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Many of you
may have already read my post about the School and the working
environment that I posted months ago. I think, however, that my mood or
opinion of the School and environment may have changed and therefore, I
would like to have another try at writing about it. I can’t really
remember my opinion of the working environment that I portrayed in my
previous posts, but my opinion of the school is quite high right now.
You may have read in my introduction to the Korea Portal that I think my
last three months will be sad because I won’t want to leave. That is
mainly due to the fact that this is a really good school and I will
honestly be sad to leave the school, my coworkers and my working
environment.
Sure, my days
have their low points with temper tantrums, crying babies, mouthy
teenagers and questioning coworkers and bosses. But, overall, I have it
really good here for several reasons including pay and the great
personalities that I work with.
I am still
teaching at least one kindergarten class each day. An arduous task, it
is one that is required in my contract, so I just suck it up and teach
the little ‘brats’ for forty minutes. I might sound a bit negative
here, but overall, I enjoy teaching them. They are such fragile beings;
I enjoy being responsible for them physically, emotionally and
intellectually. My favorite part of being a teacher is definitely not
the driving of knowledge into their growing brains, but the little seeds
of humanity that I get to plant in there as well.
“Who knows
what littering is?”
“Yes, Darwin,
it’s throwing trash on the ground.”
“Is littering
bad?”
“That’s
right! It is. Why is littering bad?”
Or, even
though it makes me the ‘bad teacher’ to at least one party:
“Darwin, no
hitting! Darwin, why is it bad to hit people?”
“No, Darwin,
it doesn’t matter what Andy did, you don’t hit”
“Because it
is not good. Say you’re sorry.”
You can tell
that Darwin is an ‘active’ child in more than one sense of the word.
Today, I had to deal with another temper tantrum thrown by my
brightest—yet emotionally youngest—student. Every day, I offer pencils
to students that can achieve two happy points (a point given to a
student that does exceptionally well on a task). Darwin really wanted a
pencil, but he didn’t really deserve two happy points. I knew that if
he didn’t get his pencil, he would throw a tantrum, so I had two
options. I could either a) just give him the extra point to avoid a
tantrum or b) not give him the point and endure the tantrum in hopes
that eventually [in life] he’ll realize that he can’t always get what he
wants. Well, I went down Road B, which was an exceptionally
melodramatic catastrophe, today. (Clean-up, Clean-up on aisle five.
Kindergartener down. Repeat. Clean-up on aisle five.)
I am also
still teaching elementary and junior high level students. We teach five
levels of students in ascending order: Wake-Up, English Playground,
English Odyssey, English Adventure and Post-Adventure classes. Someone
high up in the office must like me (or more likely, I’m just moving
upwards in the School’s hierarchical hegemony as the older foreign
teachers slowly leave for home) because I sure have been moving up in
this world. I used to teach all Wake-Up and Playground level classes,
but these days, I only teach three Wake-Ups, a single Playground and two
Odysseys; the rest of the classes I teach are Adventure and
Post-Adventure level classes (including the two highest-level courses
that our school offers).
Wake-Up level
classes have the most simplistic curriculum and are therefore easy to
teach. The students are, however, extremely difficult to control. They
are all younger students—many of whom are only children—that have very
low levels of English proficiency. Needless to say, I spend quite a bit
of each class needing to discipline the unruly students in order to
teach the ‘ruly’ ones. I do like these students, though. They, like
the Kindergarteners, are fragile humans and I enjoy being their
caretaker.
Every day, I
walk into my Wake-Up classes and ask my students a question:
“What does
Monkey Teacher say?”
(On the
whiteboard, I begin to draw a caricature of myself: big ears, wild hair,
a smiling mouth agape, beard and a furrowed brow over one eye. Out of
the gaping mouth—which takes up half of the caricature’s face—I draw a
speech bubble, in which I will lackadaisically doodle a Korean flag with
an ‘X’ through it.)
“That’s
right, Julia. No speaking Korean. Monkey Teacher says, ‘No speaking
Korean.’”
“No, Adam,
Monkey Teacher does not say, ‘Yes, Korean.’ He says, ‘No Korean.’”
These
students are actually quite adorable. I wish I could be their “Big
Brother” rather than teacher. I don’t like having to discipline them.
When they are misbehaving, they are just being kids. They are being the
type of kid I want to play with. But I can’ play with them, I have to
teach. So I discipline away. It’s okay though. The students that look
up at me with big eyes wide open are ones for whom I teach. They are
the ones that bring me back day after day after day.
I could tell
you anecdote after anecdote after anecdote about my classes, but I need
to illustrate some prudence in brevity. The Odyssey kids are a
delight. They are still young enough that they obey me, but advanced
enough in their English skills that we can chat a bit more than I can
with the younger students. The middle school kids are either very
wonderful to teach or very horrible. I, thankfully enough, have more
delightful students than terrors, so I’m pretty happy with my bunch of
older students.
As far as the
working environment, I enjoy all my coworkers and my time in the faculty
room. I have a wonderful boss, Kay, who is always very helpful when
need be and who is very supportive of us as well. I can’t complain
about a single coworker. Everyone is great to work with and I enjoy
spending time with my coworkers not only inside the office but outside
of work as well.
So, basically, I am in love with my
school and working conditions. Maybe in a few months, the temper
tantrums will stop and then my job will be like Heaven on Earth.
But that wouldn’t be much fun, now. Would it? |
