Archive for ‘December 2010’

Remember when I worked at that hagwon in Seoul, and I was always stressed out, and doing work outside of school, and angry, and miserable because my boss was a see-you-next-tuesday? Well, my friend, those days are over, for I have moved to Jinju and started working in a public school!

I work at a middle school in Munsan (well, technically two middle schools), and there are 3 grades in the school. With the 1st and 2nd grades, there are 2 classes for each grade. With the 3rd graders, there are 3 classes. So that's a total of 7 classes in the whole school. I teach them each two times a week, Monday through Thursday. I usually have 3 or 4 classes a day. That's it. I teach about 3 or 4 hours total a day. Can you believe it? Classes are 45 minutes each. Each class has between 23-28 students, I can't remember the exact count.

I started working last Thursday, but I only had 2 classes, and on Friday I got the day off to move my stuff. So technically this was my first real week, even though I didn't teach much.The 1st and 2nd graders are having tests, so they have no class, and there were no classes in the afternoon. I taught maybe 4 classes the whole week. It's also close to winter break, so I don't even teach a book until the new term in February. The students are all really friendly, everyone says hi to me, and kids come to my classroom even if they don't have me yet. The classroom gets a little noisy sometimes, but my co-teacher, Mrs. Che, is in the room the whole time to keep them in line and help explain things to them in Korean. One thing that I found helps get them to do their work in class is to threaten to give them homework if they don't finish. They live in the country, so their English levels are different. A lot of the girls speak pretty well. I've only taught the 3rd graders though, since the others were having tests this week.

On Fridays I go to a different school in Geumgok, that school has a total of 31 students, in the whole school. There's one class for each grade, and the class size is 9-12. These students are really great, they are super friendly and active in the classroom. I teach them each once a day, plus two afternoon classes. The afternoon classes I teach without the co-teacher, and all we do is play games! My co-teacher at that school, Mrs. Gwon, is extremely friendly, and she speaks English very well.

At both of the schools I have my my own desk and computer which is nice. In Munsan I have my own classroom and the kids come there, but in Geumgok I go to the different classes. They are both pretty rural, but the schools are up to date. There is a huge TV screen in each room connected to the computer, plus the one in Munsan is touch screen.

The kids seem to like me a lot, I've been trying to do fun activities with them to keep them entertained in class. But I am really happy at these schools, I have so much free time during the day to work on my material, and the teachers and students area great. I really lucked out!