My love letter to teachers everywhere…
Posted September 24, 2017 (tumblr)
Dudes, teaching is hard.
I knew this, of course. One of my best friends is a teacher and I see how hard she works. But I knew it in a naive, abstract way. The way you know that quantum mechanics is hard, because you’ve always been told it is, but you don’t really know because you’ve never done it. And now that I’ve done it, even just for 3 short months, I feel the need to say: go hug a teacher today and thank them for putting up with you. Even if you were a good kid, your past and/or current teachers are probably more tired than you know. For every flash card in the classroom, there was a carpel tunnel inducing use of scissors, and for every game played there was a careful risk vs benefit analysis done. And there are times that they just wished you would go away, just for a minute, and oh, god, just stop tilting back in your chair, you’re going to fall on your head, *CRASH*, why didn’t you just listen, yeah, I bet your head hurts, the floor is hard, I haven’t had enough coffee yet today to handle this, BE BE BE QUIET.
So, how’s the teaching going you ask?
Overall, I come down on the side of great. Now that I’m 3 months into this endeavour, I’ve passed the sort of grace period and I feel more confident in saying that I have a handle(ish) on the classes. I understand all the random codes and acronyms that the school employs (for example, I teach SAP 1–1 in the second block, M-F, and this month we are doing WonderWorks 1.5 Week 2, which lasts a month, and don’t forget about the NHK writing days, plus I have to do the S2B series of Disney English lessons every Thursday). I know my students names finally (although I still seem to have issues with mixing up the names Mason and Jack. They’re not even close, so don’t ask me why). I haven’t quite gotten used to the American spelling of some words. I actually feel my brain trip whenever I’m writing “colour” or “favourite” on the board, because somehow taking out the “u” is a huge challenge. I’ve also made more Lord Of The Rings references in my kindergarten class that I ever imagined I would. I guess I never honestly thought I would, but when I was asked what a potato was, I couldn’t resist saying “Potatoes, boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew.” It didn’t help them understand, but I laughed a lot.
In the mornings, I teach kindergarten. My class is Purple class, which is 7 kids, 7 years old in Korea, in their first year of English language school. And I’ve got to say, if Korea does anything right, its cute kids and caramel popcorn.
In the afternoons, I have various elementary classes, from a class of 6 grade 1 boys (who are a handful and a half, pictured below) to a class of grade 3 students.
For the most part, the kids are hardworking and polite. Emphasis on hardworking. The work ethic of Korea has definitely not been exaggerated. If anything, it’s even more intense than I was expecting. Some kindergarten kids are in school from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. That’s a full time job! None of this half day kindergarten here. The elementary students go to elementary school, then go to this academy or that, then SLP (the school program I teach at) and then sometimes even another academy after. They go to ballet, swimming, art academy, computer classes, piano lessons. Basically any kind of skill you can think of, there’s an academy for it. And then these kids go home and they’ve got homework. They get homework from SLP classes, in addition to whatever homework they have from regular school and other academies. These little troopers are my heroes. They work so hard. And even though it’s a little frustrating when they don’t do the homework for my class, I understand. They make my childhood look like a party.
Add to it that Korea has a late night culture and its not all that shocking that students sometimes fall asleep in class or that I have kindergarteners telling me they’re too tired to play. Sometimes, it’ll be 9 p.m. and I’m walking down the canal, past restaurants and arcades and there are tons of children whizzing by on light up scooters or segways, mothers and fathers trailing behind. Restaurants are open late, supermarkets are open until 10 or 11 p.m. and still the children are out. Even my own work schedule has me up later than I am used to on work/school nights. I sometimes don’t eat dinner until 9 at night, pushing my bed time to 12 or later. Adjusting to this later schedule has probably been one of the biggest challenges I’ve had here.
And the process of adjusting has made sight seeing and exploring hard. On the weekends, I just want to crash and relax, so that come Monday I have energy for the week. So, up to this point, I haven’t done a lot of touristy things in Korea. I’ve been to Seoul a few times, which is great. Seoul is a pretty cool city (but that’s a topic for another post, because to include it now makes it too long for the Tumblr servers). But next weekend I’m headed to Japan with a couple of the other teachers for holiday! (We’re going to Harry Potter world *squeals excitedly*)
