Korean School/Where I Work

School is quite intense in Korea. Most students will go to a public or private school at around 8 am. They get done in the early afternoon, maybe around 3 or so and then return home and do homework for a while. Several hours each evening are spent going to various extra academies, of which the most common are English academies or Hogwons. They get home around 9ish, just in time to work on their homework from school and the academies. They go to bed around 11. Wash, rinse and repeat. They also have Saturday classes most weekends at their schools. Remember, this is the typical schedule for the Elementary School students I work with. As they get older, the schedules only become more demanding. Every day when I ask the students how they are they say they are tired. I ask what their plans are for the weekend and they say they will be going to school and studying. It does sound like they normally have time to do something fun Saturday and Sunday afternoon/evening. I remember the days being pretty long and boring when I was in high-school, but I’m glad I didn’t have to grow up in Korea.

I am working at an English academy that teaches elementary students ranging from 3rd-6th grades. The academy is pretty large and one of many branches of a large chain that operates throughout Korea. We have 7 foreign (native English speaking) teachers on my elementary school floor, which I understand to be an extremely large number for a Korean English academy. Many hogwons are small independently owned and operated businesses that employ only one or maybe two foreign English teachers. They regularly spring up, run for a while, and if they are unsuccessful, the teachers are laid off and the school will eventually go out of business. The floor above us is the middle school branch of our school which employs another 4 foreign teachers. We are employed by either the middle school or the elementary school but teachers occasionally will have to sub on the other floor.

On my floor, English ability varies and most kids are grouped by ability into one of 3 main groups. These groups are each further divided into three additional groups for a total of 9 different class levels. In the highest levels, several of the students have lived in USA or Canada for a year or more and a couple kids have spent enough time there that they have no discernible accent. The lowest level students are just learning the language and can only understand the simplest sentences and vocabulary. I think teachers in these levels end up singing a lot of songs. Most of the students are somewhere in the middle. I just received my class assignments and I have 6 different sections in the middle range which I teach 3-4 times a week. Some of my coworkers were quite happy when they found out which classes I was taking from them because they have some behaviorally challenged students. I think I only have to teach the worst group on two days each week, so I think it will be okay.

It will be nice to start teaching and get to get to know my classes. For the last couple weeks I have just been filling in for teachers in random classes. One of the teachers was on vacation upstairs, so I was subbing for half of her classes and the bosses didn’t want me to start teaching my actual classes because they thought the students would get confused if the teachers kept changing. I got a lot of practice with different classes and abilities which was a nice way to ease my way into teaching. I feel that the most difficult part of teaching is just getting to know the students and their individual abilities and how strict you need to be as a teacher. It will also be nice to have a more regular routine, both on a daily basis, and also in each class as the books are somewhat standardized so that each class can be similarly structured. It was a little chaotic trying to figure out what I was going to be teaching when I was in a different place with a different class and different books most days.

This past weekend I was able to go to Haeundae Beach with my friends Pat (a high school friend from Duluth who lives nearby in Busan) and Aaron (one of my coworkers who works in the middle school). We played Frisbee for an hour or so and then jumped into the sea. The water was pretty cold, but both Pat and I agreed it wasn’t much colder than the average summer day on Park Point swimming in Lake Superior. After we walked around a nearby park on the coast for a while, we met up with some more of my coworkers and went to “Russia Town” for dinner. One of the elementary school teachers at my school was born in St. Petersburg and moved to Boston when he was 9. He is fluent in Russian so he found us a restaurant, ordered our food in Russian, and was able to speak to the waitress (owner?) about whatever it is Russians like to chat about. I had never had borsch but it was delicious. All of the Korean food I have had is pretty amazing too, but I’ll write about that another time.