Transitions: Part 1 – Work Life

The wind whistles outside my window, once warm and caressing, now cold and biting. It has yet to snow, but most mornings I awake to a pale, overcast sky. The full, shady trees and low, lumpy mountains which shouldered my neighborhood have long ago traded their deep green luster for crisp autumn orange and red; even that has fallen away to the dull, sullen winter hues of stark barren brown.

From late summer to full winter, the seasons of my life here has moved from that uncertain, fluid period of transition called Autumn. More than three months of life in Seoul have already passed me by, faster than I could keep up with recording the immense amount of exciting changes which have occurred. Settling into my new job, new friends in unlikely places, mountains and challenges surmounted, and new perspectives gained

Rather resume my chronicles from where I left of the last time in Japan, I believe it would be more fitting to answer the question which appears most frequently on my Facebook wall: “So, how’s life in Korea? What are you doing these days?” Here’s the longer answer which won’t fit in the 400 character limit of a wall post. :)

When I arrived in Korea, I had literal NO IDEA what my situation would be like. Would I teach 3rd grade absolute beginners or high school seniors? Where in Seoul would I be living and working? After a 10 day questionably helpful and thoroughly mind-numbing and tedious orientation at the National Institute of Education in Hyehwa (northern Seoul), I was told what my teaching situation would be - on the day my school representative and co-teacher Shin Phoebe-teacher came to pick me up. (I’ve quickly learned, the Korean education administration is not known for tremendous advance planning and proactive forethought).

I am working for the Seoul Metropolitian Office of Education (SMOE) in Moondeok Elementary School in Moonjeong, the southeast most corner of Seoul. I am currently teaching the 5th and 6th grades. There are 6 classes in each grade and about 30 students in each class, so that gives me about 360 students.

(So with 360 students, do I remember all my student’s names? I think do pretty well, averaging about 40%. Names like Elle, Jiwoo, and Mina aren’t too hard but names like Young-ha, Ha-Young, Woo-Sung, and Sun-Won often give me a lot of trouble remembering who is who. Some students have English names, but I tend to use their Korean name, since their homeroom teachers don’t know I’m talking about when I ask them about Tom. Students also tend to chose similar names, since they don’t know many English names. In my 6-3 class, two students’ English name is both Grace so they asked me to call them Grace 1 and Grace 2, getting very annoyed when I forgot the number or mixed them up. I eventually gave up, since I prefer Minna and Na-Young anyways.)

I consider myself lucky with my working conditions; I’m contracted to teach a minimum of 22 hours per week, but with my schedule I get an extra two hours of overtime (a nice bit of pocket money for weekend nights out). At first the 5 classes per day schedule was pretty exhausting; I teach from 9-12, get a one hour lunch break , and then one more 40 minute class. By October, I think I got pretty settled into my routine, and it isn’t so tiring anymore. After I’m done teaching, in the afternoon… “lesson planning” (aka desk warming… I’m trying very hard to get over my facebook addiction >_< ). Many other private English academy teachers have to teach 30 hours week, and don’t get paid to lesson plan.

Of course with ever job there are parts you love and part you hate and desperately want to change. I’d say the best parts of my job are the people I get to work with and around. No, not my co-workers, but the students themselves. They delight me, they amuse me, they all too often frustrate the hell out of me with their low English communicative ability, but it’s all worth it when I walk down the halls to lunch and students run to the door as they catch a glimpse of me, give an excited wave and yell, “Hello~ Miss Claire-teacher!!” Every student is trained to greet all teachers with a respectful “Angyoung-haseyo” , but I think I can easily claim the title of most popular teacher, because the Korean teachers give homework and I give high-fives :)

This is my "English Village" classroom, where I live part time. nice and spacey eh? I'd say I'm too busy to use 85% of the materials though...

From December 2009 - thanksgiving and christmastime

Some of my students who made me Christmas cards. Bomi to my left is a awesome student, a bit soft-spoken but really engaged in learning English.

From December 2009 - thanksgiving and christmastime

This is my most memorable student, "HeeHee" Joo Young-Ha. First day of class, I asked him to stand and tell me his name. "Teacher~! Me is HeeHee!" I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly so asked him why. "Becauzu, HeeHee name funny!" Yes, he is bundle of mysterious ADHD energy. He's a bit camera shy here, but his face lights up like a lightbulb when, on occasion, he understands what I've asked him to do and knows the answer.

From December 2009 - thanksgiving and christmastime

First day of snow at my school a week ago. I ran outside with the rest of the kids, marveling in the dazzling fall of frosty, white fluff.

From December 2009 - thanksgiving and christmastime

A view of the "playground" from the top floor of the school building. Notice a lack of play equipment?

From December 2009 - thanksgiving and christmastime

(From left) Easily my favorite class, this is Michael the clown, Moongyung the English prodigy, and Sang-Chul the shy tiger cub (because of his hair style) I think Moongyung will grow-up to be Minster of Foreign Affairs, and Michael will be a sports newscaster. My favorite Michael one-liner about why I could go back to SF for the break "Because Teacher said the chicken is too expensive!" ahh, the old, "chicken/ticket/kitchen" mix-up. To Koreans, those /t/ and /ch/ and /ki/ sounds are the same.

From December 2009 - thanksgiving and christmastime

So why high-fives in a culture where respect and distance are expected between teacher and student? Where hugs and intimate contact with the students is a cultural rarity?
I’ve figured out that Native Speaking English teachers like myself are hired more for the “foreign presence” and prestige we lend to our schools, and less for our teaching abilities. In other words, many Korean teachers don’t take us seriously. I’m think I’m mostly respected for my work since dramatic “stage presence” keeps the students entertained. So I’ve pretty much committed myself to never taking myself too seriously. I think my job isn’t really about helping low level students to suddenly ascertain English skills, simply by being in my proximity (as I suspect my principal believes), but rather to be a friendly, international English-speaking presence and help they overcome the “us and them mentality” (“I’m no English, I’m Korean.” Ie, I’m Korean so I naturally can’t speak English).

I’d say that the other best and worst are my co-teachers. My I share my classes with a Korean co-teacher, the 5th grade with Yoon-teacher and the 6th grade with Shin Phoebe-teacher. Phoebe is a life saver, incredibly organized and often thinking ahead, a thoroughly appreciated rarity in a sea of disorganized education administration. She speaks near native English and we work really well as a team, usually tag-team teaching. Yoon-teacher is an utterly different story; she’s older, about 60 and our lack of communication often approaches headache-inducing levels. She’s actually a long term substitute who’s never taught English before this. She’s not very patient with listening to me, often seemingly assuming she understood me. Our combined lack of experience in leading a class through a proper English lesson has made my job incredibly frustrating. I didn’t know how to co-teacher with her for the longest time; she’s older than me, but she’s always buying me drinks and food and complimenting my clothing, attempting to curry my favor, but it only makes confused on who has authority. Eventually, I think we’ve worked out a system where we both do some lesson planning a week ahead of time, we sit down and I talk REALLY slowly about what I want to do, listen to her suggestion and decide on a plan. During class, I pretty much take the lead getting the class to do what I want, and she asks as a support, playing and pausing the CD when needed.

The worst of the worst? My textbook. The textbook topics often seem chosen at random and the materials don’t provide that many game or activities for teaching the theme language. The teacher’s book is full of grammar mistakes and was probably written by a Korean. I really want to use more creative activities like drama or art-based lessons in my class, but I’m pretty stuck with “play the dialogue, ask concept check questions, listen and repeat, play a game”, since unfortunately most of my students are low beginners and some don’t know how to read and write. I’m looking forward to the new school year in spring , since I’ll likely be teaching the same students (the new 6th graders) and I can allocate some time to teach phonics to the struggling students and get the advanced speakers into a drama club which I’m going to create.

It’s all in a days’ work, I guess. Almost too quickly, I’ve become very settled in this routine and in this space. I hope though this is merely apart of my day-to-day routine, I can still distinguish differences for the life I knew before.