Oh High School

Just a quick update on teaching high school kids in Korea...

I teach about 18.33 hours a week, to be precise, but it rounds out to be 22 hours.

I teach 22 classes, 20 of them are under specific contract, 2 are extra discussion groups with talented students. I get paid extra from the school (^^ <-- korean :).

I easily opened up a bank account with the help of one of my English teachers in under an hour (take that American banks!) without social security or foreigner id card/number. Just a passport.

There are three "grades" in high school. I only teach grades 1 and 2 because 3rd grade students are soo busy with everything else. All high school students go to school from 6/7 am to 11:30pm. No joke. The third graders don't get vacation or weekends. seriously. They eat and work all day.

Strange things about Korean schools, other than kids staying there all day?
- meals are around 2,000won i think, or just under $2
- there is a teachers' room called the kyomushil which is where they all have desks and computers. At the head of the room sits the vice principal
- kids and students invade the halls and bathrooms with foaming mouths - they brush their teeth after every meal
- students have one hour (or less?) of cleaning the school. They bring out mops, tissue, brooms and generally run all over the hallways. It's quite a ruckus!
- Even though I feel tired after every day of teaching, most teachers teach QUITE a bit more. They will stay until the students are on 8th, 9th, 10th period of the day.
- My last period of the school day is 7th and that ends at 4 pm.

The past few days, I have taught exactly the same lesson. I introduce class rules using a powerpoint, give a short introduction using powerpoint, and then have the students make questions for me in pairs. This seems to bore some classes, some classes completely don't understand, but in general, i have gotten a fair response.

Here are some of the best comments/questions i've received:
- Why are you so pretty?
- How long with boyfriend before marry?
- Who is student make best first impression?
- What is your blood type? (Although, apparently, this is very important in Korea. It's supposed to say something about your personality....)
- Who is most remarkable student?
- Do you like handsome men? ( I said I like my boyfriend ;)

- upon showing pictures of my family, my mom, dad, grandmother and boyfriend were all subject to great age interpretations... mom was sister, grandmother, aunt - dad was grandfather, brother - and the combinations continued. hehe. I hope no one at home is too offended. Their totally off-base guesses were made fun of and it helped me add some humor to my class!

After teaching this lesson... 6 times now? I think it is mostly successful, but I really need to think of more interesting lessons in the future. Students vary in level from very advanced to very unadvanced in the same class.

The 2nd grade boys are particularly hard to work with. They are rowdy and do not respond to my shushings as much. The past ETA had them do push-ups if they were rowdy. I don't know if I can adopt the same type of teaching... haha. Let me know if anyone has any ideas!

More on life in Korea soon. :)