Media Coverage

I mentioned in the last post that there has been some videos and photos of us taken at work this week, but in the last few days this has really been stepped up a notch. Monday was our first day teaching and cameras came into all of the classrooms. It's rather interupting. We each have a homeroom class that we met with Monday morning, and a photographer joined me with my group of kids. My homeroom was in the 'post office' class, but I do not teach post office. Regardless, the photographer got me to hold up some of the classroom materials and pretend to teach my kids about the class. I showed you guys the picture in my last post, and it turns out there was a story in the newspaper about our school the next day and that is the picture they chose to use! I don't usually buy korean-language newspapers but my students told me I was in the Tuesday edition. I wish I'd bought a copy! Who would've thought that my picture would be in a newspaper in Asia? LOL! You can read the article here. (if you can read korean)

At lunch time Mel, Sarah, Aaron and I posed for more pictures with a selected group of photogenic students. The photographers instructions included: look at Aaron, pretend that you are helping this student, everyone look at this one girl, look like you care about this boy, etc...


Tuesday and Wednesday photographers come into our classrooms sporadically but it wasn't as overwhelming as it was on Monday. However, yesterday- Thursday- was the official grand opening. Hundreds of people in suits walked by our classrooms and video cameras were everywhere. We were instructed to keep the children in class at all times and if they asked to use the washroom we had to say no! Melodie had a camera film over a half hour of her 'homestay' class, and in the middle of her 'board game' class she was asked to start teaching 'airplane' to a group of kids that had already had airplane class... so it could be filmed! Poor kids! Poor Mel!

I was teaching science class and we were making soap. Unfortunately, when the soap melts it burns the eyes, it's pretty stinky and the room gets smokey. In hindsight, it's probably not the best activity to use for that class. Just as the classroom got as smokey as it could hundreds of VIPs, including the mayor walked by the class to see all of my students rubbing their eyes and complaining. One student asked if they could get some air and I said no! It's their fault anyway for forgetting their oxygen masks in their lockers.

So this morning when we got to school we watched a video clip of the news story that ran on KBS news last night. If you watch closely you'll see Mel teaching her fake airplane class and me playing "mafia" with my students. Click HERE to see the video.