Welcome Back to Korea

Hello everyone!

Since my last update I’ve been to the US and back. I’m glad I got some down time, visited with friends and family, and got to eat my weight in food. But now I’m back in the cold (which isn’t all that bad at the moment, looks like winter is almost over) and back to school (temporarily).

Welcome to the one week back, we’re not going to do a lot of teaching, get ready for graduation period. All the students are back, but there aren’t supposed to be any classes until Monday next week. So, essentially we’ve been cleaning and discussing these past two days back (and eating chocolate).

I found out that we definitely won’t have a replacement for my co-teacher who’s leaving. This means a total schedule makeover for the new year. I get less time with the 3^rd and 4^th graders, and kindergarten is completely cut from the year (kind of sad about that one). I get one more class period with the 5^th and  6^th graders, which could be good or bad. I’m still deciding.

Once again, I’ll be teaching some of my classes with the homeroom teachers. The thought of this stressed me out at first, but taking a look at the suggested schedule layout and my CT’s input on the matter makes it better. Instead of dealing with 8 HR teachers, I’ll only be working with 4. Plus, they don’t touch my designated sections in the book. No touchy.

Some other good news -- There won’t be an after school class in the English room any more, which means we can liven up the place without worrying about those brats other students tearing it down. And no more incessant banging on the door by students who can't figure out that a dark, locked classroom means you should wait or go next door to politely ask someone to let you inside. 

My CT and I (whom I really hope will be my CT this last year!) talked a lot about things to change up the classroom and classes. More posters, projects, and themes! I’m pretty excited about it.

What this will mean for the English camps, I’m not sure. I just hope I’ll be the main voice in that like I have been before. That’s the highlight of my job, and I don’t want to give it up. Plus, I still need to do my Harry Potter camp. 

Thank you for reading. I'm really trying this year to keep this up to date. Especially since it will be my last year here. Keep an eye out for another update, hopefully very soon!

The first day of the rest of my year

Hey everyone! By the time I post this, the majority of you will be waking up on the other side of the world, maybe hitting the snooze button a few times and giving yourself a pep talk to get out of bed. Sounds like my morning, actually.

Moving on...

Today was the first day back to school for the new academic year. I kind of wish that US school years ran a similar schedule, just for the fact that it can sometimes be confusing to keep track of what year you were in which grade. Plus, as an Arizonan I wouldn't mind a long winter vacation vs. summer. 

We spent the first day without classes to teach, but we kept pretty busy. First there was greeting the vice-principal, tea time, greeting the principal, finish up tea time, early lunch, talk about co-teaching plans, cleaning, meeting and the surprise arrival of some former 6th graders (in their middle school uniforms and uniform hairstyles, I might add). Busy day. I was so wiped out by the end of it all, I felt like I'd just gotten off a 12 hour flight.

I have one new co-teacher this year, and so far we're hitting it off pretty well. I'm actually feeling sad about the fact that she'll be leaving in October on maternity leave, especially since that means she's going to miss how gleefully insane I can become during that month. The co-teacher she replaced was on maternity leave up until the week of Halloween, and she missed out on my Halloween lessons too. Sigh~

Looking back a year, I can safely say I feel more comfortable and organized than I did the first time. I remember being shown to my desk, handed a pile of books and materials, and nervously blinking my way through planning sessions with my co-teachers. Orientation hardly prepares you for your first day. They might cover some lesson planning and "what to expect", but I can't help but think about the story of the blind men and the elephant when thinking back to orientation. You never got the whole picture, and in our case the blindness was induced by ambiguity.

Now, I understand how the textbooks work (for the most part, still can't read half the text since it's in Korean) and I know more of what to expect or what to ask. I was a little frazzled by the idea of working with a completely different co-teacher this year for half my classes, but we communicate like we've known each for a lot longer.

I'm also surprised to say that I'm not so easily surprised anymore. To clarify, one of my coworkers is very.... unique. I met her my first day at the school, and had no idea what to do. I kept saying yes when I meant no, feeling like I'd been caught in a compromising position when I hadn't, and just plain awkward the rest of the time.

So far, I'm just rolling with it and it's working. She might have asked me to come with her to the bathroom today and hand-fed me a piece of chocolate, among other things, but I managed to laugh it off. Which is good, because I have more important things to mull over than what unusual thing she'll do next. What important things? Tune in next time.

That's my way of saying I'm still mulling....... (Don't worry, it doesn't have anything to do with a secret boyfriend, marriage proposal or anything a wild imagination could cook up)

Thanks for reading!

  

Recap! The EPIK Teacher Edition

Hi Guys! I can log into my blog again, yay! Okay, so I forgot to change the security settings on my gmail account, so that's why I couldn't log in for a while. Fun, fun.

I have been at my new school for about a week and a half now. First week -- no lessons. This week, I've taught Grad 4, 5 and preschoolers. To be honest, the preschoolers were the most fun to be around even though I meet with them at the end of the day and I'm just about ready for a break by then. The teacher wanted me to sing a "Hello" song, which I totally blanked on. I don't know any "Hello" songs and I was suddenly too nervous just to make something up.

So, next time I'm going to be ready with a song. Let's hope I don't get too nervous though!

Before I get too deep into all of this, I need to play a little catch-up. I've been away for so long so.... Recap!

EPIK Orientation -- Think high school almost, but condensed. Scary, right? Or awesome, if you were one of those "high school glory days" peeps. You have about a week to find people you mesh with, learn some tips and tricks of the EPIK teacher trade and occasionally panic from all the info dumping. I met some cool people, had a lot of awkward moments with others and by the end of the week I was ready to lock myself in a room for an introvert day.

Which brings me to my new apartment, new school and new everything else...

I live in a studio apartment about 15 minutes walking distance from the elementary school I teach at now. I have 2 co-teachers, who I will refer to at YS and JS for future posts. YS has been an English teacher before, and has been a co-teacher before. JS is new to the school, new to being an English teacher and therefore new to being a co-teacher.

Yikes.

Okay, so I have to say there are things about Korean schools I like. I like that teachers get rotated from one school to another after so many odd years. I like that the staff are a kind-of mini community (which includes staff dinners and team building activities).

What I don't like is the fact that teachers are expected to rotate SUBJECTS. When I first heard this I was really, really confused. One of my office-mates is a PE teacher for the first time this year and, like I said, my co-teacher JS has never taught English before. Her English isn't that bad, but I can practically feel the struggle she is going through to communicate with me as well as the students.

So, I feel sorry for these teachers. I don't know how much thought is put into who gets transferred where (do they do interviews, look at entrance exam scores, what?), but I know that both co-workers mentioned are feeling a little panicked from the new experience. Poor JS.

Now... Outside of school stuff -- I couldn't get my heat to work the first night I moved into my new apartment. Neither could a co-worker who came over, but co-teacher YS came the next day to help meet the maintenance guy and so I only went without heat for about 1 day, which wasn't too bad.

I rode my first metro bus in Korea just this past Sunday when going to church. I got a little turned around, but made it to the church building safely. One of the missionaries was kind enough to translate for me, and then told me about a semi-English speaking session recently organized just 10 minutes away. So, I'll try to find that next Sunday. I also know which bus to take to get to an E-mart, so great experience.

That's it for this blog post. I have a lot to share, but this is already getting really long. Thanks for reading!

Week Two: TEFL Course

I'm probably not going to do this for every week of my TEFL course, since you guys have better things to do than read about every detail of my life, but here's an update on week two!

Is it strange that I'm actually enjoying my "homework" so far? I began writing my entry for peer participation last week, thinking that my entry would be a lot shorter than what resulted. I found that I had more to say than expected, and even had to tell myself to stop because it was getting too long.

As for this blog post, I'm going to just keep it nice and short. I have lots of things to do in the next few weeks, so my updates might be a little brief for a while.

So, until some giant milestone happens... take care!

Why Teach?

Children are entertaining. They just are. They say things, do things, and even though those things occasionally mean you're cleaning up a disastrous mess or calling the doctor to schedule the removal of a foreign object from said child's ear, the entertaining or warm n' fuzzy moments pretty much make up for it.

But, mostly, it's the entertaining moments.

I might be saying this simply because I don't have kids of my own, but it's the fun moments that make it worth it for me. At least, that's what makes being around kids in a school environment worth it to me.

I was helping out at health fair this year (where they weigh you, see how tall you are, check your eyes and ears). I've helped out a number of years with the hearing part of the health fair, and it's always fun to test the really young ones who are doing it for the first or second time.

Most of them raise their hand so fast, they raise off their seats from the momentum. Others hesitantly lift their hand to touch the headphones for the first few frequencies, their hand getting higher as they go along. Each student seems to have their own unique reaction to hearing the strange warbling, alien bird sound in their ears. One kid even turned around and told me that I needed to turn it up because he couldn't hear it very well.

Well, I'll get right on that.

The point of me posting this is that I realized that I haven't really talked about the student side of teaching abroad. I've been keeping you guys posted about the application process, South Korea info and such, but I haven't told you about why I specifically decided that I wanted to work with children for a living.

This is why.

Kids are fun. Kids are great. When they get something, and they are enthusiastic about it, it's even better. I was kind of tired after a full day of health fair screenings, but I wasn't exhausted and I didn't feel like my day had been wasted. Today, I woke up at 9 since I didn't need to be up as early and felt like my day was half gone.

A while ago, I watched a video about motivation. My dad showed it to me, and now I'm going to share it with you on this blog:

The video is kind of long, so I'm just going to pin-point the one thing that is significant to me at this point in my life. I have some great jobs right now from some great companies, but it took quite a bit of work to find them among the crowd of "make $200 every day" and "Easy, Great Pay" jobs that weren't actually all that great.

There are more and more jobs out there that are asking freelance writers to write more for less. What they want is quantity over quality, and in the end you, the writer, hardly get paid and actually feel a little... icky.

Then, there are the jobs that offer decent pay, but are so monotonous that banging your head on the keyboard would be more interesting and meaningful. I had quite a few of those jobs in the past, and while people were telling me how great it must be to be able to work wherever and whenever I want, I was getting headaches.

There was no satisfaction of a job well done, no feeling like I'd made a positive impact on the world and half the time I felt like my work was being deconstructed in front of me to be worked on a hundred times more.

So, I put my foot down. I decided that I wasn't going to do those jobs anymore, even if it meant more time in between jobs. This decision has done wonders for my mental state. I feel less anxious, even though I'm making less money, and I actually look forward to the work.

Which is why I decided to finally work towards teaching ESL abroad. For me, the meaning behind the work outweighs the possible disasters. I get to spend time with students who are bound to surprise me and amuse me, and I get to learn more about a different culture. To top it all off, I get paid and I get housing.

Sounds good to me.

If you have any questions, comments (maybe you want to help me out a little...) feel free to leave 'em where I can seem 'em. I'll do my best to respond. 읽어 주셔서 감사합니다!