Reminder about waygook.org.

Waygook.org is a message board my orientation roommate set up in 2006 as a way for new teachers in Jeollanam-do to stay in touch and share lesson plans. It's grown considerably since then, especially in the past year thanks to contributions from all over the country, and is home to hundreds of lesson plans created by and primarily for native speaker English teachers in Korean public schools.

This week was the start of a new semester, so it's as good a time as any to remind people it's there. It's a more civilized alternative to Dave's ESL Cafe, anyway, which for many people has become too negative and too stupid to be worth the trouble. Anyone can browse waygook.org, but you need to be registered before you can download and view lesson plans. There is material to help you all the year round, and a few lessons especially useful for the first meeting of the year.

I was never a big fan of the big Powerpoint self-introduction---or of overusing Powerpoint in general---so I often went with the "Find someone who . . ." activity. I made a version a couple years ago as a review activity before summer vacation and I wrapped things up with a bingo game based on the answers. For the first class of the year you can also, to steal a suggestion from another teacher, have students turn their papers over and ask them what they can tell you about their classmates. One challenge with that particular activity is, especially for middle school students, they might not know how to write their names in English, or how to write anything other than their own names in English (but that's a whole other post). Anyway, other activities for the first class collected on waygook.org include "About Me" and "Likes and Dislikes" lessons from the Jeollanam-do Language Program resource book, and a detailed "Introductions" plan for high school students created---wow, two-and-a-half years ago---by the author of the excellent blog A Year in Mokpo.

Registration and use of the site is free, but we kindly ask that you contribute if you borrow. Those contributions can be lesson plans, comments, suggestions, or anything else that helps other teachers. I'll mention here that some people have complained of difficulties registering. Usually registration is practically instantaneous, as a confirmation email is quickly sent to your inbox, but for some users their email never arrives and either the administrator or I have to approve people manually. Please be patient, as neither he nor I live in Korea anymore and can't devote all the time to the site we once did. If you're having problems signing up, first check your spam folder to see if the email was sent there. If it's not there and you've waited a reasonable amount of time, feel free to send me a super-nice email and I'll make sure to get you signed up.