Teaching English: market day

Last Friday was Market Day in our school. The concept of a Market Day (hereinafter shortened to MD) is to give the kids a chance to practice their English and have some fun while doing it. It's like a field trip without leaving the building. As with most other non-class activities, I'm only minimally involved with the setup, and part of the team when it comes to the actual activity. I'll be tending the book store - but first, some background.

I helped one of the Korean teachers unload a big box of toys and arrange them on the table by different prices in dollars. In. dollars. Koreans use the won; Americans, Canadians, Kiwis and even the Bahamians use the dollar. Korea doesn't. Why are we pricing things in dollars? I don't know! The only guess I could come up with was to help the kids learn smaller numbers in English - "five" and "ten" are easier to pick up and grasp than "five thousand" and "ten thousand".

Back to the big box of toys. Oh, great - the school bought toys for the kids to buy at MD. Nope. Most of the toys had obviously been played with, some missing parts. Most of the books I 'sold' had various amounts of wear or scribbling. I'm theorizing here, but I'm pretty sure the school asked the parents to provide stuff for MD, then gave the kids various amounts of 'money' (pieces of paper, not real currency) based on what or how much their parents provided. To be fair, it does sound like a good way to clear out the closet and a free way to get the kid some new toys to play with.

We spent our first class period teaching English expressions: "How much is it?", "I'll take it.", and so on. I'm not entirely sure they understood what was happening - these are 5-7 years old in kindergarten, after all. Afterwards, they received some big shopping bags from one of the Korean teachers, while myself and the other American teacher gave out 'money'.



Staffing our respective 'stores' usually alternated between boredom and sheer chaos. The kids usually arrived in entire classes rather than one by one. I've not worked retail during Black Friday, so I can only imagine this being a taste of adults rushing the stores. Few kids seemed to remember the English expressions they had learned (or at least heard several times) just an hour ago, so we coached them through while they parroted us. Near the end, more than a few kids held up a $20 book and tried giving me their $5 bill for it. I suppose the rush to buy something was more interesting than knowing whether they had enough money for it. In the end, I taught a few of them a saying that may not work often in the real world: "Can you give me a discount please?"




After the shopping ended with bags overflowing, the kids gathered just outside the kitchen for a snack. Rice cakes in a hot sauce and fish paste in a hot soup-like liquid. Erm, yummy.


I found the timing of MD - November 28th, the day after Thanksgiving - a little too coincidental. Americans know the day after Thanksgiving as 'Black Friday', and many phenomena noticed were eerily similar to that 'holiday' - running around trying to get everything they want / need, spending until they're broke, and otherwise pointing and grunting through the exercise. Of course, there were plenty of cute moments (as you can see for yourself).

If you find yourself a teacher facing an MD, there are three things to remember:

• Bring cough drops and aspirin - you'll be repeating the same three or four sayings in efforts to get the kids to speak English
• Bring your camera - you've probably already figured that kids are cute subjects and (for me, at least) usually pose quite willingly.
  
• Stay calm. You'll do fine.