The debate competition ended with a sigh of relief from everyone, except for the higher level kids who enjoyed etching out the ideas and details of one topic, because it involves a lot more speaking than writing and less homework.
It occurred in a gumdo training room beneath TOPIA. (Gumdo is a martial art style that's like kendo, but geared toward big groups of enemies instead of just individual combat. Kendo is a Japanese one-on-one sword fighting style complete with structure and armor. ) While more than just this private academy uses this building, I think the academy's owner has the rights to it, which is why we have to clean the classrooms after all the kids leave at 10pm and the Korean teachers clean much more during unofficial office hours.
We moved some unused bookcases and shelves into the giant store room next to it, cleaned it up, and then moved all the chairs (except for two classrooms) and a handful of tables down into the training room in the basement. That only took one sentence to explain, but the actual process is always a lot slower. For example, I had to hold open the elevator consistently for people to move chairs and tables into it. Before that, it took a while to move all the chairs and tables from their classrooms to the space in front of the elevator. Once we moved all the chairs and tables to outside of the elevator in the basement, we still had to place them in the training room. It also took three or four trips because the elevator is roughly only four feet by four feet.
The preparation was a lot more work than the actual competition. While I did judge one elementary competition in a panel with two other teachers, one part of the competition itself only took maybe forty minutes. There were roughly five rounds. In between, the vice academy owner treated the kids and teachers with hamburgers and cola. The kids who were too young to participate watched a movie until their time was up on that day, and I babysat them with one other teacher to make sure they don't get too out of control or make a mess of the classroom since they got hamburgers and cola as well. The first four rounds took place in classrooms on the fourth floor.
Only the final round took place in the big training room, where several banners about TOPIA have been put up, and a new banner for the debate competition itself hung behind the two competing teams. Aside from all the teachers, the academy owner and vice owner, all the students and a tiny number of parents made up the audience. The students get restless, and we had to shush them many times. The judges sat in front of the audience, the podium is in the middle, and the two teams sat on either side of the podium. The elementary teams had five members each, while the middle school teams had three students each. The final round took around an hour and a half to two hours.
The winners received cash prizes; the runner ups received participation certificates and dark chocolates that we teachers had to pass out next week in class. We also had to skip some chapters in the book so that we can say we finished the textbooks, since the semester ends this week. I went in this past Saturday to proctor an interview and grade some placement tests, and I'm not sure how much I would receive for compensation. I also have to wait one more month for health insurance.
Two weekends ago, all the teachers plus our supervisors went to Daejeon for training. The new program is called Debate and Library. There will be next textbooks, and the teaching will be much more reading and debate based. This is good for teachers who like using story formats, but bad for everyone else. There will be new schedules, which will include the one or two new teachers who have arrived since the last entry. I was just getting used to these textbooks and this routine, but situations change quickly - such is life.
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