Sunday, January 4, 2009

My Dream

...for my classes is to get into podcasting or videocasting. As in getting my students to make videos or audio files and then to put them on the internet and get the students to interact with each other leaving comments and checking out each other's stuff. Or, to get all the students to sign up for Facebook or another one of the social networking sites and interact with their classmates that way. Or to use Google groups and start some threads and get some conversation happening. But, I feel somewhat hindered by the low level of students I teach. Low in regard to their actual English ability and low in regard to motivation. I give about 1 hour of homework every week and have 6 mini quizzes and 2 big tests in a semester but many of them can't even be bothered to do the homework or study. And so I wonder if I have a bigger vision for what they're capable of, would they actually surprise me or would it just be a total flop? I have a feeling it would probably be the latter and I'd be stuck with the dilemna of whether to give them all "F's" or not.

So, I'm actually thinking of seeing what else is out there in the Korean ESL world for jobs next year. My contract is done in about 6 months and although I love my school and the people I work for and with, the low-level unmotivated students are starting to get me down because I feel limited in what I can do with them. Almost like the student's apathy is creeping into my own thinking. And thinking small is not really my style at all.

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