Le Petit' 선생

안녕하세요 💗💗 Today, I'm going to share with you about one of the known festival in South Korea, it is none other than the Chuseok holiday. Since I am so lazy to rewrite about this, I'm just going to copy some information about this festival and let you read it at your own leisure time. Okay? "The primary reason for Chuseok in South Korea is to honour ancestors and deceased relatives, but the holiday also serves the purpose of keeping the family together in a time when work and other obligations may separate people. Traditionally, Chuseok also allowed South Koreans to celebrate the Autumn harvest after a season of hard work. Chuseok is held on the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calendar, or the fall equinox. What are the activities on that day? Visit Ancestral Homes Many South Koreans are very meticulous when it comes to knowing where their heritage comes from. Those that know where there family originated may visit their ancestors’ village...

After this outing, we saw the different sides of Changwon. At first, I, personally thought that there's nothing much to be explored here in Changwon, but I have to admit, I was wrong. After an hour thirty minutes bus ride, my partner and I, together with our mentor, arrived at the neighbouring city commonly known as Gimhae. Honestly, I never knew anything about Gimhae especially the attractions at the area. Luckily, our mentor stumbled upon an ad on a festival there, which we ended up joining on that Friday. The initial plan was to go there on the weekend, however due to the Tapan typhoon warning, we chose to leave after Friday class instead. (We were lucky because it did rain non stop that weekend!) Our mentor is very thoughtful of us. She knew that we might not be able to understand a thing about it since the tour would be in Korean. So, she printed the English tourist transcript for us instead. The journey there took about one hour and thirty minutes by bus (considering a...

The time has finally arrived! After almost two weeks of observing most of the classes, it's finally showtime! We were assigned to start our lesson with the fourth graders first. Since our school wanted us to teach all of the classes, we were given three times with each of the classes throughout the school except for the kindergarten. The best part of all is that we get to do pair teaching with each other. So, we decided to take turns in teaching the classes and come up with the power point presentation and worksheet according to levels. I was in charge of preparing the materials for Grade 1,2 and 3 while my partner developed materials for Grade 4,5 and 6. We took about 2 weeks to complete all of the materials and got them checked by our mentor (she wanted to add in Hangul translation to make it easier for the pupils to understand).  Our first lesson was about introducing the general view of Malaysia and its states. So, we started with a simple jigsaw puzzle of Malaysia m...

Lunchtime is the time where you could literally hear the kids roar! Everyone is talking at the same time. Perhaps that's the one time that the could do so since they were all quite quiet and behaved during lessons. R.E.S.P.E.C.T!  As I was informed, the meal is given to the kids for free every month. Teachers, however need to pay if they are opting for the school lunch. As the fee is very much depending on the meals, I can't really say how much that would be, but we did pay 36,960KRW for 3 weeks period. We only joined the canteen meal during our first month at the school, and we brought our own lunchboxes for the following two months.  The ambience at the canteen felt very much like one at boarding school. The pupils took their utensils and food tray and lined up for the food. As for the canteen ahjumas, they're all very friendly and kind to us. They even understood us when we refused to take any meat other than seafood. They even tried to speak English to us. Well...

Teachers room are like haven for teachers. That's the one place where we can do our stuffs or even catching up with each other (by catching up, I mean, gossiping😆😆😆😆). Well, at least that's the situation in most of the Malaysian schools. However, things are quite different here in Sahwa Elementary. There are no one big teachers room, but there are a few teachers rooms mainly for the grade teachers and subject teachers. Remember when I said that there are only homeroom teachers and subject teachers here? Well, the homeroom teachers offices are in their own classrooms however, there is one room specifically meant for each of the grades homeroom teachers. The room is equipped with photocopy machine, desktop, printer and stationery stocks. Sometimes, the homeroom teachers for each of the grades will gather in that room to discuss about their grade kids and even what materials to use. Awesome, right! As for the English and Mandarin teachers, there's another room f...

Today, we were assigned to observe two of the Grade One classes. As expected, the kids are  very active, fun and interactive. Honestly, looking at their reaction makes me realise why I like teaching younger kids. They may be needy and noisy at times, but they are the exact definition of "blank canvas". By the way, the first class that we observed was the physical education class. The class was indeed fun. The teacher only focussed on activities which made them focus and alert. The games were very traditional. I don't know what are they called in Korean but the games were played like this: 1. The first game was about making one of the brick fall using another brick placed on the body parts 2. The second game was like a dart game. They have to toss the arrows (not sharp) into a vase-ish pots. The teacher let us tried too. Well, I think I did quite okay for my first time 😅😅👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 And the best part of all is that, the teacher asked the kids to reflect on the...

Disclaimer: This post is very random. You've been warned 😆😆😆 Today is such a lovely day. It has been for two consecutive days that we were greeted, "Selamat pagi, Apa khabar?" by the principal on our way to school. He is such a lovely man. He even sweeps the school compound, especially the part where the ginkgo biloba fruits (they stink by the way😓😓) fell of its trees. The kids started to open up to us. Most of them still greeted us as "Hello/Hi Malaysia" while some of them called us with our names (Dean/Zaki).  Speaking of being greeted by the kids, yesterday, Zaki and I got the permission to go out during lunch to settle about our online banking (which is verrrrrry complicated unlike our online/internet banking), the Grade5/6 pupils waved goodbye to us while saying "You're handsome". As I responded, "Oh, thank you. You're handsome too". He was sooooo excited and happy to hear that while his friends asked him what did...

Are you wondering what am I doing here in Korea? If you are, then this post is especially for you. The brief history of the program Starting 2014, Malaysia received an invitation to join an exchange program for teachers;  Korea-Malaysia Teacher Exchange Program   or KOMTEP as you know it.  The program is initiated by Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) and funded by Ministry of Education Korea.  What is the program for? Just as the name suggests, this program calls upon teachers from certain regions throughout southeast Asia to do cultural exchanges between the two nations in conjunction of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) .  How can you apply? Applying for KOMTEP is easy, but getting in is not a joke. As the requirements each year differ, you can't really be sure of what to expect. As for 2019, the interested participants were asked to prepare 1 4-5 minutes duration video about their achievements a...

As usual we were given three classes to observe, and as for today, we were assigned to visit 3 of the Grade 4 classes; 4-3, 4-4 and 4-5.  As the observation only began at 09:45 (the third period), I took the liberty of the free period to update my post and get myself ready for the observation. Well, before we went to the classes, we stopped at the principal's, vice principal's and our mentor's class to pass them apples in conjunction of Chuseok holiday. In case you are wondering, Chuseok is best understood as the Korean's Thanksgiving.  Anyway, from today's observation, I noticed that, their classrooms are very much similar to us. The teachers varied their strategies from a whole class activity and then  paired/group work which slowly shifted to an individual work. All these within 40 minutes per period. The only thing that stood out the most to me in one of the classes was dental kit. I realised that the pupils here are required to brush their teeth after me...

For the past two days, we've gathered a number of information on how the school works. Obviously, some of them aren't the same as how we run things back in Malaysia and yet it is good to learn from the differences. 1.  There are two types of teachers here. The first one is called as HOMEROOM TEACHER while the other one is the SUBJECT TEACHER. The first one teaches subjects like KOREAN, MATHEMATICS, SOCIAL STUDIES, and ARTS (music/art), whilst the later are in charge of ENGLISH, SCIENCE and PHYSICAL EDUCATION. However, we were told that this differs to schools as some schools might have homeroom teachers who can teach ENGLISH, SCIENCE or PHYSICAL EDUCATION by themselves.  2. The school starts with a reading program called MORNING ACTIVITY (similar to our NILAM ). As the school begins at 08:40, there are no recess time in the morning. However, they have 10 minutes break between subjects. Cool, right! At this time, the pupils are allowed to leave the classroom for a shor...

It was September 9th and we were still adjusting myself to the new environment. Regardless of feeling a little bit under the weather, I was indeed stoked of going to Korean school for the first time ever in my life. A lot of questions were playing in my head such as, "Will they accept me?", "Will we be able to understand each other", and so much more. Trying to get rid of the insecurities, I took out my camera and started to do a quick video on my social media - simply to let family and friends back home know where I was heading to that morning. We met our teacher mentor, Miss Song at the rendezvous place called GS25 (a convenient store similar to 7 Eleven in Malaysia). Our journey to school took about 10 minutes. We were surprised to see the welcoming banner that was prepared for us. That was indeed very thoughtful of them. No wonder our mentor teacher asked us what we would like to be addressed as. Upon arriving at the entrance, we were asked to take off our sh...