My first day teaching

Monday, November 26^th, 2012

The big day came at last, my first day of teaching.  I met my Korean co-teacher at the metro at 1:30pm.  We took the metro together to the school.  The school turned out to be in a location I was interested in all along, Namcheon.  It is also where my friend, Aimee, who will be coming to Korea in a couple of weeks, is meant to be living!  I was happy about that news. 

I was brought to my classroom and told to wait for my schedule.  After around 15 minutes of waiting with no instruction on what to do, the co-teacher finally came into my classroom.  The schedule was written in Korean.  The times were easy to understand but the rest of it meant nothing to me.  She kind of explained the level of the class and the number of students in each class.  She did not explain the material or much else.  I was basically left winging all of my classes. 

My first class was with the younger children.  They had their own books.  I had to follow along with their books and read what was going on upside-down.  This class was the best class of the day.  They were eager to learn, understood what was going on and willing to participate.  After that class I was thinking, this isn’t so bad.  The next couple of classes were pretty good too.  For one of the classes I had two boys stand up at the back because they were hitting each other.  The classes were only 40 minutes so they went pretty quick.

The last four classes of the day were essay classes.  The kids would write a short 100-word essay, and I corrected their work.  These classes were not so well behaved.  The kids would be socializing with each other in Korean and not listening very well.  I tried to quiet them down but then they would become noisy a few seconds later.  My only advice from the other foreign teachers was to be strict. I made the conscious decision to increase my strictness for when I taught them again if they were acting this way.  I was told you need to be strict at the beginning or else they will take advantage of you.  The Korean co-teacher told me she scolds them when they are being bad and she sometimes even hits them with a ruler.  Even though they were a bit bold and loud, I still played a game (hangman) with most of the classes since it was the first day and we had extra time at the end.

By the end of the day, I finished at 8:30, I was so hungry it hurt and I was so exhausted I just wanted to shower and crawl into bed. 

Paper cups they drink purified water out of

Change of plans.  I was on the metro and two Korean’s started talking to me.  They were students, a girl who was 24, named Bianca and a boy who was 22, named Henry.  They needed to find a foreigner for a school assignment.  They asked if I could help them.  Even though I was tired and hungry, I told them I would help.  We exited the metro at my stop and went to the coffee shop. We ordered a bit to eat and drink.   I ordered a cream cheese pretzel, thinking that would be a safe thing to order.  It was bizarre tasting, almost sweet.  They had to do an interview with a foreigner and videotape it. I didn’t know what I was signing up for!  The interview was about what I thought of Korean guys.  They asked me questions such as:  do you like Korean guys?  Would you marry a Korean guy?  What do you think the difference is between relationships between guys and girls in your country and Korean relationships? They also asked if I knew who Psy was and she had me stand up so she could teach me the pony dance to his song, Gangnam style, in the middle of the coffee shop!  They were both really nice and funny and it was an interesting experience.  The girl gave me her number and said if I ever need anything to give her a call.  She also said I looked like Barbie haha.

It was 10pm when I got home and I forced myself to eat a little more, showered and climbed right into bed.

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