Welcome to the forums. I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for, and that you can contribute to our community to make our jobs and lives a little better and easier.
A quick word about registrations. Currently, because of the huge number of spam bots trying to register, all new members have to be approved by Arsalan and I. I get an email each time somebody or something signs up, and I get 50 or 60 such emails a day. Usually they're spam bots and I delete the confirmation email because I don't have time to go through all of them. If I missed yours, or if you're having some problem registering, feel free to have somebody PM me, or contact me at deutsch.brian at gmail, and I'll try to get it sorted out. New registrations might take some time on weekends because I'm generally away from the computer, so please have patience. (<--problem solved) If you put your location, it will help a lot and will help distinguish actual people in Korea from robots.
Also, although this forum started basically as a way for teachers in Jeollanam-do to keep in touch, it's open to people all throughout Korea. Whether you're in Seoul, Suwon, Jeju, or Pyeongyang, you're welcome to join the site and add to it. Well, maybe not if you're in Pyeongyang.
Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to invite you to look around at all the lessons others have shared. There's certainly enough to fill out your own classes, to supplement the lessons you're already doing, to provide inspiration for summer and winter camps, and to spark discussion about different ways to approach our classes.
Many of us---me included---teach from textbooks, and so some of these lessons can't be adopted outright. Instead we're stuck trying to mold awkward dialogues and stories into a meaningful 45 minutes. I'd encourage you to share tips that have worked in your class for your textbooks, because chances are other users are using the same materials. How do you approach your classes? How do you budget your time? How do you teach dialogues and readings that might seem unteachable? Even if your lesson is specific to a particular class, feel free to share; if enough people do that we can even have different subforums for each grade. All of these things are really valuable for your peers who are using this site. I'll tell you what, I learn a lot from seeing and reading what others are doing, and it cheers me up to see others dealing with the same issues I am.
When Arsalan started this site in 2006 I thought it would be kind of a one-stop shop for Jeollanam-do, with its buy and sell forum, its current events forum, its lesson plan forums, its travel forum, and so on, but Facebook kind of took care of all that. I would still encourage users to let others know about whats going on, though: festivals, demonstration classes, parties, concerts, and so forth.
We also need to stay up-to-date with immigration information and with any chances to pension, visas, criminal checks, banking, and stuff like that, so please share.
You're free to post just about anything you want, from current issues to teaching topics to youtube videos to whatever. Please keep the pictures worksafe, and please refrain from attacking other people. I'm all for debate and for expressing ideas, but any comments that target other users will be deleted, as will hateful or racist remarks, and repeat offenders will quickly be deleted and banned. We are all frustrated from time to time, and it's great to sometimes just vent to other people. You're welcome to do that here, but let's not turn this into a hate fest. Let's make this a positive, constructive site, one that helps us feel better about our jobs and our lives in Korea. I don't know about you, but I get enough negativity elsewhere, I'd like to keep it out of here.
Again, welcome to the forums and enjoy your stay. If you have any problems, questions, or comments post them somewhere on here, send me a private message, or send me an email. We're also looking for people to help organize the lesson plans here and to update our master list, so if you'd like to help out please send either Arsalan and I a PM. Thanks again,
Brian
Suncheon
