Students Return to School

After three months of delays, my middle school is now open for students. This week the Grade 3s had the school to themselves. The 1st and 2nd graders will continue with their online classes for another week or so, after which our school will be full.

I was apprehensive about the school opening on two points. First, will safety procedures be enforced to ensure that students and teachers are safe and the spread of COVID-19 is minimized? Second, will I be prepared to conduct lessons?

Several new rules and procedures were put into place but very little of it was explained to me until that last minute. I did my best to find out information on my own, and piece together what I could. The high-tech first defence employed at our school is walk through temperature scanners at the door. Students and teachers have their temperatures read before entering the school. If your temperature is too high then I presume you will be pulled aside and not permitted to attend school that day. So far I have been well within the acceptable range.

There are secondary temperature checks before lunch, hand sanitizer is well placed throughout the school, and everyone wears masks in the classrooms. Students are supposed to keep their distance throughout the day. Desks are spread out in the classroom, and students nor teachers are permitted to sit together in the cafeteria. One person per table is strictly enforced. There are posters throughout the school reminding students of the required safe distance from others.

Perhaps the biggest imposition on me personally is that students must stay in their desks throughout the lesson. This is especially burdensome in an English language class where pair and group work are important learning methods, and moving around the classroom is essential to facilitate conversation. I need to find creative ways to engage the students, without having them leave their desks.

I think these safety precautions and classroom restrictions are totally pointless. As soon as the bell rings, the students run out into the hallway and are within close proximity to each other. I saw boys roughhousing, arm-wrestling, running and chasing, and doing all the things you'd expect of middle school boys. The girls walk arm in arm and squish their faces together to make cute little poses. Some students remove their masks in the classroom until they are caught and corrected by the teacher. I am resigned to the fact that if any student has the coronavirus, it will quickly spread throughout the whole school population.

As for teaching, I couldn't sleep the night before my first lesson. I didn't know what classes would be like, and I was still unclear about some of the simple details like, should I bring my own utensils for lunch? And, what would the co-teacher actually do in the classroom? Importantly, I didn't know if my lessons were level-appropriate for my students. As you know, I had to plan all of these lessons without ever having met the students.

My first class was an utter disaster. Seriously. I went to the English room about 10 minutes early to set up the computer and TV. Just before I expected students to arrive, another teacher told me she needed the English room. This was very strange because I had a class scheduled there in a matter of minutes. Suddenly my co-teacher ran into the room and explained that lessons will not take place in the English room as previously planned but in the students' homeroom classroom.
This last-minute change had me frazzled from the beginning.

I arrived in the proper classroom and couldn't figure out how to hook up the laptop to the HDMI TV. The co-teacher didn't know either and went to find the technician. I was left fiddling with the computer and TV for a while, wondering whether or not to proceed with the lesson without any visuals. The class started nearly 10 minutes late and my lesson plan was shot to hell. When you lose 10 minutes of a 40 minute class period, it's hard to get back on track.

Students were quiet and non-participatory. So much awkward silence. No one volunteered to speak or answer any of my questions. With the face masks, I couldn't read their faces to know if they were understanding me, interested or confused. The co-teacher, trying to console me, said "it was the students first day back from online lessons, so they were not motivated." Defeated and demoralized, the class ended. It can only get better from here, right?

My next class was marginally better, but still seriously problematic. At least I was able to hook up the HDMI TV without issue, so this gave me some extra time to mingle with the students before the class. I decided that I needed to give the students some incentive to participate, so I assigned each row as a team. Every time someone from that team answered a question, that team would earn a point. The team with the most points at the end of class won stickers from Canada. Some students participated, but for many others, the stickers had no motivating effect.

I ended up running out of time in the lesson. I wasn't aware until my co-teacher informed me with about five minutes left, as I was scrambling to complete as much of the lesson as I could, that we had to stop the lesson early to take each student's temperature before lunch. I was about halfway through the lesson. It was a somewhat depressing but important lesson for me because it seems it doesn't matter how much of my lesson I complete. In fact, it doesn't seem like my lessons matter at all.

It was finally time for school lunch. The food wasn't great this week, and I had to eat while distancing from others, but it was a nice break from having entire classes of students awkwardly stare at me.

I had a few nice moments with the students, and mercifully, not all of my classes were terrible. A boy gave me a container of these UFO candies, which are sour little packets literally filled with pure sugar. The kid who gave the UFO candies now follows me around saying "UFO, UFO". I spend most of the day mainlining caffeine, eating sugar, and listening to upbeat music to get my energy up to face the wall of silence in my classroom. This is my fight song before I walk to class. 

The school is hosting 16 university students from Busan National University as part of their training to become teachers. Two teacher-trainees observed my class on Thursday morning and four attended my afternoon class. I didn't know they would be attending when I saw them walk into the back of the classroom. I had them introduce themselves to the class and asked that they help the students individually during the lesson. Students don't really understand me, so it was great to have all of these extra teachers in the room. For one lesson, between me and the co-teacher and the teacher-trainees, there were six teachers in the classroom. That was by far my best lesson of the week.

I had some momentum going at the end of Thursday and I thought things were improving after a very difficult start to my in-class teaching. I only had one class on Friday, but it was the last period of the afternoon. I guess the students, the boys especially, were pretty much done with it for the week so it was an incredibly difficult class. Even though I already taught this lesson once before, it was a struggle from start to finish. Many students were misbehaving and some were sleeping. Very few students took it seriously at all. The co-teacher did well in translating my instructions and controlling the class. It would have been even worse had she not been there.

I think I made a bad first impression with this class because I was encouraging them to sit down so we could start the lesson on time, but I must've misjudged the time because partway through the opening, the bell went off. I had started the class too early. Having stolen a few minutes of their break, the boys groaned and complained. What's worse, in two weeks I will have an open lesson with this particular class, and the principal and other teachers will observe. I picked the worst-behaved class to have visitors join us. Can't wait.

It was a crazy week and I only taught five lessons over three days. Next week, the Grade 2s will be at school, so I will teach ten lessons. This weekend I need to revise some of my lessons because what I did for online lessons will not work in the classroom. I hope things get better with time and I can better connect with the students.