Teaching

I've finished my first full week of teaching and I'm on to my second, so I figure it's about time to write a post about teaching.  Also, Grandma complained that I was posting pictures about food and not talking about teaching, so here you go! (loooove you Gma~) 

The basic rundown:

• I get in to work at 1 and leave at 9.  No lunch/dinner break, but there are snacks for everyone to share around 5 every day.  I also keep snacks at my desk.
• Classes start at 3, so I get about 2 hours of lesson prep every day before I start.
• I have two sets of classes: one on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, the other on Tuesday-Thursday.
•  My oldest students are about 11-12 years old, and my youngest are around 7 or 8.  There are older and younger students in the hagwon, but I don't have them in my classes.
• My school is an SLP school.  SLP stands for Sogang Language Program, so all of the classes are pretty strictly outlined by Sogang University's guides.  The majority of my lessons are planned for me and I just have to "put my spin on them," meaning I make sure that what the teacher's guide says lines up with how my students learn.  If I think a particular activity won't work with a particular class, I change it.
• My maximum class size is ten students.  My largest class is at full capacity, but most are about five or six students. One of my classes only has three.

Overall, my school is pretty awesome.  I'm not micromanaged, so I'm free to set my own schedule for class prep.  My coworkers are all pretty laid back, so I feel completely at ease asking any of them questions, even if it's something I should probably already know.

I'm only a week in, but so far teaching looks like a lot of "stop," a lot of "shh," a lot of "sit down/up," and a lot of dead trees.  I also hear a lot of "teacherrrrr!" throughout lessons and "teacher finished!" whenever we're doing individual work.

That last bit requires a bit of explanation.  In the U.S., we generally refer to teachers as "Mr./Mrs./Ms. So-and-so."  In Korea, it's "So-and-so teacher."  I am "Olivia teacher."  And because it's rude not to use the title when talking to someone (in Korean), I have taken to referring to my coworkers as "_____ teacher" as well.  When talking to the other foreign teachers (in English), I'll often drop the title because that's how our culture works.  However, when talking to the Korean teachers (also in English), I'll use "____ teacher." I use the title even when talking about another foreign teacher because the Korean teachers would see it as very rude if I didn't.

My classes are only 40 minutes long, so one of my biggest struggles is not getting everything done when students are loud and talkative but getting done way too early when students are quiet.  There are two or three classes where I'm constantly telling one or two students to be quiet, stop distracting the other students, calm down, that's not appropriate, that's mean, etc. etc. and it keeps me from finishing the lesson on time.  I also have a couple classes where I always have to make sure that I have extra activities planned because the students will finish their work early.

Day one

Day one started early - we met at 8:40am to go to the hospital for medical checks.  Chest x-ray, blood test, urine test, and EKG test.  It took about an hour from start to finish for two people, so it wasn't too bad.

After that we got to the school and got our full schedules for training.  I won't go into much detail about it, but basically I start at 10:30 and finish around 7:30.  The morning is learning about the different classes and tracks, and the afternoon/evening is mostly observation.  I have a mock lesson at the end of this week, which I'm pretty nervous about, and then I'll be assigned to my classes.  Next week is all lesson planning, observation, and learning about teaching the specific classes that I'll be taking over.

 This is the view from the windows across from the front door of my school.  Olivia likey.

After finishing my first day of training, I ran back to the motel for a very brief nap before heading out again to meet some of my new coworkers for dinner.  Dinner was really tasty, but the lack of sleep was making me feel a bit sick so I mostly just sat there while we talked.  After dinner, I collapsed in my bed and managed to get a few hours of sleep, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn off one of the lights.  It wasn't tied to the light switch and none of the buttons on the remote said anything about "light." In a lot of Korean hotels, you have to put the key in a slot by the door in order to turn on the lights or A/C.  That left me with two options: sleep with the light on, or take the key out of the slot and shut off the A/C as well.  I ended up with only about 5 hours of sleep, but it was better than the night before.

Tomorrow is a suuuuper early day - Ingrid and I have to go to immigration and lines are horrendous this time of year...