Step Into My Office...

The main reason I am here: To Teach English as a Second Language. Songwon Middle School has around 1000 students. The school has five floors and my office and classroom are located on the fifth floor. The students are 13, 14, and 15 years old and are put in classes according to their age and academic level i.e. the high achievers, intermediate, and low level learners. The school is literally five minutes from my apartment. I can actually see my apartment building from my office window :)

If you were to drive up through the front gate, it would look a little something like this:

When it comes to teaching, I create my own lesson plans for my students. I do not follow a curriculum, they just emphasize that my main focus is on English speaking. This week I am going to an orientation, so I might find out a bit more to what I need to be doing.

Every week I teach twenty classes and each class has forty students in it. I pretty much see every student in the school once a week. This rotation allows me to teach one lesson per week. With three hours of prep time a day, I have fifteen hours in a week to come up with one lesson plan, which means I am way ahead of schedule with my lesson plans. It's a nice feeling to be prepared. And if the lesson I put together isn't working for some reason, it gives me time to fix it. Usually with my one lesson a week, I adjust the lesson to be more difficult for the high achievers, and for the lower level learners I dumb it down.

My classroom is great. It has a projector mounted to the ceiling, two white boards, computer, teacher's desk, six windows with picture blinds, seven tables for students to sit at, and central heating. If you would like a tour, visit My Classroom in Suwon, that is, if you have facebook. Still haven't been able to load a video on blogspot yet. And here are some pictures:

The students are full of life and lots of energy. They always say hello to me in the hallways and then a lot of the time follow with, "You are beautiful". It feels awkward for random strangers, my students no less, to tell me I'm beautiful all the time. But it is nice on the days when I am feeling a little self-conscious about how I look :) The third thing they tell me the most is that I have big eyes... and not scary big eyes like the big bad wolf, but they think that having big eyes are a good thing.

The food during lunch is usually delicious, and you really can't beat the $45 a month it costs to have it. There is eating etiquette though... there are places on your plate that you have to put certain food (I don't know if this is a school thing or a cultural thing) and you can't leave the table until everyone at the table you are sitting at is done eating (which sucks sometimes when you have things to do during lunch, but it's a nice gesture). One thing you can't do in front of people is blow your nose, which is frustrating because most all of their food is spicy. I don't know about you, but spicy food can get my nose running, and this can be an inconvenience at times.

Something that I learned the hard way is they don't supply toliet paper at the school. It's BYOTP here at the school, and I've noticed in a lot of public restrooms too. And it's not like they run out all the time, they literally do not have holders in the bathrooms. Rarely do you see paper towels and if you're lucky, there is a hand dryer.

But yet, after lunch, most Koreans brush their teeth. They brush their teeth three times a day. And when they are sick, they wear masks to make sure they don't get others sick. Seems like a contradiction to me, but who am I to say which hygienic routine is more important.

Kinda getting off topic... my co-workers. My co-workers have been so nice and they are always making conversation with me. I was feeling sick to my stomach one day and my co-workers notice I was having a difficult time with my food. They thought I didn't like the food. I told them I did, but that I was feeling nauseous. Mrs. Hwang took me to the school nurse to get some medicine, she offered to take me to the hospital, and she made me rice cereal not once, but twice to help my stomach. Totally above and beyond.

My other co-worker Mrs. Chang, she has been getting all my paperwork together and just been on top of everything concerning me. It's really nice to have co-workers that are looking out for you. Especially in a place where half the time I can't figure things out for myself.

All in all being a teacher is just as I imagined. It's everything I want in a career. It's a job that I can be proud of and that makes me feel important. Most of all, I love doing it and being here, which makes it not feel like a 'job' at all. And that's the kicker :)