This week is exam week which means that Wednesday (today), Thursday and Friday I have no classes. The only bad thing is that I still have to come in and keep my chair warm for a few hours. At least I get to leave at 1230 instead of having to stay the whole day.
I'm really glad for this time off because sometimes teaching my students can be really frustrating.
Anyway, this evening I'm meeting with the pastor of my church (who is actually younger than me, not that that's bad - just giving you perspective). And Friday, the teachers at my school are going hiking in the hills somewhere so I'll make sure to post some more pics either on Flickr or Picasa. Check back for links.
Other than that, Shannon and I have really been enjoying our time here in Korea, if only for the time we've had to grow closer together through God's word. We're finding more time to do devotionals together and spend some quality time not only with each other but with valuable church friends outside our marriage who can strengthen us and give us honest advice. I think our time in Korea can be compared to the experience that a caterpillar has in its cocoon. I feel like God is using this time to prepare us and bring us closer so when we leave, our marriage and our faith will be stronger and more durable. I hope you understand what I mean.
Well, whoever you are, whether you're friends, family or strangers - know that we're praying for you and that God loves you. May the peace that transcends all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:7)
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Life Going On
A lot has happened in the last couple weeks but most of it has been normal stuff involving our church and our schools. For example, two weeks ago our church celebrated its 2 year anniversary and then a week later celebrated Easter. Last week the 3rd-year middle schoolers at my school had a science day and shot water rockets at an orange cone target. And through it all, Shannon and I are just getting into the rhythm of life here, trying to balance our school, church, social, professional and personal lives. It takes a lot of work and a lot of day-to-day decisions that unfortunately might not seem so exciting to everyone else out there. But to us, it's great stuff. I think God is really working on us and I hope that he is doing the same with you.
Oh and by the way, I submitted 35 stock photos to a stock photo website and 3 of them got accepted which is actually pretty good. I'm also posting a lot of Busan photos on my Flickr account so be sure to check them out.
So, that's it for now but I think that's enough. :)
Oh and by the way, I submitted 35 stock photos to a stock photo website and 3 of them got accepted which is actually pretty good. I'm also posting a lot of Busan photos on my Flickr account so be sure to check them out.
So, that's it for now but I think that's enough. :)
www.flickr.com
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Monday, 23 March 2009
Korean School Kids
“Teacher is untie So, I look ghost But preety priness”
This was a written note from one of my better than average 3rd grade middle school students (14-15 years old). I couldn’t understand what she meant when she was saying the word “geäst”, so I got her to write it down for me.
I’m pretty impressed with this girl’s vocab. In class her listening comprehension is better than most. After me demonstrating how to pronounce “ghost”, I got her to read this sentence to me again and with her gestures that came with that, I came to understand that I have “ghost hair” (so either I need to get a hair cut, or else I just shouldn’t wear it out untied maybe, hehehe) but I still have the face of a pretty princess.
My colleagues at school keep telling me how incredibly poor people who live in Bansong are. One teacher said it’s one of the top ten poorest places in Korea. That means their English (and often their results in other subjects too) is mostly below the national average, due to no private lessons at hagwons. They don’t have any money for that. Most of them receive financial support from the government.
So how does that affect the classroom? Problem #1 is that the lower level students cannot and maybe will never be able to understand me. Even with beginner class style instructions and demonstrations, the less motivated ones have the attention span of tired teenagers. There’s also the special needs students who are normally in their own classes, but they join mine for fun?! They look the same as any other student and have varying capabilities in Korean as well as English, so I have to try to get them involved without spending too much time helping them. One of my co-teachers strictly tells one special needs student to stay out of my group speaking activities. I feel so bad for her, because she sits there all by herself, but my co-teacher doesn’t want any of the other students to have to “waste time trying to talk to someone who can’t talk back”. I feel like the material in the text books is above what a lot of my 2nd and 3rd graders can do. But do it we must. It’s the curriculum.
Yes, then there are problem kids. Is there any school that doesn’t have problem kids though? There are girls who don’t have mothers and are basically brought up by their grandmothers, since the fathers apparently don’t care. Or often they are without a father and their mothers are busy working. The teachers are constantly disciplining kids, in a variety of ways. I’ve seen students kneeling on the ground, doing lines; making them stand up with their hands in the air in the corridor; clapping the student’s face lightly with both hands to show them they are too chatty; crossing out previous stickers the student has earned on their award sheet. I’ve even seen the old-school rap on the hand with a ruler. Save the last one I’ve also considered using these methods – although so far I haven’t had to. I remind them and drill them on the classroom rules we’ve agreed upon constantly. With only one 45 minute lesson and 31 – 38 students in a class, it’s so important to make sure they’re all listening, understand and are participating in their one speaking practice class a week. The students generally respect teachers for punishing them though. I’ve heard it’s something to do with Confucianism and teachers being like parents to their students – they want their students to grow and do the best they can, so it’s their responsibility to keep students on track.
Generally, girls from Bansong Middle School are happy, quiet and shy or loud and boisterous, generally well behaved and respectful girls. I can’t tell they’re any poorer than anyone else. After all, they are in school uniform.
Please pray for them, my colleagues and I though, because some of my colleagues have to deal with the problem of the stealing of expensive items from some students. A handful of students refuse to follow guidance and continue to disrupt other students in a variety of ways. (There was a before school protest against violence amongst students before school earlier this week.) And it may be that for that handful of them, teachers are the only caring (younger than 50) adult guidance they have in their lives. I wish for teachers to not have to make them hurt to make them think about their actions and for their peers not to be scared and consider them outcasts, but to be brave and encourage them without being used or abused in the process.
I’m really looking forward to having my English classes in my English Only Zone (EOZ) from April. I can’t wait to put some new posters up and take some photos to show you. The resources there are fantastic. More to come on that later. They’ll also be sitting in teams then and class motivation and self/peer discipline should be remarkably easier then. Rob’s already got that situation right now. I have to go to their home rooms, where they sit in pairs or in single file. 31 – 38 desks!
* * * * * * * * * *
Today whilst exploring a new part of Busan for us, we saw students from a richer school: Busan International High School (for foreign languages) out on a field trip. Rob’s going to post photos. They learn English, and one of Chinese, Japanese or German. So we were talking with them on basic topics in English and Deutsch. Even the richer kids only speak about Elementary topics, it seems, albeit a little more fluently than most of my students – but these girls are a little older (and maybe only started learning German this year, to be fair). I mean, we were walking with these 400 or so girls for about 20 minutes to the same destination. They screamed with excitement to learn where we’re from, to hear we’ve lived in Germany and to hear that we’re married -only in Korea!!! “I envy you” said several girls after the screaming subsided. I also got told again that I have a small head (a Korean obsession) and that Rob is handsome and I am pretty. (I’m told this regularly from my girls too – they see Rob on the street after school.) We were pulled into a lot of their group photos being taken by teachers or friends, introduced to their Korean English teachers (the Native English teachers don’t work Saturdays without being paid overtime), just so they could scream when they heard their teachers and us conversing in English. It was very funny and a lot of fun. Rob and I are pleased we can show Korean kids they have the opportunity to practise English outside of their classrooms.
This was a written note from one of my better than average 3rd grade middle school students (14-15 years old). I couldn’t understand what she meant when she was saying the word “geäst”, so I got her to write it down for me.
I’m pretty impressed with this girl’s vocab. In class her listening comprehension is better than most. After me demonstrating how to pronounce “ghost”, I got her to read this sentence to me again and with her gestures that came with that, I came to understand that I have “ghost hair” (so either I need to get a hair cut, or else I just shouldn’t wear it out untied maybe, hehehe) but I still have the face of a pretty princess.
My colleagues at school keep telling me how incredibly poor people who live in Bansong are. One teacher said it’s one of the top ten poorest places in Korea. That means their English (and often their results in other subjects too) is mostly below the national average, due to no private lessons at hagwons. They don’t have any money for that. Most of them receive financial support from the government.
So how does that affect the classroom? Problem #1 is that the lower level students cannot and maybe will never be able to understand me. Even with beginner class style instructions and demonstrations, the less motivated ones have the attention span of tired teenagers. There’s also the special needs students who are normally in their own classes, but they join mine for fun?! They look the same as any other student and have varying capabilities in Korean as well as English, so I have to try to get them involved without spending too much time helping them. One of my co-teachers strictly tells one special needs student to stay out of my group speaking activities. I feel so bad for her, because she sits there all by herself, but my co-teacher doesn’t want any of the other students to have to “waste time trying to talk to someone who can’t talk back”. I feel like the material in the text books is above what a lot of my 2nd and 3rd graders can do. But do it we must. It’s the curriculum.
Yes, then there are problem kids. Is there any school that doesn’t have problem kids though? There are girls who don’t have mothers and are basically brought up by their grandmothers, since the fathers apparently don’t care. Or often they are without a father and their mothers are busy working. The teachers are constantly disciplining kids, in a variety of ways. I’ve seen students kneeling on the ground, doing lines; making them stand up with their hands in the air in the corridor; clapping the student’s face lightly with both hands to show them they are too chatty; crossing out previous stickers the student has earned on their award sheet. I’ve even seen the old-school rap on the hand with a ruler. Save the last one I’ve also considered using these methods – although so far I haven’t had to. I remind them and drill them on the classroom rules we’ve agreed upon constantly. With only one 45 minute lesson and 31 – 38 students in a class, it’s so important to make sure they’re all listening, understand and are participating in their one speaking practice class a week. The students generally respect teachers for punishing them though. I’ve heard it’s something to do with Confucianism and teachers being like parents to their students – they want their students to grow and do the best they can, so it’s their responsibility to keep students on track.
Generally, girls from Bansong Middle School are happy, quiet and shy or loud and boisterous, generally well behaved and respectful girls. I can’t tell they’re any poorer than anyone else. After all, they are in school uniform.
Please pray for them, my colleagues and I though, because some of my colleagues have to deal with the problem of the stealing of expensive items from some students. A handful of students refuse to follow guidance and continue to disrupt other students in a variety of ways. (There was a before school protest against violence amongst students before school earlier this week.) And it may be that for that handful of them, teachers are the only caring (younger than 50) adult guidance they have in their lives. I wish for teachers to not have to make them hurt to make them think about their actions and for their peers not to be scared and consider them outcasts, but to be brave and encourage them without being used or abused in the process.
I’m really looking forward to having my English classes in my English Only Zone (EOZ) from April. I can’t wait to put some new posters up and take some photos to show you. The resources there are fantastic. More to come on that later. They’ll also be sitting in teams then and class motivation and self/peer discipline should be remarkably easier then. Rob’s already got that situation right now. I have to go to their home rooms, where they sit in pairs or in single file. 31 – 38 desks!
* * * * * * * * * *
Today whilst exploring a new part of Busan for us, we saw students from a richer school: Busan International High School (for foreign languages) out on a field trip. Rob’s going to post photos. They learn English, and one of Chinese, Japanese or German. So we were talking with them on basic topics in English and Deutsch. Even the richer kids only speak about Elementary topics, it seems, albeit a little more fluently than most of my students – but these girls are a little older (and maybe only started learning German this year, to be fair). I mean, we were walking with these 400 or so girls for about 20 minutes to the same destination. They screamed with excitement to learn where we’re from, to hear we’ve lived in Germany and to hear that we’re married -only in Korea!!! “I envy you” said several girls after the screaming subsided. I also got told again that I have a small head (a Korean obsession) and that Rob is handsome and I am pretty. (I’m told this regularly from my girls too – they see Rob on the street after school.) We were pulled into a lot of their group photos being taken by teachers or friends, introduced to their Korean English teachers (the Native English teachers don’t work Saturdays without being paid overtime), just so they could scream when they heard their teachers and us conversing in English. It was very funny and a lot of fun. Rob and I are pleased we can show Korean kids they have the opportunity to practise English outside of their classrooms.
Friday, 13 March 2009
A Good Day
Okay, in each class I have anywhere from 30 - 35 students, all of who have very similar names with nametags printed only in Korean. As you can probably guess, this makes calling on them in class rather difficult since they're listening for me to call their name and I can't either pronounce or remember it.
One thing I've already done to make my job easier is to arrange the tables so that they're sitting in groups of 4. Instead of having 35 students to control. I only need to control 9 tables. The arrangement helps but there's still a lot of confusion when I'm trying to call on one particular student and the only thing I can do is point at him.
So this morning, while talking to Shannon, I came up with the brilliant idea to give each table the name of a particular English-speaking city. The names I chose were:
Of course, I hope that eventually I can learn everyone's name but, for now, it's a great way to manage my classes.
I also had another great experience today. At the end of each day, the students spend their last hour cleaning the school from top to bottom. When they're finished with their particular job, they're allowed to roam around the school talking to the teachers or just playing while they wait for their friends to finish. Today, as usual, a group of students crowded around my desk because they were curious about me. They're always curious about me, asking me if I know Korean sports stars or videogames.
Anyway, today they were asking me about videogames so of course I turned it back on them. A few of them told me that liked an online roleplaying game called "Maple Story" so I went onto the internet and looked up the website as they watched over my shoulder.
As soon as the website came up, a ripple of excitement went through them and suddenly there were 20-30 students crowded around my desk, all of who were desperately trying to tell me about this "Maple Story" game... in English! It was so cool! They went from being bored and just hanging out to super-excited because their English teacher was looking at one of their favorite videogames. They all wanted to tell me what level their character was or how awesome of a player they were. The only thing I could do was just sit there and milk the conversations as long as I could until they had to go home.
I love it when my students get excited about English! Their reaction just reconfirms my view that students will want to talk English when it's exciting and personal. In the coming year, I hope that I can find other ways to get my students just as talkative.
So, I feel encouraged and I think that's a great way to end the day!
One thing I've already done to make my job easier is to arrange the tables so that they're sitting in groups of 4. Instead of having 35 students to control. I only need to control 9 tables. The arrangement helps but there's still a lot of confusion when I'm trying to call on one particular student and the only thing I can do is point at him.
So this morning, while talking to Shannon, I came up with the brilliant idea to give each table the name of a particular English-speaking city. The names I chose were:
- New York City, USA
- San Fransisco, USA
- Toronto, Canada
- London, England
- Dublin, Ireland
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Capetown, South Africa
- Sydney, Australia
- Wellington, NZ (I put this one on the table in the center of my classroom out of symbolism and sentimentality)
Of course, I hope that eventually I can learn everyone's name but, for now, it's a great way to manage my classes.
I also had another great experience today. At the end of each day, the students spend their last hour cleaning the school from top to bottom. When they're finished with their particular job, they're allowed to roam around the school talking to the teachers or just playing while they wait for their friends to finish. Today, as usual, a group of students crowded around my desk because they were curious about me. They're always curious about me, asking me if I know Korean sports stars or videogames.
Anyway, today they were asking me about videogames so of course I turned it back on them. A few of them told me that liked an online roleplaying game called "Maple Story" so I went onto the internet and looked up the website as they watched over my shoulder.
As soon as the website came up, a ripple of excitement went through them and suddenly there were 20-30 students crowded around my desk, all of who were desperately trying to tell me about this "Maple Story" game... in English! It was so cool! They went from being bored and just hanging out to super-excited because their English teacher was looking at one of their favorite videogames. They all wanted to tell me what level their character was or how awesome of a player they were. The only thing I could do was just sit there and milk the conversations as long as I could until they had to go home.
I love it when my students get excited about English! Their reaction just reconfirms my view that students will want to talk English when it's exciting and personal. In the coming year, I hope that I can find other ways to get my students just as talkative.
So, I feel encouraged and I think that's a great way to end the day!
Monday, 9 March 2009
The First Stages of Culture Shock and a Multitude of Blessings
It’s Sunday and I’m unsure of the date! Uh, March 8th. I’m writing this on Rob’s laptop because we don’t have internet at home yet. I’m not even sure when I’ll be able to upload this, as every time I got to blogspot on my work laptop, everything apart from our writing is in Hanguel!
So, we’ve been in Busan just over a week now. I remember when I first started working in Karlsruhe…. Weeks seemed like months and months felt like more than a year had passed! In a new country and culture almost everything is new and we are but sponges, soaking up all of the new information, adapting as best we can. All of that new experience changes our perception of time drastically.
Rob’s already described a lot in so much detail, so to summarize what it’s been like for me: in our first week I’ve started a new job, met hundreds of people (of which only about 15 names will be remembered next week), improved drastically with reading Hanguel considering I haven’t been studying it, become capable of correctly pronouncing most of my students’ names, we’ve been communicating as best as we can with limited Korean, easy English and a lot of sign language, started forming our own physical understanding of this city’s layout, lived in two different locations, visited and got to know some people at two different churches…. So it somehow feels like we’ve been here much more than a week already, in a lot of ways.
Oh I can’t resist, because my first few days at school were really hard! So I here’s where I go into more detail. My first day of school was mostly very boring. My main co-teacher, Noh Hyun Jung, took me to school early and we sat in the teachers’ office basically all day.
My school’s teachers’ office sounds a bit like Rob’s: every teacher has their own desk area facing a cubicle wall. 4 teachers face the wall on either side. The vice principal has a stand-alone desk right in the very middle of this long room filled with teachers. The students open the sliding doors and come and talk to teachers freely between lessons. So I especially had a lot of visitors that first day, being the new foreign teacher (aka super star). Some were too shy to do anything but wave, smile and giggle. Quite a few bowed and said hello. One took my hand and bowed until her forehead was touching my hand. Many try to speak to me for more than just hello. A couple of them have a decent sized vocabulary, even if they don’t speak very fluently or grammatically correct. Occasionally they are just being silly. A giggling group visited to tell me they love me and that one of them was my predecessor’s girlfriend. Sometimes it’s awkward, because they are just hovering around me, the conversation has drawn to its natural close and I have to tell them “I need to get back to work now, so see you later. Good bye!”
So on that first day, without any computer and barely any Korean, I met my 3 other co-teachers, one of which is also new to Bansong Girls’ Middle School this year. Then I met and instantly forgot the names of some other friendly teachers. Many of the teachers are very friendly, but their English seems to be only slightly more advanced than my Korean and even my co-teachers have big problems understanding me sometimes. They are also very busy. They have more classes than I do, plus they have so much administrative work, it’s insane. I’m very aware of this, so I try not to be bothersome to them.
Korea seems to be the opposite of Germany when it comes to organisation. All anybody could tell me was that I probably wouldn’t have to teach that first day. I just read until about 9.30am, when the old principal and vice principal gave exit speeches and left. Then I just continued to read through my 3 new textbooks and the empty organisational files my predecessor had left me and made notes of things to ask my co-teachers. After an hour or so a new principal and vice principal arrived with an official from the Busan Office of Education and there were more speeches. Then we went back to doing our own things, which for me, was reading and making notes. At 11am we had an “opening ceremony” in the school gym, which was basically an assembly with only 2nd and 3rd graders. (1st graders started on Tuesday.) The new principal, vice-principal and 8 or so new teachers were introduced. When it was my turn to step forward and bow to the audience, the students screamed like I was a rock star, much to my surprise and embarrassment. Since then, two of my English classes have screamed in the same way when I enter their classrooms too. It’s very loud. I’m sure the excitement will wear off soon.
After the opening ceremony, it was back to reading for the rest of the day until 4.30pm, apart from a Korean lunch with the teachers in the teachers’ cafeteria.
On day two at school, I wanted to cry in the morning. I just felt left out because I can’t speak Korean. I can’t read the teachers’ notice board, or understand the announcements, or go to the staff meetings. I also felt like every one was too busy to help me out. There still wasn’t a schedule, so I had no idea if I’d be teaching that day or not. I had brought in our laptop, but couldn’t hook it up to a printer, so once my basic lesson planning was done, all I could do was try to get my co teachers to understand that I need to be able to have internet access and print before I can teach and that I can’t bring this laptop in each day, since I share it with Rob. Once they understood that, I got a school laptop that afternoon and since then I’ve been surfing the internet if all of my school planning’s finished. That has been a real outlet to my prior frustration, I have to say, although I feel a bit guilty that I’m there surfing for all to see when my colleagues have so much to do. But I’ve offered my help for anything and until we have some meetings about what my co teachers would like me to cover and when and what the lunch time and after school classes should cover, I really can’t plan that much more. I also wish my school laptop’s computer settings were in English, as then I’d be able to change the setup to how I like it, but apart from the software, it all defaults to Hanguel still.
My first classes on Wednesday – Friday with all three grades went really well. The students got to speak a lot, have agreed to my rules and had fun. From all of those classes, only a handful of students refused to speak English with me. With 700 students from a poor, often difficult background, a handful reusing to speak so far is much better than I what I was told at orientation to expect. My co teachers let me run the classes and assisted with monitoring the students’ work, making sure they understood and keeping the students in check. They were all surprised I could run a class. They didn’t understand I have prior teaching experience and they’re all quite happy with me, I think. On average, the 1st graders seem to be better in listening comprehension and speaking fluency than the 2nd and 3rd graders – especially the 2nd graders. I’m looking forward to next week. On Monday and Tuesday I get to meet those classes I haven’t yet met and I’ll be spending a lot more time lesson planning, having to use some material from their seemingly random textbooks. I’m going to have to have some meetings with my co teachers, although I still don’t have access to their schedules.
Apart from work differences and the language barrier, I hadn’t thought I was feeling culture shock much yet. But then we went to watch “The Watchmen” last night at the new local cinema… Here Hollywood movies remain in English, as there are plenty of Korean movies in Korean playing all of the time as well. At the end of that movie as the lights were slowly raised, I looked at the people walking out and it took me several seconds to realise they were all Korean, every one of them. Then I felt surprise at how much I had really escaped reality by watching that movie. I momentarily forgot what country I’m in!
Since I got a laptop and started teaching, I haven’t felt bad at all. The other teachers have begun to show real interest in getting to know me and I’ve found out some very interesting things about them. I’m super motivated to find a Korean course now! (And keep practising German.) There’s still a lot to do in terms of registering, changing banks, getting internet at home… general set up stuff. I feel really blessed to be at such a great school, with enthusiastic students, teachers who really care about quality education and their students’ well being. I feel really blessed to be in this awesome fully furnished apartment with Rob. I have a practice room! We’re praying for lots of guests and are seriously considering getting two little dogs. I feel really blessed about the churches we’ve found. We’ve met some wonderful people there who will probably become good friends and I’ve already got the electric bass from one of them. When we speak with our fellow EPIK colleagues, I realise that Rob and I have already seen a lot more of the city than most. Spring is clearly almost here, so I’m happy to report that after a slightly difficult beginning to the working week, I feel like we’re doing really well. I can only sing God praises.
So, we’ve been in Busan just over a week now. I remember when I first started working in Karlsruhe…. Weeks seemed like months and months felt like more than a year had passed! In a new country and culture almost everything is new and we are but sponges, soaking up all of the new information, adapting as best we can. All of that new experience changes our perception of time drastically.
Rob’s already described a lot in so much detail, so to summarize what it’s been like for me: in our first week I’ve started a new job, met hundreds of people (of which only about 15 names will be remembered next week), improved drastically with reading Hanguel considering I haven’t been studying it, become capable of correctly pronouncing most of my students’ names, we’ve been communicating as best as we can with limited Korean, easy English and a lot of sign language, started forming our own physical understanding of this city’s layout, lived in two different locations, visited and got to know some people at two different churches…. So it somehow feels like we’ve been here much more than a week already, in a lot of ways.
Oh I can’t resist, because my first few days at school were really hard! So I here’s where I go into more detail. My first day of school was mostly very boring. My main co-teacher, Noh Hyun Jung, took me to school early and we sat in the teachers’ office basically all day.
My school’s teachers’ office sounds a bit like Rob’s: every teacher has their own desk area facing a cubicle wall. 4 teachers face the wall on either side. The vice principal has a stand-alone desk right in the very middle of this long room filled with teachers. The students open the sliding doors and come and talk to teachers freely between lessons. So I especially had a lot of visitors that first day, being the new foreign teacher (aka super star). Some were too shy to do anything but wave, smile and giggle. Quite a few bowed and said hello. One took my hand and bowed until her forehead was touching my hand. Many try to speak to me for more than just hello. A couple of them have a decent sized vocabulary, even if they don’t speak very fluently or grammatically correct. Occasionally they are just being silly. A giggling group visited to tell me they love me and that one of them was my predecessor’s girlfriend. Sometimes it’s awkward, because they are just hovering around me, the conversation has drawn to its natural close and I have to tell them “I need to get back to work now, so see you later. Good bye!”
So on that first day, without any computer and barely any Korean, I met my 3 other co-teachers, one of which is also new to Bansong Girls’ Middle School this year. Then I met and instantly forgot the names of some other friendly teachers. Many of the teachers are very friendly, but their English seems to be only slightly more advanced than my Korean and even my co-teachers have big problems understanding me sometimes. They are also very busy. They have more classes than I do, plus they have so much administrative work, it’s insane. I’m very aware of this, so I try not to be bothersome to them.
Korea seems to be the opposite of Germany when it comes to organisation. All anybody could tell me was that I probably wouldn’t have to teach that first day. I just read until about 9.30am, when the old principal and vice principal gave exit speeches and left. Then I just continued to read through my 3 new textbooks and the empty organisational files my predecessor had left me and made notes of things to ask my co-teachers. After an hour or so a new principal and vice principal arrived with an official from the Busan Office of Education and there were more speeches. Then we went back to doing our own things, which for me, was reading and making notes. At 11am we had an “opening ceremony” in the school gym, which was basically an assembly with only 2nd and 3rd graders. (1st graders started on Tuesday.) The new principal, vice-principal and 8 or so new teachers were introduced. When it was my turn to step forward and bow to the audience, the students screamed like I was a rock star, much to my surprise and embarrassment. Since then, two of my English classes have screamed in the same way when I enter their classrooms too. It’s very loud. I’m sure the excitement will wear off soon.
After the opening ceremony, it was back to reading for the rest of the day until 4.30pm, apart from a Korean lunch with the teachers in the teachers’ cafeteria.
On day two at school, I wanted to cry in the morning. I just felt left out because I can’t speak Korean. I can’t read the teachers’ notice board, or understand the announcements, or go to the staff meetings. I also felt like every one was too busy to help me out. There still wasn’t a schedule, so I had no idea if I’d be teaching that day or not. I had brought in our laptop, but couldn’t hook it up to a printer, so once my basic lesson planning was done, all I could do was try to get my co teachers to understand that I need to be able to have internet access and print before I can teach and that I can’t bring this laptop in each day, since I share it with Rob. Once they understood that, I got a school laptop that afternoon and since then I’ve been surfing the internet if all of my school planning’s finished. That has been a real outlet to my prior frustration, I have to say, although I feel a bit guilty that I’m there surfing for all to see when my colleagues have so much to do. But I’ve offered my help for anything and until we have some meetings about what my co teachers would like me to cover and when and what the lunch time and after school classes should cover, I really can’t plan that much more. I also wish my school laptop’s computer settings were in English, as then I’d be able to change the setup to how I like it, but apart from the software, it all defaults to Hanguel still.
My first classes on Wednesday – Friday with all three grades went really well. The students got to speak a lot, have agreed to my rules and had fun. From all of those classes, only a handful of students refused to speak English with me. With 700 students from a poor, often difficult background, a handful reusing to speak so far is much better than I what I was told at orientation to expect. My co teachers let me run the classes and assisted with monitoring the students’ work, making sure they understood and keeping the students in check. They were all surprised I could run a class. They didn’t understand I have prior teaching experience and they’re all quite happy with me, I think. On average, the 1st graders seem to be better in listening comprehension and speaking fluency than the 2nd and 3rd graders – especially the 2nd graders. I’m looking forward to next week. On Monday and Tuesday I get to meet those classes I haven’t yet met and I’ll be spending a lot more time lesson planning, having to use some material from their seemingly random textbooks. I’m going to have to have some meetings with my co teachers, although I still don’t have access to their schedules.
Apart from work differences and the language barrier, I hadn’t thought I was feeling culture shock much yet. But then we went to watch “The Watchmen” last night at the new local cinema… Here Hollywood movies remain in English, as there are plenty of Korean movies in Korean playing all of the time as well. At the end of that movie as the lights were slowly raised, I looked at the people walking out and it took me several seconds to realise they were all Korean, every one of them. Then I felt surprise at how much I had really escaped reality by watching that movie. I momentarily forgot what country I’m in!
Since I got a laptop and started teaching, I haven’t felt bad at all. The other teachers have begun to show real interest in getting to know me and I’ve found out some very interesting things about them. I’m super motivated to find a Korean course now! (And keep practising German.) There’s still a lot to do in terms of registering, changing banks, getting internet at home… general set up stuff. I feel really blessed to be at such a great school, with enthusiastic students, teachers who really care about quality education and their students’ well being. I feel really blessed to be in this awesome fully furnished apartment with Rob. I have a practice room! We’re praying for lots of guests and are seriously considering getting two little dogs. I feel really blessed about the churches we’ve found. We’ve met some wonderful people there who will probably become good friends and I’ve already got the electric bass from one of them. When we speak with our fellow EPIK colleagues, I realise that Rob and I have already seen a lot more of the city than most. Spring is clearly almost here, so I’m happy to report that after a slightly difficult beginning to the working week, I feel like we’re doing really well. I can only sing God praises.
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