Korean Job Discussion Forums

[agoodmouse]

I had heard of this trend, but didn't expect to experience it at my school. My high school has asked me to consider teaching a different subject in English twice a week after school. I'd heard of universities asking native English teachers to do this, but not high schools. I taught an English conversation class after school one semester, but classes were rescheduled a lot. It ended up taking two months into the new semester to finish that semester's after school classes. I think I'll just tell them I'd prefer to teach English. I know my school means well, and wants to broaden students' experience of English, I just don't know what other subject I could teach in English. My students are somewhat reluctant to talk, and so I'd have to, for their benefit and mine, keep students interested and actively speaking in this different subject.

Anyone taught a different subject in English at a high school?

[pkang0202]

Can you pick the subject?

I would teach geography. First, teach the cardinal directions, longitude, latitude, etc... Then pick a continent and start teaching the names of countries/capitols and where they are located.

[agoodmouse]

[Ya-ta Boy]

It could be an interesting experience, but it would be a LOT of work. No matter what subject you taught, geography, history, science, you'd have to use the text book as a frame to teach English, starting with the special vocabulary for that topic in that subject. Then you'd have to teach grammar lessons related to expressing ideas since you said your students don't talk much.

[agoodmouse]

[nobbyken]

I found our elementary kids loved geography, and of course many of the names are different. That or science would be fun.^^

[littlelisa]

I'd personally try for cooking/baking or dance. I would LOVE to teach either one of those. But not everyone can teach them, I guess.

[Dome Vans]

At middle school, I get to teach some cooking lessons. I teach one every couple of weeks. I used to work as a head chef in Sweden, so I miss cooking so when they asked me I jumped at it. Teaching 30 students with all that gas and those knives is no problem. It's so much fun because you stay calm and help them, the Korean cooking teacher is new and shouts a lot and it's generally chaotic for her and the students. But they seem to be a lot different with me, I even pass on some tricks that I used myself as a chef and it's great and they learn a lot of practical english too.

[moosehead]

I'd op for social studies and turn it into a cultural smorgasbord - you can download all kinds of images of celebrations on the internet (choose google IMAGES) and then show them on the class monitor, maybe make a simple pp presentation identifying what's going on and ask for comments and discussion - choose a different holiday for instance, each class and find out as many different ways to celebrate it in different countries

there's all kinds of things you can think of - just try and think outside the traditional subject areas and go a little deeper

also films - there's so many E dvds available here cheap and then you can get them to discuss it, talk about how it was made, their ideas about the actors, etc.

stretch your mind a little you can have fun w/it if you want

[Dome Vans]

[BS.Dos.]

Sounds like an interesting proposition. If it were me, I'd run a sociology class as you can pretty much go anywhere with it. An FT I know told me that he used to teach it over in NZ and basically he had a license to teach anything he wanted. He said that he did one lesson on Hip-Hop and, in doing so, managed to reference:

Slavery
The Civil Rights Movement
French Hip-Hop
Sport brands and Street Fashion
Drugs and Crime
Cities and urbanisation
Bling Culture
East and West Coast Hip-Hop
Graffiti
Breakdancing
Music technology

[BS.Dos.]

[Dome Vans]

[moosehead]

[bassexpander]

Pick something fun that YOU enjoy, and maybe is a bit new for them (if you have that freedom to choose). High school kids get bored easily with classes that are already taught in Korean.