Savannah Glaves

C&T 491

Dr. Cho & Johnson

13 June 2019

Journal Entry #3

Teach. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. If there is anything that I have learned in the past three

weeks, is that teaching the same lesson plan twenty times per week is extremely exhausting.

Despite having new students for every class, the lessons seem to blend together, and I forget half

of what happened in the class.

One of my major problems is that I can’t remember most of the students’ names because

all of the lessons blend with each other. Along with that, being on vacation in Sokcho for five

nights made me forget most of the students’ names that I had learned. I feel bad because of that.

Most of the students know all of our names by now (noted, we all have pretty distinctive

hairstyles from one another), and I want to know all of their names as well. However, when one

of the high school teachers asked Greg who a student was, he said he didn’t know. That made me

feel slightly better, but not completely.

Along with that, going to so many classes and helping teach is making it hard for me to

keep up on all of the homework. It’s hard for me to concentrate on reading with people talking

while we are in E1, and I read at a much slower pace when I try to read while listening to music.

I don’t tend to remember any of what I read either when I read during the day, because I am

distracted. I am not able to get any readings done during the day. It’s kind of stressful. While I

have almost always gotten my homework done on time, it has been more difficult for me since

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there is such a huge time constraint on this study abroad. It is pretty annoying, but so far I have

been able to keep up. It has taken a lot of effort, though.

Although I have struggled with many things over these past few weeks, I do feel like I

have been improving on both teaching and doing all of my homework on time. The Sokcho trip

allowed me to relax and de-stress for a few days before returning to work. After I was done, I felt

like I could focus more on work than before. I think that if I give myself a few days of rest, like

the weekend, to recuperate for the week after, I will be able to do better and concentrate more on

teaching and doing homework. When someone is stressed, it makes it so much harder to focus on

the things that you need to focus on, so I plan on working on stress-relieving methods in the

coming weeks of this practicum.

Overall, I hope to work on communicating with the students and working harder. I feel

like I will regret it if I don’t communicate more with the students. I will have just been here for

six weeks and made little to no impact on both my relationships and theirs. Although I’m

exhausted by the end of the week most of the time, I hope to be able to work on relieving both

my stress and sleepiness in the coming weeks. If I don’t make things better for myself, I won’t be

able to enjoy this experience as much as I would like. Coming back to America, I want to be able

to make an impact in the lives of people. If these students can’t learn from me, then I feel like I

will have failed them as well as myself, and I hope for anything but that in the last weeks of this

study abroad. I want to make a difference, and I can’t do that if I don’t work hard.