo.