Teaching

So I suppose you all want to know about the teaching part of my job here in Korea. It’s been interesting so far, to say the least. There’s more lesson planning involved than I was expecting, but we do have a syllabus to follow and each level has its own textbook. There was a lot of information given to us during the first 3 days of orientation, but once we had a chance to get into the classroom and get teaching, it was a lot better. I’m glad that we had a shorter week (Thursday was a national holiday, Memorial Day). I guess I’ll just jump right into the nitty gritty of it all.

The school program is called Global Star (to go with our housing which is called Global House). Our lowest levels (of understanding English) are the Phonics 1 and Phonics 3 classes. I have 3 Phonics 3 classes and blank looks are a regular part of my classes. Granted the first class with all of them was spent coloring pictures while I tried to do a placement test with them (to make sure that they are in the right class) wasn’t too bad, I’m a little nervous about this week of actual lessons. I’ll be getting through with a lot of vigorous hand gestures, repetitions, modeling, and if I’m lucky, one of them will catch on and be able to explain in Korean to the others. One of the boys cried during his test so I stopped telling them that it was a test and just said that I had some questions for them. It was my very first day, second class and I felt soo bad for him.

From there the classes go up by level, 1-4, and textbook. Each level has 4 textbooks, 1 textbook is taught in every class. For example: I have 3 classes of Level 3 Book 1 students. So I teach from the Level 3 Book 1 textbook, and not say, the Level 3 Book 2 textbook. So after the Phonics 3s the Level 1 Book 1 students are the least understanding (I have 2 classes of them), then the Level 3 Book 1 who have a good grasp of English (3 classes of them), the Level 4 Book 1 (2 classes) and then the Middle school (high-school, 1 class). The classes last for 40 minutes so it goes by really fast.

The Middle school kids, I think, are going to be a bit of a problem for me. They seem to enjoy laughing and talking in Korean while I’m teaching, even when I ask them not too. So I’m going to have to work on that. The rest of the kids seem to be well behaved and enthusiastic to be here. Apart from the 3 Phonics 3 boys who were fighting in class. I’ll come back to that story later. But all in all, so far, the kids are good. The classes are mixed, boys with girls. And they’re pretty cute.

We all have Korean co-teachers that we work with, but we’re in our classrooms and teaching on our own. My co-teacher’s name is Dana (day-na). She’s in her late twenties and has been married for 2 years. Like most Korean women, she’s really pretty, but also very friendly and I enjoy working with her. We teach the same classes but just alternate.

For example: on Monday/Wednesday at 2:30-3:10 I teach Level 3 Book 1. Dana teaches Phonics 3. Then at 3:15-3:55, I teach the Phonics 3 class Dana had, and she teaches the Level 3 Book 1 class that I had. And it goes on like that until 7:10. So I work Monday-Thursday 10-7:10, I start teaching however at 2:30. The morning until then I spend doing lesson planning. Friday we also spend all day lesson planning for the next week. Saturday and Sunday are our days off. My smallest class size is 3 and the largest is 13. That’s the biggest that we can have, so it’s a nice manageable size for us. We also see our students only twice a week, so either on Monday/ Wednesday or Tuesday/ Thursday. The reason that we don’t start teaching until 2:30 is because ICC (the school) is a hagwon (private school) and the students go to public school in the morning.

Then there’s Active Zones. And they are a horse of a different color if I do say so myself. From what I understand Active Zones are only offered at ICC, and is not part of school programs in other hagwons. They’re pretty interesting as well. And they only happen on Wednesdays and Thursdays. What they are is a fun interactive lesson where the kids can be more hands on. We have 12 different active zones; Books, Science, Math, Sounds, Zoology, Space, Earth, Food, Dance, Speech, Drama, and Words. So what happens is, on the day in the syllabus when we’re scheduled for an Active Zone, we prepare a lesson specifically for that active zone. For example: I have Science this week, so I do some Google research and found an experiment for exploding paint bags (think the baking soda and vinegar volcanoes but with powdered paint instead of baking soda). So what will happen is, the students will come into class and write out their target words and target sentence (vocabulary that you want them to learn, only 3), then we’ll go to the Science Active Zone and perform the experiment, (mix the powdered paint and vinegar into a zip-lock bag, seal the bag, it’ll create carbon dioxide, fill with gas and then burst), and the kids can learn from that.

Then there are the camps. Camps are extra on top of what we normally do (so extra pay), and take place in the mornings before the 2:30 class, so you give up your prep time for them, but are a nice little pay bonus and fun to do. What happens for camps is that we get a group of pre-school/kindergarten kids who come to ICC and we play games with them. For example, last week we did two different camps. So on the one day we played tag with clothespins, and the kids ran around the Dance Active Zone room, trying to clip their clothespins onto other kids (or me) while not being clipped themselves. They had a lot of fun and there was a LOT of high pitched screaming. The next day we played Magic Sponge. So the kids went outside, I divided them into 2 teams and each team raced to take water from a bowl with a sponge, run to a beaker, and emptied that water into the beaker with a sponge, and the first team with a full beaker won. They had a lot of fun with that too.

So that’s basically what my teaching is like over here. A lot of lesson planning and lots of fun so far. And now for the fighting kids, don’t worry, I didn’t forget.

On Wednesday, my last class 6:30-7:10 we were in the Sounds Active Zone and I was in the middle of my lesson with my Phonics 3 kids. Class is going well and then one of the boys yells “Teacher!” and then something else I didn’t catch and then “Teacher look! He’s picking his nose!” and he’s pointing to this other little boy who’s sitting in the corner with his chair pointed to the window, and of course as soon as he points it out the rest of the class starts laughing. And the little boy jumped up looking like he was going to cry, and made to run out of the class but I stopped him and had the other kids stop laughing, and started teaching again. But the boy who pointed it out and his friend kept laughing at him and he jumped up again and threw himself at them, the one boy who pointed it out managed to get out of his way, but his friend wasn’t fast enough, and the next thing I knew they were both on the floor in the back of the classroom in between some chairs, like tucked right into the corner because there was a table with girls sitting in front of them.

And I had a bit of a time getting to them because the tables were close and the girls were just deer in headlights watching them, and I finally had to give up leaning across a girl and got her to stand up and move and all the time I’m trying to get them to stop, then I finally get through and get them apart. I tell them both to sit down and that I won’t have any fighting in my class, and they sit but the two friends keep smirking at each other so I made them go stand in the hallway until the end of the class, then I took the 3 of them down to Evan.  

The one little boy who was being made fun of bolted as soon as we got to the doors, which I can’t really blame him for, but the other 2 glossed over the facts to Evan in Korean so I had to tell her that they had instigated and embarrassed the other little boy and he didn’t actually attack them for no reason. I mean, it’s not great to pick your nose, and it’s not fun being made fun of for it, but the two boys could have been a little more discreet about it. Especially when a big Korean culture thing is “saving face” which is about respect and giving and receiving it and not embarrassing anyone, so I think that made it really hard on the other little boy.

But Evan was really great, she gave them a good talking to in Korean and had them both apologise to me before they left. It’s nice to have an employer who supports you. Evan takes really good care of us teachers here, and she’s really nice.

That's really all there is for teaching. I'm liking it here so far, I'm working and living with a great group of people, and I'm glad that I've done this.

To mom, dad, and little miss peanutbutter cup (Tanya), I love and miss you guys tons. To all of my family and friends, I love and miss you guys so much too. Thank you for all of your support, it means the world to me. I love you all xoxo.