So I'm a Teacher Now...

The 2 ½ weeks since I arrived in Daegu have just flown by; I’m still a little bewildered by the fact that I’ve moved into – actually settled into – a new apartment in a new city, as well as started a new job. I still find it hard to believe that I’m really doing this, really going into middle-school classes every day with my own lesson plans, and then coming home to this apartment every night.

My first day at school was Monday, August 31st, but for the first three days I didn’t teach. I sat at my desk in the teacher’s room (teachers don’t have their own classrooms at Jeil. They move around to different rooms for each period and have desk space in a common room), started putting some lesson plans together, tried to familiarize myself with everything, and met my co-teachers. Jeil Middle School has three grades (in Korea they say middle school grades 1, 2, and 3, but it’s the same as grades 7, 8, and 9 in the States). Grades 1 and 3 are divided into three levels for English classes, with C being the lowest, B being intermediate, and A being the highest. Grade 2 English classes have mixed levels. I teach several of each type of class each week, as well as two after-school conversation classes (I didn’t have a choice about doing them, but I do get paid extra because it’s outside normal working hours). So in total I have 22 class hours each week, of nine different types or levels, and I see over 440 different students every week.

Carrie is my co-teacher for all the A-level students; my B-level co-teacher is Um Soo; my C-level co-teacher is Bosun; and Sook Hee is my co-teacher for all the grade 2 classes. They’re all very nice and helpful women. They tell me what topic or chapter to teach, I make the lesson plans, and they help me in class with discipline, translating directions or phrases, and modeling games or activities. I have a lot less interaction with all the other teachers at Jeil, but they also seem very nice. The P.E. teacher sits to my left and knows a few words of English, and a man who teaches Korean sits across from me. He’s always working on his English, and I often look up to see him reading the grade 1 English textbook and listening to the textbook’s CD! Sometimes I get questions from other teachers (and even the principal once) about how to say something correctly in English, or requests to proofread something. I don’t mind doing it at all – it’s nice to be the expert on something when I can’t even do basic things like read the ‘on/off’ button for the printer or operate the water filterer.

Bosun sits right next to me in the teacher’s room, and she is the closest to my age. She also helps me outside of school – she went with me to the Immigration Office to apply for my Alien Registration Card, and is coming over when the Internet/cable guy comes to my studio to set up the Internet this week. The ARC is just an ID card for foreigners, and you generally can’t transfer money or get cable TV, Internet, a cell phone or a bank account without it. EPIK very conveniently took care of our cell phones and bank accounts for us at orientation, and for some reason the cable/Internet guy came to my studio two weeks ago and agreed to hook up the cable without an ARC, but not the Internet. But I just got the ARC today, so the plan is to have Internet by Wednesday. And the hot water is FINALLY fixed, after three visits from the mechanic and two weeks of cold showers (luckily the weather’s been hot!). I continue to kill a lot of strange insects but overall I am very satisfied with my studio.

Teaching is REALLY hard work. At first I thought I would just set up a few lesson plans at the beginning of each week and then do them over and over again, but it definitely does not work like that. I’m still trying to get a handle on all the different grades and levels that I’m responsible for, what each class is capable of, what is possible within a forty-five minute period, and what activities work or don’t work. Some of my lessons have gone really well, and others have totally bombed. I find myself making adjustments after almost every class, until I finally feel like I have it down and then it’s the last day of the week and I’m already behind in planning lessons for the next one. It’s draining and time-consuming – I often take work home with me nights and weekends – but I’m already beginning to feel how rewarding this can be. I really like the challenge of appealing to the different demands that go along with the varying abilities of the students, and when a class goes really well and the kids have fun and actually understand me, it’s so empowering.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written, and since my original goal was to write once a week and I still have quite a bit to say, I’ll try to write a few more shorter posts over the next few days to catch up on everything. So keep coming back! And please email me, Facebook me, leave comments here, or whatever – I do have Internet at school and I can’t say enough times how much it means to me to hear from everyone.