Well most of you should know by now that I am living in The Republic of Korea for the next year or so, teaching Middle School English. Life here is a little different than Wisco, and for the next year I hope to blog what I've seen and done on the other side of the world.
I guess there is no better place to start than explaining a little about my schools that I teach in. I teach five days a week at two different schools. On Monday's, Thursday's and Friday's I teach at a small country school in Subuk (name of town), Damyang (county), Jeollnam-do (state). There are MAYBE a thousand people in the town, but I think that may be pushing it. My kids here are awesome but most of them have a very low English level. There are about 94 kids at Subuk. I am teaching first, second and third grade, in America that would be 7th, 8th and 9th grade. Each grade has a high and low level English Class, so I am teaching 6 normal classes a week at Subuk and five special classes. I don't teach by myself EVER! There is always a Korean English teacher in all of my classes which makes it easier when the kids don't understand what I am saying (which happens frequently). My co-teacher at Subuk, Mrs. Kang (pronounced kong) is my main co-teacher. She is the one who makes sure everything is going good with my apartment and stuff. Overall Subuk is a good school but I love my two days a week I spend at my other school so much.Every week I look forward to my two days a week at Geumseong Middle School. On Tuesday's and Wednesday's I spend my 8 hours at the smallest school in the county. Geumseong has 27 students. Grade 7 has ten kids, Grade eight has 11 kids and my 9th Grade has six kids!!! My co-teacher there is Mrs. Oh. She is probably the best co-teacher in the country, no joke. She is extremely helpful with everything, from paying bills to helping me figure out how to teach. I teach 3 classes a day at Geumseong, but I still need to be there 9 to 5. In my spare time I usually either plan lessons or plan my vacation in February.
My kids at Geumseong are awesome I was able to go on a field trip with them last week, exploring Damyang and I was able to get to know them a little better. This is a picture of some of my favorite students. Most of these kids are in 9th Grade.
Teaching is a whole new experience I don't think I was prepared for. Before I came my Grandma who was a Elementary school teacher for 30+ years asked me, "do you even know how to write a lesson plan?" I laughed and told her that I wasn't worried because they would teach us how to do all of that when we got to Korea. Well Grandma, you were right to be skeptical, I still really have no idea how to write a lesson plan after two two months of teaching. Getting the kids to speak is probably the hardest aspect of teaching English in Korea. Korean's are very shy when it comes to talking in English all around. They probably know the words, but they are usually reluctant to speak because they are afraid of being wrong.
Well I hope that gives you all some insight into what I am doing over here. Hopefully early next week I will be able to write some more about life over here.
Miss all of you.
Love
Aaron
Aaron, I totally agree with you about it being hard to get the kids to speak, and I think this is true of all ESL students. I probably spend 20% of every class just waiting as my girls try to put into words what they want to say. Yay, patience!
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