A lot of you have been asking how teaching is going. I haven't written about it yet for a few reasons.
1) When I'm doing it all day long, I usually don't want to think about it. Because . . .
2) It's very different than what I expected. And . . . .
3) I'm having a hard time with it. Although I should say I WAS having a hard time with it, but this week has been much better.
4) Also the noise level. Can we talk about the noise level of 10 5-year olds? It used to annoy me when the person in the cubicle next to me played the radio a decibel too loud. Now I dream of hearing I Will Always Love You at a soft 18 from an easy listening radio station.
Everything in Korea is later than in North America. Business (even restaurants or cafes) don't open until 9 and when I go to the cafe (on the weekends) right at 9 I think the guy hates me so much. I am usually the only one there for about an hour. Lots of stores don't open until about 10 or 11 but they stay open until midnight. So school starts at 9:50 and goes until 7:20. But, I only teach from 9:50-4:20. Well, that is until last Friday when at 4:29 I was approached and told that I was to teach a class at 4:30 until 7:20. Science to 7 year olds. I had no idea of their names, what I was teaching, or how to do it. Awesome! I fumbled my way through it and left to go eat tacos with the other English teachers. It's a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class and another teacher does the lesson plans and teachers the M/W and I do the F. (pun intended) It's a tough time because these are students who go to school all day at Korean school and then come in for 3 hours to do English . . . on a Friday.
My pre-kindergarten class is from 9:50-2:20 (with an hour lunch break from 12-1). All of the classes are named after animals so I teach Nemo class. The other teacher of pre-K has Dory class. The kids call me Allison Teacher (although mostly they say something like "Awawin Teacher." So I mumble their names back at them just to be a dick.
That was a joke.
At 3:00-4:20 I teach ESL. For about a week I had 1 student who is a girl from my morning class. Personally, I feel this is too much for someone that age, especially because we do a lot of the same things (talking about weather, calendar, feelings) and she is usually so tired or hyper active because it's so much structure for a little one. We get through it by me singing at her a lot. I'd love it if she'd sing with me, but baby steps. For now you can catch me performing a solo act at the local night club. The set list includes "What's the weather?", "If you're happy and you know it," and "Days of the week." Stick around for "Twinkle Twinkle" to close the night.
I like to sing/read to 5 year olds about old women who die. It's comforting.
Randomly this week a boy named Gun joined my class. His Korean name is something-Gun so they decided to just use Gun as his Canadian name. Today his parents announced that Gun isn't a real name (which I told them on Monday) and so now I should call him Dave. No wonder he looks at me like I'm a lunatic. I can't wait until the end of the school year when I package his portfolio together and a few pages have the word Gun written at the top.
Most of the kids at the school have chosen English names that we would consider "normal." But yesterday I heard of a kid named "Rookie" pronounce "Roo-key" (rhymes with roofie) The teachers tried to tell the parents that isn't a real name and it means someone who is an amateur at sports, but they wanted to stick with Rookie. I kind of love it because I like when things are weird.
The school provides them with lunch and snack each day. It is my favorite part of the day because the noise level drops significantly.
The biggest shock from Canadian school to this Korean school is the total lack of organization. I mean total. I came in the day before the new school year started. It was a Thursday before a 4 day weekend and the new school year started on Tuesday. I had one day to set up a new classroom for the new school year, make EVERYTHING on my own including every picture of the days of the week, months, weather, etc. Craft/activity supplies need to be ordered on the 15th of the month, so I missed January 15 and can't order anything until February 15. Luckily, the teacher of Dory class ordered two of everything so I can use what she has. But you'd think they would have ordered me some basic things like white board markers or a stapler, etc so I could have those. But no - a new teacher coming in has nothing to start with. Cool.
I didn't even have a class list until 5 mins before they walked in. We are two weeks into the school year and we still don't know our school holidays coming up. There are national holidays, but we don't get all of them off. We get one week in winter and one in summer. Those are yet to be determined. Makes it hard to plan for travelling on time off.
Another thing that makes it hard is that Korea doesn't really recognize mental disabilities. I for sure have one kid in my class who is on the autism spectrum. There is another in the Friday class who is the same. But, there is no support for that because it's kind of just a shrug your shoulders and ignore it kind of thing. I worry for these kids when they are teens and adults - how will they function? Anyways, the one in my class just runs around and ruins everything, screams, and cries. It was so difficult that my Korean teacher quit after the first day because he was so demanding on her. The Korean teacher is supposed to help me get the kids involved by speaking Korean to them and then learning the English words. She also helps me order supplies and communicate to the parents. But, she's just keep him from running around so the other kids miss out. The other kids can't learn when he's in there because it's such a disruption. Then there's another that cries all the time for her mom. Like all the time. We finally got her to stop crying all day long but now she cries when the Korean teacher leaves the room. It's hard because they've likely never seen a white person before so they just aren't used to me. I am pretty proud of myself for stepping up and saying something but I finally went with my Korean teacher to the Director of the school and told him that the boy can't be in my class until he is ready to learn. The other kids totally react to him and are so rowdy when he's around. And, because no one knows how to deal with children like this because it's ignored, everyone is just left floundering. For now, someone takes him out and does activities with him one on one and then he returns for snacks and lunch. The harmony in the classroom is so much better. It feels totally different!
Luckily the kids are stinkin' cute. They wear little green uniforms. Here are some pics.
I'm starting to get a handle on how things happen at school. The other English teachers are amazingly helpful. We are all in the same boat so we just go with the attitude of - we are all in this together.
I said this the other day to some friends back at my old job: Can you believe that this is what I do now? I used to assess diplomas and degrees from foreign countries to see if applicants met the requirements to get into a post-secondary institution and now I help 5 year olds make alligators out of the letter A. How is this my life?
I'm off to the dog cafe with a couple of the teachers. This is a dog cafe where you pet dogs and drink hot beverages, not eat dogs. Just some clarification for Amy B who said, "You never know - you're in an Asian country." I'll post pics of this soon!
Love,
Awawin Teacher
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