Well, I’ve been living in Osan and working at Namsa middle school for two weeks now. Things have certainly settled down a lot. The kids are still polite and say hello, but are not falling over themselves to say ‘hello teacher’. Though, they still do talk to me in the halls, at lunch and after school.
However, my view of the students as polite, well disciplined, and eager to learn was completely shattered during my afterschool class yesterday. I know I’ve only got about 3 months teaching experience, but I have taught a lot of different students at a lot of different levels during that time, and this was the worst class I have ever had. They were sullen and unresponsive, talked straight over the top of me constantly, refused to do the work I set them, refused to talk to each other in English, and just overall sucked. They weren’t rude to me, as in obnoxious, but they were very disrespectful, and made teaching them very unpleasant. I’ve just got to keep going though. If the behavior keeps up, I’m going to let the ones who want to leave go home. One of the boys kept asking me if it was home time yesterday, and next time I think I’ll just say ‘yeah, if you want to. I’m going to stay here and teach, but feel free to leave’. Not really sure I’m allowed to do this, but I’m a firm believer in it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission in some cases J.
Another illusion of Korean culture that was shattered yesterday – the strict hierarchy and extreme delicacy required so that no one ‘loses face’. I’ve read over and over that no matter what you should not get visibly angry or agitated with people, especially your boss, of people older/ ranked higher than you. Yesterday, however, one of the ladies in the office here had a huge screaming match with the vice-principal. I was sitting at my desk when they started ‘talking’, and was thinking ‘Man, it always sounds like Korean and Chinese people are angry with each other when they talk. Our cultures have such a different way of communicating”. Lol, and then they got louder and more and more angry until they were full out yelling, then the lady stormed out and slammed the door. So, they were actually angry J. Everyone completely ignored it though, so, so did I.
I have a lot of spare time at my desk! I have fully planned the next four weeks of afterschool classes, and have two – three weeks after that partially planned. I don’t want to bother going too far ahead because a) I’ll probably leave, and b) with the way things are run around here the schedule/class/what I’m supposed to do/everything could change at the drop of a hat. So, I figure four weeks is enough to plan at a time. Now though, I don’t have too much to go on with, though I could find thing if I want. I like to make it at least look like I’m doing English related work though, so I don’t go on Facebook, or plan holidays, or research guinea pigs at work J.
The best part of my day is school lunch time. I wait every day to see what weird and usually tasty thing the sweet lunch ladies have made. Because I’m a teacher I get first dibs on the food too – and I usually get to serve myself, which means I can have as much as I want. Today we had tteokbokki and I actually liked it. It wasn’t too sweet or spicy, and the rice cake things were small enough so they weren’t huge gluggy masses. There was also yummy battered chicken drumsticks, which I only took one of, but I should have gotten two! I had to eat it with chopsticks and a spoon, but I covertly watched how the other teachers did it and copied them, and got on just fine. All in all, a very tasty lunch – and no spam in sight! They really like spam here… you should see the bumper packs at the supermarket. There must be like 20 cans of spam taped together for a discount price. Ew.
Speaking of the supermarket, they sell stuff with weird add-ons. Like some of the stuff has other stuff taped to it as a promotion. Like buy this, and you get what’s taped on fo free. Often they are completely unrelated! I’ve seen normal ones like ham with free mustard, or shampoo with free soap, but the other day I say beer with a free pack of 4 toothpastes! Not just one, but four full sized tubes of toothpaste. With beer. Because what do you want to do after drinking your beer? Clean your teeth!
So, I helped teach three classes today, and all three were reading lessons. I had to read each reading aloud, bit by bit so the students could repeat after me multiple times. And that was it. It took maybe 15 minutes at the beginning of each class, and then I had to sit and do nothing while Mr Baek spoke in Korean. It is better than sitting at my desk, though. This pretty much sucks donkey balls. And no one likes that.
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Ok, today's after school class was much better. They are the slightly older kids, and I have them every second day, alternating with the class from hell. Today's class is awesome. They make me feel like I really want to be a teacher. They're responsive, enthusiastic, and today I actually saw a couple of the kids improve in their writing and speaking, and I managed to get everyone involved and speaking by the end of the class, and correctly using the target language. It's like the angel class and the devil class! Yesterday's class was so awful! I'll just have to work on them.
And after school, I went to put my stuff away in my desk to go home for the day and some mystery person left me a pack of two mini-cakes! They were yummy! I think it was probably Chloe, the lovely, but shy, lady who sits across from me, but she wasn't there so I couldn't ask her. Whoever it was, it was lovely :)
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