Day 216: Great Expectations

Today was a totally stressful day. Today was Open House Day - the day when all the parents of the pre-school kids can come in and *watch you teach*!!! Egad!!! I can barely think of a horror worse than having to teach (aka: perform) in front of 11 skeptical and impossible-to-please Korean mothers. The mothers of my students that I have met so far have actually been really nice to me, but Korean mothers are notoriously intrusive and gossipy and I was warned ahead of time about this day. Oh boy...

So I stressed out about it all week which isn't a very good thing, but was feeling okay this morning actually. There's only so much that I can do, cause when it comes down to it, these kids are only five years old and so you have to sorta expect things to be a little chaotic. The mothers are only there for one forty-minute block and I had it all nice and organized so that it would showcase a sampling of each of the areas of study that we do in a week - some reading, some writing, some speaking, some flashcards, some song and dance - it was gonna be all smooth and cutesy and every student was going to have their minute to shine.

Only nine of my mothers actually showed up, and I was thankful that none of them had a video camera (there usually is at least one of them wanting to film you teach, or so I've been told...) I jumped into the swing of things and away we went. The schedule went by as smooth as silk and my Parrots were being surprisingly well-behaved. Teaching pre-schoolers to behave is a lot like training a school of dogs - you can practice and practice and tell them all a hundred times how important it is to *really behave* on this one special day, but in reality you're totally at their whim. Like dogs, five-year olds will only do what they really feel like it when the pressure's on. Overall they were all quite good - the presence of the mothers caused some of them to be really shy, and yet it caused some of them to be quite hyper. Other than the song and dance at the end of the class where things got a little crazy as the kids were really into their singing and dancing, I thought it all went really well.

The forty minute block flew by (thank god!) and next thing I knew I was ushering out the kids to go and get washed up for lunch, and saying goodbyes to all the mothers. They were all quite silent and none of them asked any questions...they just sorta filed out of the room afterwards... Is that a good sign or a bad sign? Personally I thought it went quite well, but I guess I'll find out later.