Look, I haven’t been ignoring you all, I promise.

In fact, I wrote a very nice and long winded blog post over 2 weeks ago, and then simply didn’t find 5 minutes to sit down and post it.

Honestly.

That’s how busy and exhausting this whole ‘settling in to a new job and country thing’ actually is.

So today, I am making an extra effort and am going to try and reorganise my thoughts into smaller, neater chunks (while trying not to be distracted by ‘You’ve Got Mail’ which I’ve just discovered on Netflix).

Right, I think it’s best to start with the teaching. That’s why I’m here after all. So here now, some thoughts on my first month teaching in South Korea…

As you may recall I have been assigned 3 different schools to teach at during the week – high, middle, and elementary – which for me equates to 19 teaching hours over 8 different grade levels.

My day-to-day schedule is generally a 6.30am wake up, breakfast and get ready, before walking the 5 minutes to work and starting at 8.20am. I will finish work somewhere between 4.20 and 4.50pm.

On Thursdays and Fridays, my trips to my travel schools (middle and elementary) include between a 30 minute and 1 hour bus ride each way.

The bus rides themselves aren’t too bad (apart from one slalom section of road where the driver suddenly turns into Michael Schumacher and takes a rather hairy racing line down the mountain roads), but for one of them it means I have to get up at 5.45am and don’t return home until 5.30pm which sucks a little bit. 

My day is basically split between being in the classroom for 3-4 hours teaching students, 1 hour for lunch, and then the rest of the time in the office desperately trying to prepare lessons for the upcoming week.

For all intents and purposes, it is very much the same as teaching in the UK.

Having said that, it also has a fair number of differences.

On a good note, I am solely responsible for my teaching and teaching prep. What that means is I mostly get to decide what goes into my lessons and how to deliver them (I say mostly because I do have textbooks to use as a base for my middle and elementary school lessons).

While I do have co-teachers in the room with me while I teach, none of them actively take part in my teaching, they are pretty much there as silent observers and only step in for help with translation if needed (mostly when explaining rules of games) and some behaviour management (teenage boys who have a hard time just being still and quiet).

For all of this, I am thankful. I had nightmares of either actually having to try to organise and teach alongside someone in the class (urgh), or being left deserted in a room full of young children with no way to verbally tell them off if needed (my basic Korean only stretches so far).

Another positive is that I teach and that is pretty much it. I do not run a tutor group, I do not set homework or assignments, I do not mark homework or assignments, I do not attend staff meetings, I do not do paperwork. All of the banes of actual proper teaching at home, I am free from (bar one speaking test I have been asked to do for the middle school).

The children I teach (about 95% of them anyway) are remarkably nice and sweet. The elementary kids, hands down, are adorable. Yes, they are high energy and a bit hard to focus on occasion, but they are happy and excited to see me and try to speak to me. Even better, they speak a level of Korean that I can just about understand, so I feel I can actually try and talk to them after class with very basic questions without getting flustered when they can’t understand me, they just stand there and wait for me to try and figure out something else to say to them. I also like that my desk at that school is in the library, so that makes me feel more relaxed from the get go every time I’m there.

The middle school kids, well, they’re a whole different story. They still have a lot of energy, primarily because I teach at a school where the majority of them (about 30 out of 34) are boys, and they are all also football players who seem to leave the school quite regularly for this activity. My first week teaching there, my one class of 15 was actually 4, because all the rest where at a football match.

As a result, they are noisy, have no interest in being in a classroom, and certainly have no interest in learning English. However, I find them all quite fascinating and hilarious. They no doubt will be a nightmare to teach, but I still find their bright personalities fun to watch and have been really surprised by their willingness to at least try to do what I ask of them in the class. If I ask them to repeat something, they will. They don’t get shy, they just try. And if they stumble a bit, I have been more amazed by the fact the other kids around them try to help them out. They don’t sit there and fuss or tut and say rude things, they try to encourage them with the answers or try to translate what I’m asking for into Korean. And that there really impresses the heck out of me. 

And while two of my classes there are certainly a ‘challenge’, the set of first graders I have are actually much, much better behaved and with a better standard of English than the older kids. Two of the students from this group ride the same bus home as me and are both very sweet to say goodbye to me when they get off the bus. And if you have any inkling of the ‘ignore the world’ culture of the Koreans, you’ll know how nice that small gesture makes me feel.

And finally to my high school girls. Yes, all girls. While my younger classes are generally between 6-15 students (awesome) my high school classes are about 30 each – much more like teaching at home. For the most part, they are quiet and polite to a startling degree.

I rarely have to shush them for talking (unless I’m trying to get them to focus after an activity), they just sit and listen, nod their heads, and in some cases sleep (by the way, the sleeping thing is fine with me. Again, this is a very Korean thing. These kids are usually up very early in the morning and can end up studying not only at school, but also in after school academies until about 11pm. They are under a lot of pressure and exhausted most of the time. My lessons for them are purely for speaking practice. They get no official grade or test for this. Therefore, if I see someone sleeping in class, I will generally let them snooze unless they are needed for an activity when I’ll just give them a gentle nudge as I go about the classroom pairing people up. Additionally, if the students don’t look happy or well, I generally will only make them say an example sentence for me and then leave them to it. The co-teachers in the class are also quite gentle about this and will quietly nudge students too. I would also like to say the classrooms are kept at about 27^oC which is boiling and no wonder they doze off…..)

Anyway, back on track. The biggest issue I have with my high school lot is the fact that getting them to talk in English, to say ANYTHING in English, is like pulling teeth. Unlike the younger kids who either repeat everything I say (elementary 3^rd graders) or just will babble any English they know with over-the-top energy (middle school 3^rd graders); in most of my high school classes you can hear a pin drop.

Therefore, I spend most of my time in an over-enthusiastic mode to get them to smile and giggle a little and lighten up before trying to get them to say something. Anything. Sometimes just a word or two.

And what makes this interesting is that the stuff I am teaching and going over with at high school is probably early middle school material. These girls academically are very bright. Their reading and listening comprehension is generally quite high, much better than my Korean equivalent, but their speaking ability is almost non-existent.

And right now it’s quite difficult to gauge if that is simply classroom anxiety, lack of actual skill, or somewhere in between. However, I am really hoping that as the year continues, we will make some type of progress, even if it is just in their general speaking confidence.     

And that’s about it for the actual teaching side of things.

Overall, it’s been a real learning curve but the students, especially the younger ones, make it a pretty fun endeavour and I have yet to wake up hating my life. So, I’ll call that a win!

Next post…general working in the school.