School Daze

Mother asked me to write about my school and about teaching, seeing as that is the reason I am in Korea, I guess I should deliver.

I teach at the Kang Tae Woo English Institute in Ssangmun, a neighbourhood in Dobong-gu. Kang Tae Woo is a man, I have never met him, but he has a few academies in Seoul; the head branch is in Nowan. This type of school is known as a hagwon, an after school academy. There are lots of different kinds of hagwons, like science, math, music, and art and a lot of English hagwons. Everywhere you look, there are hagwons.

My teaching hours are about 2:30 to 10:00, there is no given time to actually be at school, my earliest class is at 3:30, no one has actually told me when I should be at school, but I figure I’m ok as long as I arrive at school before Sally. She has been here longer, so I take my cue from her. I teach 23 classes a week, four or five a day. I only have one class that is a repeat, I teach a little girl named Sally three times a week, she just happens to be the only student at her level. The rest of my classes I teach only once a week, the class sizes are between four and thirteen students.

The school is divided up in to age levels, there are the youngest Elementary students, they have two thirty-five minute class, then the older elementary students who have two fifty minute classes and a ten minuet vocabulary test. Last are the middle school students, they have three fifty minute classes and a fifteen minuet vocabulary test. There are a number levels within the grades, because obviously not all the students are at the same place with their English.

The high school students come on Saturday, I don’t have to teach them. They are taught by Paul, the one I went drinking with the other day. I didn’t know who he was until that night, so I used to just take his cue and ignored him like he ignored me, now I smile in a friendly manner and nod my head when I pass him in the hallway.

Sally and I are the only foreign teachers. She is from New York. There are four full time Korean English teachers: Julia, Sunny, Tasha, and Youn. And five part time teachers, I sit beside one, I think her name is Sammy, or something Korean that sounds like Sammy. She is really nice and shares her kimbob with me. The teachers are awesome. As you may remember, Sunny took me to the palace and to Insadong on my first weekend. Tasha and her husband took Sally and I too a movie, and Julia is giving me Korean lessons and she helped me get a bank account. Besides the stuff that they do for me, they are really great to work with. We all share an office and they always share their food, or bring stuff for everybody. We sit around and complain about how horrible our students are or we come up with ways to trick the students into working and share tips on the best way to bribe the kids or the best way to punish certain children.

Which brings me to the kids, the horrible horrible hell children. They are all demons from the deepest pits of hell, for reals. The middle elementary students are the worst, the class sizes are usually too big and I find my self having to shout just to be heard above the constant, and I really mean constant babble, babble that frequently turns to shouts and screams. I lost my temper on a class the other day and screamed at them, actually screamed. I told them to stop talking for the like millionth time and they don’t listen, they don’t even pretend to listen and I lost it. I went Merrilee Plett on their asses. I asked them why there were still talking, I don’t understand why you are still talking. Just stop, stop talking. Right now, what don’t you understand about stop talking? I told them to stop talking, I said they were only allowed to talk if they were talking to me and talking in English. I was actually yelling almost as loud as I could. I was soooooo pissed. I get so sick of fighting with the classes, so sick of boys who fight and yell in class, girls who have their more subtle but equally frustrating ways of ignoring or not paying attention. I can almost understand why some teachers in real schools resort to corporal punishment, almost. I do not condone corporal punishment.

I try to understand it from the students’ point of view; they are in school all damn day, every damn day. They wake up to go to regular school, where the teachers are sometimes beyond mean, cruel even. Then they have to come English hagwon, the come here twice a week. On other days they have to go to math or science hagwon, they also have music lessons and who knows what else. Then they have to do their piles of homework. The often don’t get to bed until 11:00 or 12:00 or even later. They don’t get enough sleep, they work too much, and they have few releases for the their energy. And to top if all off, a lot of them are very spoiled because they are only children. Korea has one the lowest birth rates, so they cherish their children. The Korean teachers have to make regular phone calls to the parents regarding the child’s progress. They almost always get blamed for the kid’s poor grades and lack of performance. It couldn’t possibly be their bratty child who refuses to listen in class nor could it be that their children are tired and over worked.

All of this in preparation for the university entrance exam and for the Tofel test that they will take in high school or even later. English is everything. All they want is for the children to learn English, as if it the English language alone with save them or provide them with amazing jobs. It is a very bad system and these kids get the worst of it. Further more, it apparently, to educate a kid in this fashion costs about $5000.00 a month! That is why they only have one kid, that is why people wait so long to have kids. It is fucking expensive.

However, there are some bright spots. Like the adorable middle school boys who try to flatter me to get of doing work. They pepper me with questions about Canada and my boyfriend. They tell me I’m beautiful. The 14-year old in me, loves every bit of it, the 22 year old me, smiles with amusement and is just thankful they are speaking in English. I don’t care how they do it; I’m perfectly willing to forgo the boring course work as long as they are speaking English.

Some of the middle school classes are less awesome and all we do is follow the book to a tee and they have a boring boring boring book. But if they refuse to talk to me, what else can I do?

So the kids are hell, but some are worth it, like when I realized that student Sally understood top, under, and in. And When I realized that she could read some of the words. Or when I can talk with my class for over half an hour about activities they like or when they actually tell me things about Korea. I get warm and a fuzzy, Teaching is tough, especially because I only see the kids once a week, it is hard to really see progress. And I have only been here for less than a month, but getting close to a month.

And sometimes they give me candy, like on pepero day, Nov. 11 (11/11). It is not actually a holiday, but they have they sweet bread sticks dipped in chocolate that they all give each other on 11/11. I asked how long this had been a tradition, apparently only about two years. So not really a tradition, but some company sure is trying.

And I have mentioned hat Mr. Lim, the director is a dude outside of school. In school is still a dude. The other day he brought a bag (a plastic bag) of dukbogi for the teacher to eat, which we devoured in a moment. It is so delicious. Apparently, he also takes out the whole staff for meals about once a month. He is also really good with the kids. I don’t think they fear him, but they do listen to him. There is lots of joking around in the halls between the kids and the staff, which is nice, from what I hear this is not the case in many schools.

Mr. Park is also really good with the kids. He doesn’t teach but he is the main punisher. However, the harshest thing I have seen him do is make a kid stand in the corner holding his arms over his head. Usually he just pulls them aside and talks to them. Sometimes they get a gentle cuff on the head or he pulls their ears, but it is not usually in anger.

I all I have to do is teach my classes. Many of my classes, epically for the middle school kids requires very little preparation. Unless they are willing to talk to me, all I have to do more or less is push play on a CD player. Some of the elementary classes require a little more prep and once a week I have to teach a speaking class that is supposed to be just for fun, we play English games. That is the class that requires the most work, but it is also the most fun. I have no marking to do and no tests to give. None of my classes require any marking, but for the classes that do require it, interns do all the marking. I’m sure how old they are, either high school or university students. They do all the grunt work: the marking, the cleaning, the copying, everything.

School days seem to go by very quickly; some classes are better than others. There are few classes that I totally hate and then others that I almost look forward to, like the little girls in one of my elementary classes who try really hard to understand the story. Or the one middle school class, where there is one boy who actually remembers what happened in the novel from the week before.

I don’t hate teaching as much as I though I would and I find myself actually caring about the students and weather or not they understand and are learning anything. In classes where we are reading books, I really want them to understand so that they can sort of enjoy the book, I’m passionate about that. But we have to read these really crappy adaptations of classics, like Black Beauty, Oliver Twist (you know how I feel about Dickens) The Lost World (Conan Doyle not Jurassic Park), and Little Women. It breaks my heart when I think about how badly they butchered Little Women (“Jo, how could you? Your one beauty!” “The Play is the thing Amy.”) How do you make kids enjoy that crap? Although it is better than Morris the Moose, the bane of my existence right now. Have ever had to explain what a thing is? The words are easy but the concept is impossible for English learners. That is problem with most of the curriculum; it is very difficult to teach from because, all though the words or exercises are quite simple, it is impossible to explain how to do the work.

I guess I just expected that I would show up and just be there, but it turns out, I care.

Dee