I thought I'd write a bit about teaching. Okay, a lot. Read as much or as little as you like.
On Monday, Tuesday and Friday I teach at Cheonan Girls' Middle School. This school was built in the 1950's and at that time schools were sex segregated, so this one still is. The schools that were built more recently are co-ed. The building is old but the people are cheerful. There is no heat in the halls, but all of the rooms have heat. There are frosted glass sliding doors to enter each classroom. And there is a glass-covered (but still outdoor) walkway connecting the two buildings of the school. Therefore, it will be cold in the winter, but thankfully warm in my classes and in the teacher room.
Another teacher about my age gives me a ride to this school. She speaks pretty good English so is fun to talk to. She's very excited to have the honor of giving me a ride and always says I look like a movie star. She's actually a social worker in the school, as the school is in a older/poorer part of town.
Every day when I arrive I have to take off my shoes and put them in a cubby by the door. At this school there is a cubby with my name on it. I then put on some slip-on shoes. The students wear plastic flip-flops--the kind you wear with socks (no toe divider) but most of the teachers' "slips" are a bit dressier. After exploring expeditions at Lotte Mart, I found some that look dressy but are very cushy for about $10, so I was excited about that. After that I must go greet the principal. He wants me to greet him when I arrive for the first few weeks. The teachers are very respectful to the principal and do a lot of bowing when they enter his presence, same as the students do when they approach a teacher's desk. He speaks no English so another teacher translates for me. He has told me that he hopes I like Korean culture and feel no prejudice because they think of me as a sister.
Then I go to my desk in the 2nd grade teacher room. (1st grade=6th grade, 2nd grade=7th grade, and 3rd grade=8th grade. Many 2nd grade teachers have desks in this room, where they come between classes and during their planning period. There are 10 minutes between each class and a whole hour for lunch. There is an ethernet cable at my desk, which makes me happy. :) Everyone at this school always so friendly to me. On my first day there was a sign on my desk that said "Welcome Ashley to Cheonan Girls' Middle School" and a flower. A few of the teachers are women in their 20's or maybe 30's and I have already had invitations to dinner, to see a movie downtown, etc.
The students here go wild over me. In the halls they all want to say hello to me and when I say hi back to them they squeal and giggle. The first time I walk into each class (which every time is still the first time as there are 15 English classes and I only see each one once a week. They have a Korean teacher that I team teach with.) they clap and cheer. Anyone who has low self-esteem or is seeking significance should come teach in Korea. Except not. Anyway. These girls are all extremely enthusiastic.
Lunch here is Korean food, which actually has so far been some of the best Korean food I've had. I have 5 classes each day, which keeps me running. By the end of the day I am tired, but happy. I seem to have quite a bit of freedom in my teaching here, and the teachers are very supportive. Some of them translate practically everything I say, and one tries to maintain an English-only classroom, even though her own English is somewhat limited. I think it's best when there is a good balance of both, so that the students are forced to try to understand the English, but if there is a concept or direction they just can't grasp they can have it explained so that they understand.
By the way, going to the bathroom at this school can be an adventure as the teacher restroom usually smells like a port-a-potty and there is only one normal toilet (somewhat normal that is--it has a really complicated set of electronic buttons attached next to the seat but a normal flush handle--but the other 2 stalls have "squatty potties" that are basically urinals in the ground, as they flush and everything. And there is no toilet paper, ever, so they keep a roll in the teacher room. This goes for both schools.
Buk Jung School (Jung=Middle) is feels very different from Cheonan Girls' Middle. It was a boys school until this year, when they began phasing in girls starting with the 1st grade class. Since I teach 2nd grade, I teach all boys. When I greeted the principal this morning, she told me not to wear short skirts. I was wearing a knee-length skirt with black tights, so I wasn't sure if she was referring to my skirt or to the mini skirts that are very popular in Korea. I decided that to play it safe I'll wear pants from now on to that school. This school feels a lot more traditional, and consequently, more stressful to me. At both schools the teachers are the ones who head to class when the bell rings, and the students are already in the classroom. And at the end of class the students wait for the teacher to dismiss class regardless of the bell, and the teacher generally leaves the room before the students do. At Buk Jung more of the classes begin the traditional way, where one student rises, calls his classmates to attention, then they all bow and say "Hello teacher" and I bow back and say hello back to them. Only one class at the Girls' School did this. Also at Buk all the teachers seem to be very strict with the students. Many of them carry sticks in class. First thing this morning I passed a teacher spanking with a stick a male student who was on his hands and knees on the ground with his butt sticking up in the air. The teacher escorting me to class must have seen the startled look on my face because she explained that this was a very troublesome student who was in trouble for hitting his classmates. Ironic. Later, in one of my classes, the (male) Korean teacher got onto some students who were horsing around and made them submit to being rapped on the head with his knuckles. Actually, one of the other American teachers told me that in her elementary school class the Korean teacher gave a quiz on colors where they had to match 5 color words to the picture, and for every answer the kids got wrong, the teacher hit their hand with a stick. She said the kids were crying and she was having to hold back tears herself. Not all of the teachers are like this. But if they are, nobody has a problem with it. The teachers are friendly to me at Buk but harder to relate to. They call me "Ashley Teacher" lol. And most of them are older and have a lower English level than most of the teachers at Girls' Middle. For example some of the teachers this afternoon asked me if I was boring at Buk Middle. They meant bored, because I don't have any afternoon classes. Also some of can only speak in present tense, or maybe always say "is" and never "are".
The Koreans traditionally teach English through rote memorization of essential phrases. One of the other Americans at KNU told me that she said to her 11 year old student, "Is this your pencil?" and he didn't understand because he had learned "Does this pencil belong to you?" or something like that instead. That is why a lot of Koreans don't understand grammar rules unless they have lived in the U.S. At Buk, they want me to teach that way too, as it is consistent with their emphasis on discipline. Today I was about to move to another activity I had prepared when the teacher, a man, who is actually quite good at speaking English, interrupted me and told me he thought I was teaching too much content and not giving enough opportunity for speaking practice. He wanted me to stick to just one page in the textbook, which only had on it two dialogs, both of which were very similar. Here was one of them--I have it memorized lol:
(in the airplane) "Excuse me. Could you please do me a favor?"
"Sure."
"Could you get me some water?"
"Sure. Here you are."
"Thanks. By the way, do you think this flight will arrive on time?"
"No, I'm sorry. We'll be delayed an hour."
"Anyway, I hope we'll arrive safely."
"So do I."
The teacher wanted me to have the students practice saying the dialog with a partner (which I already did), then have each pair of students (about 40 students total in the class) stand and read the dialog before the class. They did. And most of them didn't really know what they were saying, as evidenced by their having their noses buried in the book.
I decided today that I won't be able to make any breakthroughs in understanding with these kids with those kinds of restrictions, so I am going to focus on correcting pronunciation--something the Korean teachers can't do as well--so maybe someday if the kids travel to the States they will at least have some of their bad pronunciation habits broken, the worst of which is inserting a vowel between all consonants, like this: "I hope-a we'll arrive-a safe-a-ly".The Korean language never puts two consonants together--hence the misspelling of my name on my door by someone who pronounces it Ashely. Another common error is mixing up r's and l's, because in Korean both sounds are represented by the same symbol.
Okay well I'm gonna hit the sack now. Oh one more note about Korean culture. Their diets mostly consist of vegetables, with just a little bit of protein. And their is a national obsession with "well-being food", or health food. So those of you who may have been worrying about my health need not fear. :)
Adieu.
