Despite being in South Korea for over a month now, I’ve only posted 3 times. One of those was a 3 minute video of my journey from London, one was a brief overview of my first impressions and the other was my first hiking experience.
This first month has been very hectic and exhausting, mainly due to work, which is something I haven’t mentioned much on here.
To set the scene, if you’re picturing a building like the school you went to as a child, then erase that. I work here:
Where I work, everyone smiles.
I work in a hagwon, which is designed for kids to go to after their regular school. They are usually inside office blocks. After-school academies are standard in Korea. They are obsessed with education. Going to the right kindergarten means getting into the right elementary school, which means getting into the right high school, into the right university and into one of the BIG employees (think Samsung, LG, Hyundai). This apparently affects who wants to date you as well.
My director was telling me that his daughter is 10 years old and is up until 11pm doing her homework in order to pass exams for school. All children are required to score highly in academic subjects, sports and also play a musical instrument.
One of my 9 year old students described her weekly after-school schedule to me. The only one she actually likes attending is ice skating.
The worst Friday schedule ever
So there is a lot of pressure on students from their parents, who are willing to spend a fair amount of money on sending their children to hagwons like mine (200 USD a month). This makes for an ‘interesting’ work environment…
Kindergarten
From 10 am until 3 pm, my school is a kindergarten. I have one class of six students (5-6 year olds) who are extremely cute and well behaved. I was expecting them to only be able to talk a little bit and certainly not write, but they surprised me. These guys babble away in English all lesson, never using Korean unless they are trying to figure out an English word amongst themselves. They write long paragraphs about their weekends, using irregular past tenses, present and future. Quite simply, they are amazing.
Their classes are 40 minutes long and there are text books I have to follow. Today I was told I’m behind schedule which my Korean co-teacher looked appalled at, despite no one telling me and having precisely one morning of “training” with the previous teacher. (This lack of communication and hit-the-ground-running setup was something I’d read about and expected. But it still didn’t make it any less stressful).
My Kindergarten class, on a field trip to a farm.
Elementary
At 2:50 pm, the kindergarten students go home (I hope) and the buses of elementary students arrive, dropping off children who have just been to school since 8 am. Ready for more school!
These classes are 50 minutes long and I have 4 in a row. The classes get progressively older and more able, and vary in size from 4 students to 8. The hardest one by far are the very first class who are absolute beginners. Even though they are a couple of years older than my kindergarten class, they started learning English later and are therefore much less able, understandably. It’s a challenge trying to teach them whilst making the lesson clear, educational but also fun.
My oldest class are about 13 years old and have me at 5:30 pm. They are always absolutely exhausted and even though I’d like to give them a break and let them relax a little, I have a set of textbooks with deadlines to get through that my co-teachers are checking up on.
All The Extra Work
So I teach about 6 – 7 classes a day, which adds up to 25 teaching hours a week. On top of this, we have extra duties.
School Bus
The foreign teachers take turns to ride the school bus in the mornings, meaning that every three weeks I need to arrive at work an hour earlier (8:30) to spend an hour collecting children and doing their seat belts up. This is easy, but eats into sleep of course 🙂
Lunch
Lunch is at noon, and each teacher is allocated a class to sit with to serve and supervise while they eat. Depending on how fast you can get the kids to eat, this leaves about 25 minutes for a lunch break to yourself.
Sing-a-long
At the end of each kindergarten day (2:30 pm), we do a 15 minute sing-a-long session, run by yours truly – the foreign teachers. So every third week, I run this. And if you’re not running it, you stand at the back singing anyway. Again, it’s easy and quite fun actually. Even if I do wake up every day with ‘I am the music man’ stuck on repeat in my head.
Textbook prep
I have 1 hour 40 minutes allocated every day for creating supporting textbook materials. I love this time because it’s nice to have some quiet time during the day. I fear this might be taken away from me though once I finish the textbooks allocated to me.
Classroom Cleaning
When the final class ends each day at 6:25 pm, every teacher must clean their classroom – wipe down the tables, sweep the floors and empty the bins.
Monday meetings
Every Monday after school there is a teacher’s meeting which can be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.
The Gist
From what I’ve heard from other teachers I’ve met in my town, my hagwon does seem to be long hours. It’s starting to get easier, as I get my head around all of the textbooks and deadlines I have to keep to. I’m starting to realise there isn’t much time for straying from the curriculum and doing extra fun activities.
Also, because the school is a business and is primarily focused on retaining students, it feels like a lot of things are done to look good for the parents. For example, we are currently preparing for an Open day, which means getting our students to talk for 15 minutes on video about a project they’re doing. So there is a lot of emphasis on us as teachers preparing the students to look good on camera for their parents. Another example is that on field trips with the kindergarten, the main point of the trip seems to be to take photographs of the event and then piling back on the bus, instead of actually letting the children enjoy it.
Apologies if this post feels a little rushed. I have been meaning to post for ages, and am intending on writing about a lot more – including my trip to Seoul, another hiking adventure in Seoraksan, some no-prep ESL games I’ve been using in the classroom, and just general Korean quirks I’ve found entertaining. All of that to come, once I get my ass in gear and start spending more time at home in the evenings and weekends. Although I just bought this beauty for 30 USD so there might be a small delay…. 🙂
In Lallyland 