Seoul Scholars International

Developing as a HS Teacher

SSI was my first opportunity to teach High School students. While there, I developed my understanding of how to engage with and motivate older students.

Rock Band Sponsorship

While at SSI, I was co-sponsor for their Student Rock Band. As part of this, I helped with the planning and execution of their concerts. Because of my close involvement with their music department, I was their primary substitute teacher when their music teacher was missing. This is indicative of the importance I place on community involvement.

Scholar Dollars

When I first arrived at SSI, their school-wide rewards program was run via paper “checks” Teachers were issued a pad of scholar dollars and when we wanted to reward a student for behavior, we would write out the student’s information on the check, sign it, and then give it to the kids. The kids then had to take these checks to the office, who would then enter the information into that student’s spreadsheet.

Because of this complexity, the program was almost never used. After my first semester there, I proposed to switch to a digital system. Over the course of the summer I prototyped, developed, and then deployed an online system based around QR codes rather than checks. Each student was given a QR code, which was how they could receive and spend Scholar Dollars. Teachers signed into the site on their phones and then they could scan the QR codes of students to award dollars. The whole award process took roughly 30 seconds from camera open to final click.

This system was the underpinning for a major push from the faculty to address English usage and tardiness within the student body. By the end of the Fall semester, we had seen a dramatic increase in English usage in the hallways. It took until the end of the Spring to see an improvement in attendance.

This program was used for a number of years after I left. In fact, several students transferred from that school to SJA Jeju and they reported it was still in use 6 years after it was first created.

Graduation Planning

Planning a graduation is a complicated endeavor. My first year at SSI, their graduation did not run smoothly. Most of the awkwardness was down to a lack of practice and planning. In conjunction with the music teacher, we set out to plan and organize graduation my second year.

Over the course of the year, we led multiple committee meetings with the administration and local staff to secure locations and plan details. Then we led meetings with senior advisors and the seniors themselves to explain the ceremony and set out practice details.

What had been missing from the original graduation was largely practice and attention to detail. For example, the original plan did not require students to sit alphabetically, nor did it have them stand and sit as one. This resulted in large pauses while students climbed over each other in graduation gowns to get out of the row and onto the stage to receive their diplomas.

There also was not a sense of how long each step of the performance would take, therefore the ceremony ran over by nearly 50% of the intended time. We were able to help with both of these issues through our planning.