Hello everyone!
This time around, I want to focus only on what an average day could look like for me. Right now, we're actually in the transition time between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next, so this general day will be changing a bit for me in just a couple weeks, but this is what it's been like for the past few months at least.
Most days I will get up around 7:30 or 8am and maybe shower or make breakfast or do anything else during those precious first minutes awake. Lately breakfast has been great, and I usually indulge in banana pancakes or fried egg sandwiches or an omelet or some other delicious thing like that. And then, sometime around 8:50-55, I head out for the kindergarten (Haba). Living 4 minutes and 30 seconds (by foot) away from work really has its perks. It reminds me of when I lived in the dorms during college; I always knew exactly how long it took to go from my doorway to my classroom seat, and I would hardly allow more time than that for the trip. So also, I get to the kindergarten usually only minutes before my student shows up, but that's ok because usually the first students are a minute or two late as well.
4 days a week I've been meeting with one of two students at 9am to work on specific things for that student. We practice pronunciation or listening comprehension or something along those lines. These meetings usually go really well, and I enjoy starting off the days when talking with just one kid at a time. Then, around 9:30, the bulk of our students begin to arrive. Students come to school in our school buses (which are actually just larger vans -- I think that seeing an American-sized school bus navigate the tiny streets in my city would be a terrifying, yet awe-inspiring sight) or with their parents. I think that most of the kids arrive by van, but I'm not wholly sure.
9:40 marks the actual beginning of our class time. Once the kids get settled down and ready to work, it usually ends up being closer to 9:45-50, but it's somewhere in that first 10 minutes that we'll get down to business. Our school day is broken up into 6 periods, with breaks after every 2 of them. I spend periods 1 & 2 with my 6 year-old students (Edison Class), have a 20-minute break, and go on to spend periods 3 & 4 with my younger kids. On Mondays and Fridays, I teach both 3 year-olds (Angel Class) and 5-year-olds (Rainbow or Sun Classes), while on the other days, I only meet with the 2 5-year-old classes. Next comes lunch time. All of the kids eat lunch in their respective classes with their homeroom teachers, and the English teachers are served lunch in our room.
Our school lunches usually consist of something like this: white rice, kimchi, soup and other things. The rice and kimchi and soup all appear every single day, since these are Korean staples. I would guess that any of you could imagine rice or kimchi (assuming you've had and/or encountered it before) and think of what I'm talking about. The soup, however, may be a little different. Most of the time, the soup is more like "broth with a few things in it" than what I'd typically expect as my kind of soup because frankly, when I make soup … I often leave hardly enough room for broth or other liquids (for better or worse). There are some days when lunch isn't as tasty as others, but I think that I've only really not wanted to eat it once since being here. I will say this: it is what it is … a mass produced school meal, and as such, it's not as great as a restaurant meal, but I think it's still pretty solid.
After lunch, at 1:20, I go back to Edison Class and spend the remaining 2 periods (5th and 6th) with them. Our main school day ends at 2:40, and then come all the exciting after school things. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I teach an Speaking Class to a group of 6-10 6 year-olds at 3:00. These kids all come from classes that I don't teach during the day, and I have to say, it's one of the most refreshing classes that I have. Because it's not one of the regularly-scheduled classes, we have lots of flexibility with the curriculum. We do use a textbook and complete activities in that book, but we spend a lot of time just doing things that get the kids to use English, and use it well. These kids have memorized Shel Silverstein's "Boa Constrictor" and love singing/moving to "The Hokey Pokey" and "London Bridge" (and in the latter, we use 4-5 different verses that many of you have probably never heard before). I'm a firm believer that language associated with songs and games (essentially just fun things) will stick better than words memorized in a rote manner. I'm reminded of this idea each year when Christmas comes around; it's been years and years since I studied French as a student, yet I still remember so many French carols with such clarity. I'm hoping that these kids will be able to recite that poem years and years from now.
Once I've finished at Haba, it's time for the afternoon Academy, Oedae (sounds like "Way Day"). On Monday, Wednesday, Friday I have 3 classes, at 3:50, 4:30 and 6:00, while on Tuesday and Thursday I only have the 4:30 class. In all of these classes I teach students who are between 10 and 12 years old. Their English is generally pretty good, so we go through exercises focusing on grammar and usage and just practice, practice, practice. Just to give you a taste, here are the grammar points we've covered recently for each of the classes (numbers corresponding to the order of classes): 1. reporting what someone had said. Let's say that 2 people are talking about something, and if I want to tell you what one person said, I would say something like "Mrs. Webster said that blah blah blah." This learning focuses on paying attention to a conversation between 2 people and repeating the information while giving credit to the appropriate person. 2. frequency of activities. How often do you study? I study every day. or I study 5 times a week. or I study on Mondays. or I always study. You get the drift. 3. reflexive pronouns. I can do this myself. The dog licks itself. They go to the store by themselves.
These last three classes have had their ups and downs. Lately it's been on an upswing with all of them. Some of the students I like a lot and have so much potential, while some others apparently would have much better lives if I weren't their teacher (which they will soon get to put to the test). So on those later days, I finish teaching by 6:40, and then I have the evening open to do as I will. Last semester, I had been meeting with some friends to study Korean or teach English about 3-4 nights a week, so as you can imagine, I was pretty busy during that time. Since Christmas, though, that schedule has been completely changed, and it's now been a few weeks since we've met at all. Lately also I had been sicker than I've been in a long time (or possibly ever), so having more time to rest and relax was a great thing. Once things get settled with the new school year, we'll see how it gears up again. Additionally, as you imagine, there are always lots of things to do no matter where you are, so I've ended up filling empty time with games and podcasts and writing and reading and sleeping and eating and cooking and doing all those things that I liked to do in the States. Life here feels pretty normal -- minus the fact that still everyone speaks a language that I don't readily understand. haha.
Now, here's my final note about the daily schedule: since I began writing this message, I've found out more about my classes for the new year (coming into effect at Oedae tomorrow and at Haba in 2 weeks). As it turns out, I will obviously have a bunch of new students at Haba, but a little to my surprise, I will also have a wholly new schedule at Oedae as well. I will now have 4 classes after the kindergarten, and most of those kids will be 8 year-olds, fresh from the kindergarten. I'm also gaining a later night class that'll meet only on Wednesday and Friday, but it'll last until 8:30. These students are apparently the highest level the Academy teaches, so really, just as I was getting pretty comfortable with the 10-12 year-olds, I will now be switching students to both considerably younger and those considerably older. We'll see how this goes.
Alright. I hope this finds you well. As always, drop me a line, letting me know how you and yours are. I just got caught up on my emails today, so it's about time I get some new ones. haha.
Much love to you all.
pfn,
bg
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