Hello again dear friends.
Now, don't think I'm making a habit of this double-posting in one week because I probably can't really keep up all this exceptionally clever writing all the time, but then again, I'm a pretty exceptionally clever guy, so maybe I can. We'll just see how that all shakes out ;).
Today I want to tell you more about my schools and what it's like to step into a teaching role like this. After talking with Brian since being here, I found out that when he started his predecessor had already left, so he basically talked with Don the director [note: from this point henceforth, I will only give the appositives about people when I first introduce them … so if you don't remember someone, you'll just have to look back at older posts to find out more] for about 10 minutes before his first class, and then he just jumped in and began teaching. I'm writing this part of my message early Friday morning, before I teach by myself, and although I'm rather nervous about today, I've very glad that Brian's been around and able to walk me through many things … even if I still would prefer another week's worth of in-the-class training.
So since I did arrive late Tuesday night, my first day in school came Wednesday morning. Classes begin at Haba, the Kindergarten, at 9:30am, so Don picked me up at 9:10 to make the hike from the Tomato to the school. It seemed like a much longer trip than I now know it to actually be (since yesterday I got to walk to and from school all by myself -- I am such a big boy now!), but seeing all the new, different sights definitely affected my judgement there. So we arrived at school in time to see students showing up on their buses.
Here's an interesting cultural aspect that I hadn't really thought of before, and I can't truly say how far this extends (ie- from one coast of Korea to the other … or just from one edge of this city to the other), but it's what I've encountered here so far: footwear and its place in the house is different. I first bumped heads with this notion on my flight to Seoul. Shortly after departure, one flight attendant came around and handed out simple, disposable slippers (I wish I would have kept mine … but I felt weird about it, since everyone else just left them on the floor when we left). So then we all took off our shoes, and we wore the slippers for the rest of the flight. Granted, I still don't really know if this happens on all International flights, but my experiences since then lead me to believe that this may be isolated to a certain area.
Then, when I came to my motel room, I ran into another similar aspect -- after opening my main room door (the one in the hallway), I had to open another door inside. I first just stepped into the main part of my room without thinking about it, but Don quickly stopped me and told me to leave my shoes here … in that little anteroom, if you will, between the doors. So now, each night, my shoes just chill between the locked doors and wait for me to leave the next morning.
[note: it's now Saturday, and I'm writing again]
And beyond those two, I found that at the schools, no one wears street shoes around the building. As students file into the entryway, they go to short cabinets along one wall, take out different shoes, put away their street shoes and head to class. Likewise, teachers, upon arrival at school, will go to one cabinet and swap out their shoes for slippers (and these slippers look a lot like Adidas sandals … although they're a bit different). Since I didn't have any slippers with me, I ended up using shoe covers (like hair nets … only for the bottom of my shoes) for this whole week. As we left Haba on Friday, Brian gave me his slippers, which was like some magical, special passdown moment when I completely took the reigns from him, so no more baggies for me.
Haba has quite a few different classes inside, and from what I know, all classes have specific names. I teach in Edison, Rainbow, Sun, Angel and with the Speaking Class that's a little bit different from the rest. In general, classes are broken up into three classes: intensive, normal and basic. As one could infer, the intensive classes receive the most language instruction, thus teachers spend more time with those classes. I spend 160 minutes each day with Edison, while with a normal class, like Rainbow or Sun, I only spend 30-40 minutes a day. Most of my students are 5 or 6 years old, although Angel class has 7 3 year old children in it. I haven't yet taught for them by myself, but it's rather mind blowing to see kids that little learning something. Additionally, the way that Koreans count one's age is different than you will expect. I haven't yet figured out exactly how it works, so the description will come later, but for now know this: the Korean age could be up to nearly 2 years older than an American age. Part of this is that every child pops out as a 1 year old, and the other part has something to do with when kids actually become a year older. Thus, the kids I'm teaching are pretty young.
Each of these classes actually has at least 3 teachers. First, each classes has a homeroom teacher. These teachers really don't speak much (if any) English, and they stay with classes all day long. Edison's homeroom teacher is a woman named Ji Hye [pronounced g hey], and it's really interesting to see how she interacts with the kids and all the things that she does during the day. In some ways she's the mother of the class. She will discipline if necessary, use Korean to help explain or provide directions, serve the kids' lunch to them, sit and comb the girls' hair after lunch, put band aids on injuries, help me with lessons, and do all sorts of other things with and for the class. Next, each class also has a Korean teacher, or Korean coteacher, as I would call them. These teachers are native Koreans who speak good English, and they spend time with the students covering grammar and mechanics and the like. They also serve as liaisons, when necessary, between the homeroom teachers and the last type of teacher, the English teacher, translating to make sure that we're both on the same page if something comes up. So, finally, we have the English teachers (like me!). These are native English speakers who spend time with the students, teaching about some topics as they arise but ultimately focusing on pronunciation and generally good speaking habits.
So as an English teacher, I spend just over half of my day at Haba with the younger kids. My day is broken up into different segments, and I spend most of those with Edison, but I also give 2 or 3 segments to other classes (depending on the day of the week). This part of the day lasts from 9:30am to 3:40pm, and right around 12:30 each day is when we have lunch. The school provides lunch each day, and it seems that most of the teachers are pretty unimpressed with what they receive. So far, I've only enjoyed it. Since I generally am not too picky about food, I have a feeling that this should be ok with me for a while yet, so I will be consistently having Korean food throughout the year. I'll write more about food in the near future because that has been a great topic thus far.
Starting at 3:50pm most days, I walk over to the other school, Oedae [way day], the afternoon school, and I teach 2 or 3 classes. These classes, like the ones at Haba, are driven by course books, and so my responsibilities remain nearly the same -- I'm supposed to given some instructing direction, but I'm primarily there for the speaking aspect. In these classes, because the students are older and their English is better, I have no other teacher -- it's simply me and 8 students (whereas in Haba it would be me, homeroom teacher and 11 or 12 students). The class size in both schools has been so great. It's just big enough to provide lots of variety, but it's not too big that students get lost. Granted, I still don't remember everyone exactly, but I'm getting there.
So, teaser resolution time: because I didn't have the shoes, as I explained earlier, I did have to wear that plastic shoe bags (or whatever they're called), so all day I walked around with the slight crinkle in my step. And some of the kids found that rather amusing, so a couple of them would occasionally reach over and grab them or pull on the elastic around the top of it. Funny kids. I obviously forgot my lunches each day because we have lunch together. As I said, I've enjoyed the food; it hasn't been too hard on my stomach yet, and let's hope that it keeps going that way. And finally, I am now a Giant. Essentially I find this rather funny because Brain became short only after I entered the room. Haha. In Edison class, the kids noticed my height right away, and Brian even used me to help describe "tallest" and "shortest" one day when I stood side-by-side-by-side with him and one student, Jun Pyo [june p-yo]. And in the afternoon classes, it's been even a funnier aspect of the first few days. There's one of the afternoon classes with which I meet every day, and because these kids are 11 or 12 years old (I think), they are funny and lively, and I think it'll be a great year (keeping them reeled in and attentive will be the challenge here). Even on the first day, they mercilessly prodded Brain for being so short, and by the second they called me a tree and Brian a bug. That was amended after the first time it was used, but you get the idea. They caught onto the heigh difference and made the most of it, even if I'm not really that much taller than Brian. And most recently, on Friday, either that class or another, decided to call me Giant sometimes, which I think it funny and fitting because I could crush them at any given moment with my huge feet or superior intellect. Haha. Don't worry; no crushing will take place here.
Now, I want to make two requests of you all (and some have already been doing this, so I want to make them "official requests"): first, give me some updates from your lives. If I didn't care about you/didn't want to hear about what's happening in your life, I wouldn't have added you to this group of recipients, so feel free to write back when you can. Second, even if you don't want to write back much about your life, send me any questions that you have -- either about what I've written or about something else, and I'll address it in another post. Chances are, if you're wondering about it, someone else will be curious as well. For example, one person wrote back and asked how I, speaking no Korean at all, could possibly teach in a Korean school. The answer, as described above, simply stems from having the three teachers and the people to translate. So, send me your questions and your life stories, and I will love the both of them. Oh, and also tell me when you plan to come visit because it's pretty figgin' awesome over here ;).
This is probably enough for now. Next time look forward to … Matt teacher tasting delicious, Ben teacher receiving gifts for his hard work and Ben teacher drawing sperm on the white board. Whew. What a riot!
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
ps- if you want to see some shots from the classroom, visit:
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