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Last Friday saw me complete my first full week of teaching at an elementary school in the upmarket
Seocho district of Seoul. The school is a 45-minute journey from my house with about 30 of that spent on the subway. The subway comes overground to cross the Han River every morning, and the novelty of this is still very much alive for me. Seoul does not have the instantly recognisable skyline of a New York or a
London or a Hong Kong, but it is very much a foreign landscape, and looking across the river to the smog-covered skyscrapers makes me feel
exhilaratingly far from home.
My school lies within spitting distance of the brand-new
Sinpyeong-
yeok subway and I emerge from underground into a high-rise suburbia which is currently under construction. Directly opposite the station is a huge and brand-new apartment complex that has been lived in for only two months or so, whilst to the right and left are immense building sites throwing up like-for-like apartment buildings for Seoul's white-collar workers. A quick survey of one of my classes informed me that my kids' parents are of the doctor, lawyer, architect and dentist variety. This is the Korean Cheshire Set. Seoul-derly Edge, if you will. A short walk through a small park and I enter the school, giving a half-bow to the two ladies stood with their little machine, taking the temperature of every child that enters. They have done this every day since I arrived as a precaution against swine flu (of which 2 kids have been diagnosed in the last week) and each day I'm tempted to go stand in front of them and hold my mouth open to see if they'd take mine. I haven't yet. I might, though.
The school is 4-storeys tall, reasonably modern, and clean. Each classroom (there are at least 40) is fitted with a 50-inch
Samsung LCD TV which we use for displaying
Powerpoints, flashcards and
inappropriate YouTube videos (more of that later). I teach mainly 6
th grade students, but I also have five 3rd Grade classes a week, two 2
nd grade and one 1st Grade. Although this schedule makes my planning slightly more confusing than for other teachers in the
SMOE programme, I can hard
ly complain as my planning tops out at four lessons a week. And that's if I find it in me to
separate the 1st and 2
nd graders in term of level - I haven't as yet. The kids are good fun, mostly well behaved and very, very smart. One 1st grader - a 6-year-old girl - pulled me up on my spelling of the word 'Clementine' by standing up, adjusting her glasses and saying, verbatim, "Teacher, I believe you have
misspelled Clementine", before sitting down, adjusting her glasses again, and rolling her eyes at the boy sat next to her as if to say, "Who's this
dipshit"? I turned and muttered "I think you'll find it's mis-spelt," before sulkily correcting my woeful spelling on the chalkboard. Turns out it is
misspelled, actually.
We were promised more free time when we decided to take up public school positions and I suppose we have it...I guess it just depends what your definition of free time is. We have to be at school between 8.30am and 4.30pm but my teaching is always finished by 1.30pm. This means that I have a minimum of three hours planning time every day but,with only four (well, three) classes a week to plan for, this planning time becomes free time which must be spent at school. It is so,
so boring. I am trying to use this time productively to do some writing, but it is a frustrating few hours and I would much prefer a system whereby, provided I could prove I had planned my lessons (and I would be happy to do this) I could go home and sit around in my boxer shorts rather than sit feverishly refreshing
facebook or talking to the school geek about an
Apocalypse theory he's read about on
adolescentangst.com. Seems pointless to me.
The main difference in the teaching between our public school gigs and last year's
hagwon job is the difference in class size. I have 25-30 students in each class and, whilst this makes the lesson more difficult to control, you do get more characters in your lessons. There's one kid in my class who doesn't say a word to anyone, does his work quietly and perfectly, but 3 times now has handed me a note at the end of class saying, in English, "Do I make you angry, Teacher"? Or the other lad who insists on doing the robot every time he moves away from his desk. O
r, my personal favourite, the special needs boy at Kendra's school who will fix
Kends with a keen stare before shouting, "MY NAME IS KENDRA TEACHER!" at the top of his voice and running out of the classroom, only to be found peeping around the door moments later to see if Kendra is looking. I suppose it is the kids that make a teacher's job worthwhile and it's moments like this that do make the boredom less of a pain. However, the main thing I miss from the smaller sized
hagwon classes is the one-to-one interaction with the kids and I can't see a way of us getting that this year. It's a shame.
Another difference is that we have a co-teacher in each of our classes who, in theory, is there to control the class, help with any language barriers and do a little teaching. This relationship will be very important for the year ahead and I'm lucky that my co-teachers are quite cool, young and speak English well. We're getting along okay so far and, as I say, I feel lucky for that. However, one tip I would give to anyone
considering this experience for themselves would be to double-check any YouTube videos you were thinking of showing the children before pressing play. In the first class that I would lead, and the first opportunity I had to impress my co-teacher with the world-class teaching that I bring to the table, I showed an animated video for the song, 'Anything You Can Do' from
Annie Get Your Gun that I was using as a lesson on comparatives. The video ended with the two characters
baring their arses before giving each other a double-
fisted middle finger- something the students found considerably more amusing than my co-teacher did.
Embarrassing moment #2 came during my first (and hopefully last) appearance on the school's television network when I was to introduce myself to the school and express my joy at returning to Korea.
Humiliating enough, you might think. Well yes, you'd be correct, had I not coupled it with a huge outbreak of sweat and an odourless but definitely audible fart as I stepped in front of the camera.
Horrific.
We knew coming into this that it would be a different working experience than last year, but I'm not sure we were prepared for how different it was going to be. The days are long, the teaching
difficult and, in a minority of cases, the colleagues are dickheads. But, one of the reasons we didn't take the
hagwon jobs in
Busan was to take ourselves out of our comfort zones and, when we order our 4
th cocktails of the day, lying
bollock-naked on a beach somewhere in south-east Asia come February, I'm sure we'll be able to see the benefits of our
decision. We're in this together and I'm certain it will be worth while. Every day is an experience, and we should be thankful for that alone.
Anyway, I'm going to hit the sack. Got to do it all over again tomorrow.
Peace and love,
Smithy x
London or a Hong Kong, but it is very much a foreign landscape, and looking across the river to the smog-covered skyscrapers makes me feel exhilaratingly far from home.
ly complain as my planning tops out at four lessons a week. And that's if I find it in me to separate the 1st and 2nd graders in term of level - I haven't as yet. The kids are good fun, mostly well behaved and very, very smart. One 1st grader - a 6-year-old girl - pulled me up on my spelling of the word 'Clementine' by standing up, adjusting her glasses and saying, verbatim, "Teacher, I believe you have misspelled Clementine", before sitting down, adjusting her glasses again, and rolling her eyes at the boy sat next to her as if to say, "Who's this dipshit"? I turned and muttered "I think you'll find it's mis-spelt," before sulkily correcting my woeful spelling on the chalkboard. Turns out it is misspelled, actually.
r, my personal favourite, the special needs boy at Kendra's school who will fix Kends with a keen stare before shouting, "MY NAME IS KENDRA TEACHER!" at the top of his voice and running out of the classroom, only to be found peeping around the door moments later to see if Kendra is looking. I suppose it is the kids that make a teacher's job worthwhile and it's moments like this that do make the boredom less of a pain. However, the main thing I miss from the smaller sized hagwon classes is the one-to-one interaction with the kids and I can't see a way of us getting that this year. It's a shame.
ight on the phone outside, hauling my two huge suitcases, hand luggage and laptop on the tube to Heathrow, flirting with a 50-year-old woman in the hope that she would let me off the £300 she wanted to charge me for being 10kg over my 30kg baggage allowance (she did) and catching the 2:30pm flight from London to Dubai where I would take my connecting flight to Seoul. It was chaotic to say the least, but as I sank into the reclining seat of the brand new Airbus A380 on which I flew, sipping on the first of a number of complimentary bottles of red wine, I was able to finally relax and look forward to seeing Kendra and the adventures that lay ahead.
GI Joes and their (mostly Korean) girlfriends. The major benefit of this is the plethora of western amenities in the area and the local shops are filled with familiar products, herbs and spices that would be much more difficult to get hold of in other areas of Korea. I'm also hoping to get involved in some expat football but I haven't heard anything as yet. Our apartment is only 10 minutes from the subway station where I integrated myself into the local culture subtly by dropping my T-Money card (a plastic keyring type thing that I use to get on the subway) down a 50 foot drop, bouncing off escalators and missing the heads of commuters by inches. And, later, I fell on my face. On my first day.
ent out for galbi (marinated pork rib, barbequed) the other night, but we have also eaten Chinese, Mexican and American food in the few days that we've been here. And Italian if you count the pasta that I made. We've been shopping almost every day to spend the settlement allowance we are provided with on the essentials for the apartment. We also managed to pick up a bit of furniture to make the place look more lived in but we're still in need of a few pieces. I'll put up some pictures when it's a bit more finished.
partments that we lived in last year, we have taken the option of a housing allowance and used this to rent a 3-bedroom apartment together. These 3 things should make for a rather different experience this year than the one we had previously.
