Kai Carpenter

C&T 491

Dr. Cho & Johnson

June 24, 2019

Reflective Journal Four

Teaching this last week has been amazing. Before teaching the first lesson I was terrified

of everything going wrong, but once we started teaching the lesson, I had a lot of fun with it. Its

very exciting when the students are very responsive to the class and it makes me feel very happy

about being a teacher even for just these six weeks. One thing that’s been difficult is trying to

come up with ideas for the lesson plans, but once we have an idea it is easy to come up with

activities to teach the students the concept.

Another thing that has been a bit of a struggle is the cross-cultural differences that as an

American, I am not aware of. Like when we first thought of the idea of our teaching theme being

about playing card games, we did not realize the connotation that card games have in Korea. As

an American who grew in a white household, these differences can be difficult to know about if

you haven’t done a lot of research or don’t personally know a cultural extremely well, which can

sometimes make planning lessons difficult.

Overall though, I have been having a great time in Korea, with the lovely students at

Kyunghwa. It’s hard to believe that we only have two weeks left, but I know that when we leave,

I am going to miss the students and Korea so much.