the beginning of the end

this is the last week of the spring/summer semester for middle schools across korea. lucky me. and i guess lucky kids too, though most of them will spend their summer vacation studying. as we all know, i'll be going to thailand (in less than three weeks now - 18 days if you wanna get right down to it).

monday was my first last day of class. my after school class finally finished. i've been teaching an extra two hours every monday for the last two and half months. it was my favourite class of all though, and was sad to see it end. i had three girls that showed up every week without fail. the rest of the (20 odd) students showed up a maximum of four times each. so i ordered pizza for the girls and got them little prezzies. they got me a necklace and a jewelry box... so sweet. they all have my email and i hope they'll use it, especially Siria, she is an amazing bright teenager.

Grace, me, Siria, and Mia - my after school girls.

today was my second last day of the semester (tomorrow will be the third). this didn't only mean that i only have one class (in august) left with these kids, but that one lucky class was having a pizza party for lunch. at the beginning of the year i devised a plan to try and keep control over my classes... a little reward system that i call "my sticker program". lots of teachers have them.

basically every period a class would start out with five stickers. when it was time to settle down, or if they got out of control i would count down three... two... one... zero. if by the end of the word zero they weren't quiet, they would lose a sticker.

the class at the end of the month with the most stickers would win prizes. these usually consisted of a printed certificate from me, a not-so-shiny canadian penny, a pencil, some candy, and a choco-pie (a kind of chocolate cake with marshmallow that the kids all love). the school didn't pay for any of this, i did. but i figured it was a small price to pay to have them all be quiet when i needed them to be. in some classes it worked extremely well, in others, not so much, but at least they could gauge when they were about to get in trouble!

well, the second part of the program was that whichever class had the MOST stickers at the end of the semester would get a pizza party. i didn't think this part through that well, since it cost me an arm and a leg and they weren't even all that appreciative, but today was the party. class 1-5 were the winners... which was expected since they won two months in a row and got five stickers in just about every class i had with them.

anyway, here are some pics:

mmm...pizza and "no teacher! don't take my picture!!!"

cuties. very quiet and shy...but that can be a good thing!

me and my little friend.

this girl never attends my class since she's handicapped, but she was allowed to come to the party. plus she loves me. she makes me little gifts and gives them to me in the hallway. she's the happiest middle-schooler i've ever met! she spent the whole class giggling about something!

they're a bunch of pretty smart kids and i'm proud of how far they've come in such a short period of time. and yes, when it's time to go home for good, i might get a little teary eyed over some of them, but that's just part of the job, isn't it?