A Day In The Life Of A Foreign English Teacher In Korea

Parking Korean Style.

It's Friday afternoon fading into evening. I'm sitting in a big fat easy chair on my balcony watching as the car park fills with people returning from work. It's interesting, car parking is at such a premium here that people quite happily double park.  Apparently they leave notes with there cell phone numbers on their windscreens so that if the person they are parked in front of wants to leave they can contact them. Alternatively one morning I watched a man wearing a suit carefully put on white gloves and then push someone's car forward one space so that he could get his own car out. The car park here is perfectly flat and so people leave their cars in neutral without the hand break on.

This weekend is my weekend off. So tonight I am going to stay right where I am curled up with my computer until I've written this blog and updated all my pictures.

So to writing ... Let me tell you about a day in the life of an English teacher in Korea.

The day officially begins, with the start of my first class at 8am, on the dot. Koreans are big on time keeping - however in my school every clock is slightly different so the big on time thing doesn't go so well - on the other hand all cell phones show the same time - it's done by electronic magic! So I've set mine to say 'cuckoo' on the hour.

We begin with a short Bible reading and a prayer, and then I take the roll. The Bible reading can be interesting - how do you explain things like pride or 'going the second mile' to someone with a very limited vocabulary? My art skills are taking an unexpected divergence into the field of stick men. It's amazing what you can explain with stick men!!

Next we have pronunciation drills, "repeat after me; love, love, log, log, lion, lion, etc, etc, the loving lion lay by the log, ..." for about 10 mins. Kind of boring, on the other hand trying to explain and demonstrate correct placement of the tongue when making required sounds can be challenging. Turns out that Koreans have a letter that sounds something like half way between our l and r which is why they have so much trouble with those letters.

After pronunciation we have grammar type drills for 15 mins - more of the repeat after me routine. Compared with teaching chemistry this is not at all challenging, but it is very fulfilling in terms of seeing my students making progress from one week to the next - much more obvious progress than in a chemistry lab, plus there is a much lower risk of blowing the students up - or poisoning them! In the last 20 mins of class we have conversation time. The students ask each other questions from the textbook, the way it is structured the students are supported to begin to make there own responses and so I get to learn all sorts of things about them as I listen to their conversation and correct their grammar and pronunciation etc. Am making friends with my students, been out to a few meals and some sightseeing with some of them.

After I finish the 8-8:50 am lesson I have a 10 minute break and then I teach it all over again at 9 am and at 10 am.

Some of the students from my 10am class.

Same students - pretending to be studious :-) Took the pics after class, just before they went home.

... and now it is Sabbath Afternoon, same chair same balcony, different day. Decided last night that sleep was more important than finishing my blog. Just like I decided every day this week. Sorry about that. But now that I've finally adapted and am sleeping well - most of the time - I'm suddenly very tired, think my bodies gone into catch up mode or something.

At 11am I teach a listening class on Tuesday's Wednesdays and Thursdays. Then lunch is at 12pm in the kitchen upstairs, I am being introduced to the many many types of kimchi, some I actually kind of like, enough to eat a respectable amount when it is offered, not enough to spend my own money on.

Then I am free until 3pm. At the moment I'm using this time to write lesson plans and prep for the next days lessons but am keeping all I do and next term the amount of prep time will be greatly reduced :-)

At 3 pm I teach three 15 minute segments to three different children's classes. They come for an hour long class four days a week with a Korean teacher and I join the class for just 15 minutes. Lots or repeat after me, hangman, and stickers (and other stuff). I'm actually enjoying them - little children not quite so scary after all. My favourite class has only three children in it; Roy, Harry and Sally. Is it very bad of me that I giggle when ever I think about Harry and Sally? Just reminds me of the movie... Which really it shouldn't, these kids are so cute ... Roy is about 8 I think, and I suspect he has a learning disability, haven't asked his teacher though. Harry and Sally are just 5 - and Sally is tiny! And smart!! She is reading the words and everything. Harry is a little gentleman, stands up every time he answers a question, has little round glasses and looks like an Asian Harry Potter. Also smart but not quite to Sally's standard. The other two classes have something like 20 children and I am discovering that those discipline skills that worked in high school work just as well with little kids, no translation required. Mainly they are good and I enjoy them rather a lot.

After these three classes I am free from 4pm until 6pm - have started using this time to go home and prepare food and clothes for the next day, and also to have a nap. I think Nap Time is going to be a priority over here. Not just a luxurious indulgence. 6pm I have a level 1 class - these are students who are just beginning to learn English, I have seen the most progress in them - amazing how quickly people can learn new things if they put the time and effort into it.

7pm has a Religion class that I am loving, 5 students. We are looking at the stories of Old Testament people; Joseph, Ruth, Daniel and Esther. I get to tell stories and am loving it!!! Actually they do most of the talking, there is a simple worksheet that the students read a paragraph each and then try to summarise in their own words what they read, then I fill in the story in with more details and ask things like "how do you think Joseph was feeling when ...?" or "Why do you think God allowed ...?" etc. Leads to very interesting discussions. Then there are grammer exercises, vocabulary words, and discussion questions. We finish with prayer.

8pm I teach another L1 class, the beautiful thing is that I only have to prepare 2 lessons and then teach them multiple times. The Bible classes are already prepared, I just have to look over them before class and think about how I am going to tell the story, and pray - a lot. I think I am beginning to understand what Paul de Ville once told me about 'teaching students not content' - because the general class work is kind of boring I'm concentrating more on the individual students than what I'm teaching. Maybe there is hope that one day I'll go back to chemistry teaching ...  and Maybe NOT! There is still the difference that these students actually want to learn English. Few of my chemistry students wanted to learn Chemistry. There were a few, and I thought they were delightful, but the majority did not. Sad since it's so fascinating.

My classroom - view from the door.

My classroom - view from the back. 6 of these would still be smaller than my Lab was.

I've given up trying to prep for the children. Was at first but then the Korean teacher would want me to do something different when I got to class. I just make sure I know the story of the week really well and have thought about lots of different questions I can ask about the story. And activities to go with each page in the textbook. The format of the lessons is that on Day One I read a story - with lots of actions and funny voices and things like that, Days Two through Four or Five I do what ever the Korean teacher asks - but it is always related to the story. There is a text book that has something like ten pages of activities the students complete - when I get into class the teacher will point to a page and say please cover this page - and I never know what it is going to be - have tried asking before class, but they are busy then and I don't like to interrupt their time. They each have to ring every parent of every student every day. So imagine, you teach about 5 classes of 20 students each - that's 100 phone calls a day! On the last day of that story I test the students and give them a grade. That is the easiest day.

I finish my teaching day at 9:15pm and being the last one to leave I lock up the Institute and go home.

View from classroom window just before I go home.

View from classroom window just before I go home.

The institute is on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors of a large building that also contains 3 other English language Institutes. Have met one of the teachers from one of the other schools. A very tall American - must be 6'6'' I think. He's nice, but spends all his break time smoking by the front door of the building.

My classroom is on the 4th floor of this building.

These Institutes (the Korean word is Hogwon) are after school/Night school type services. Except they happen all day too. People who want to learn English sign up for a one hour class in English and they can take a Religion class as well for a very cheap price to get extra practice. Then they come to class 5 days a week. (4 days for the children.) There is also a program called All Day Club, that is an English Intensive. They have their regular 1 hour class and then 3 additional hours of things like listening, pronunciation, grammar, etc. And then any Religion classes they have signed up for as well.

Over all I can highly recommend the experience and am very glad I came - even if I do get chatted up by random men in the subway :-)

Have also discovered that the temptation to go back to my bad old workaholic ways is high! Am doing my best to stop that. On the plus side - days when I don't do so well as a non-workaholic I also can't go back to the 'bad old live on takeaways' ways either. Difficult to buy edible takeaways when your a vegetarian in a country with a high meat consumption and you don't speak the language. Means some days that lunch is the only meal I eat - sleep being such a premium that sometimes I choose to sleep rather than get up in time for breakfast. But since I started coming home between 4 and 6pm that has not been such a problem - make the next days breakfast and put it in the fridge ready to be micro-waved in the morning - quick.

Next term my schedule will change to different time slots and classes, but will be still about the same number of teaching hours. I'm planning to join a gym and re-start my weightlifting routine - found one very close to my apartment building -it's underground - and it is so cheap compared to gyms in NZ. Also going to use some of my free time to explore the area where I am living. Am discovering that there are hidden surprises here too. Statutes and other artworks nestled in unexpected places :-)