Welcoming back the Korean teachers

For the second year running the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education (South Korea) will be sending us a group of fifteen primary and fifteen secondary state school teachers to attend a four-week course. The aims of the course, which runs from 22nd July to the 16th August, are to enhance the teachers’ English language and English language teaching skills. The course participants will receive input sessions from practising primary and secondary teachers from local schools, as well as experts from the department itself on specific areas related to teaching and language.  An important part of the course is the peer-teaching component, where participants are encouraged to put into practice what they have learnt by teaching their peers and receiving feedback from them. They will also be visiting four local schools to see the British education system in action and to talk to local teachers.

Each week the participants will be introduced to other overseas students from a variety of different cultures for the International Conversation Afternoons, where lively discussions and cultural exchanges take place.  This was a very popular activity for the participants last year.  For the first time this year we are holding a publishers’ afternoon in the third week of the course, where representatives from the main education publishing houses will present their wares and course participants will have the opportunity to look at the latest on-line teaching materials and the most popular English language teaching resources.

The high point of the course last year was the Playday, an event where the primary and secondary teachers organised activities for primary-aged children from York holiday clubs.  The event was very successful with around 86 children plus helpers attending on a beautiful, hot, sunny afternoon.  The Korean teachers did an excellent job of keeping the children entertained with traditional games such as Korean kite-flying, their version of hopscotch and some quite complex-looking activities which the children nevertheless threw themselves into.  This year we will be holding the Playday event over at the sports centre where there is lots of room for the children to run around and sample the activities.

During the course, participants will be encouraged to reflect on what they have gained from the course and how what they have learned will impact their teaching in the future.  In the final week, each participant will produce their own poster to illustrate these changes and these will then be displayed.  Staff from the department, other students on University teacher training courses and colleagues will then be invited to view the posters and discuss the points they raise. 

The course was very successful last year and received excellent feeback from the participants, the teachers involved and the holiday clubs. We hope that by responding to participants' comments from last year, this course will be even more successful!