My First Week

I've been in South Korea a little over a week now (it is Tuesday night as I right this, early morning in the states. It has been a learning experience. I will attempt to describe some of my experiences and first impressions of South Korea.

First of all, everyone speaks Korean and writes Korean. This may sound obvious, and it is, but it weird walking down the street and everyone is Korean and almost every sign is in Korean. Living in the US my entire life, I grew used to being able to walk down the street and being able to read street sign and store signs. Also, living in Tacoma area I was used to seeing people from every nationality in the store. In Korea that is not the case. If you see someone who isn't Korean it's a safe bet they speak English.

My first week at school was rough, but is getting better every day. My first day was the first day of the semester so it was basically controlled chaos the entire day. During my classes I was attempting to get to know the students, and they were trying to get to know me. This is a difficult process when they don't speak English and I don't speak Korean. My first class was a new class and thus basically no English (although they knew the alphabet and whatnot). It took my about 5 minutes to get them to draw a cat. The day got better as the later classes spoke more English. My classes range in age from Kindergarten to 5th grade, although the age doesn't necessarily tell you how well they speak English. In my most advanced class we are reading a book together. It's a book that's basically intended for 5th graders in the states, and it's hard to remember all of the cultural things they don't know about, even though they speak really good English. For instance they have no idea who Merlin is, or what Camelot is, or King Arthur (all things important in the story). They understand most of the words just fine, but I'm having to explain the context of those words.

As for training, I didn't really receive any training, I was given the books that I am teaching from and thrown in, which has been quite the experience. With that said I must say that I am very impressed with everyone at the school. They are all very nice and helpful. Everyone has asked me on more than one occasion if I had any questions or needed any help.

I work at the school with 6 other non-Korean English teachers. I just want to say that everyone of these teachers have been more than helpful and friendly as I attempt to learn my way around Korea. If I ever have a question or need any help they are more than willing to give a lending hand (even when I get lost and I have to call them in order to find my way home). The Korean teachers and staff is very helpful too. My main boss is named James who was born in Korea, moved to America when he was young, married a Korean, and moved back to Korea. Thus, he speaks fluent English and Korean. He is very helpful interacting with the Korean teachers (who speak varying degrees of English), and he is also very friendly and helpful when it comes to teaching.

As to the school itself: I work at a Hagwan. This is basically a private after school school. There is two elements to this, there is a kindergarten school which is in school during the morning and early afternoon and operate as any normal kindergarten works, but part of the lessons are English. The second half of the day are Elementary school kids. Of the seven teachers, 5 work 10 AM to 6:40PM, to other two (of which I am one) work 1PM to 8:40PM. As such I work mainly with elementary school kids, although I have two classes of kindergarten. The point of the school (for the elementary school kids at least) is to work as an extracurricular activity. The kids are there for about an hour and a half and we have kids coming and going every hour and a half. I split the classes with a Korean teacher. I have a class for about 40 mins and my Korean counterpart has a class for about 40 mins and then we switch. One of the main motivations for parents is that learning English well helps kids get into college later in life.

As for the teaching, imagine teaching a bunch of elementary aged kids, but they only understand some of the words you say (and when I say “some” I don't mean the words like you would expect elementary aged kids to understand, I mean “some” of what a normal elementary aged kid would know, also they for the most part don't know tenses and normal English phrases).

As for the kids, they are pretty cute and I like a lot of them, although a few of my classes are very rowdy and difficult to control. My first elementary class is full of 7 and 8 year olds and are very cute and it makes my day when they say “Hello Trevor Teacher”(this is the class that basically speaks no English so I'm happy when they can say anything correctly in English), which brings me to my next subject. In Korea they say “[first name] teacher”. I don't know why they do this and no one has been able to explain it to me. That is all I have to say on this subject but it helps to remind me that I am a teacher now, a role that I have never really played before, at least in an official sense.

The last thing I will speak on are names (this will be the last thing because this is a very long post as it is). The kids are given English names. My first day (before I realized they were given English names) I looked at their name tags and was shocked at the English sounding names they had. Names that wouldn't stand out in any American school. The school does this (as do other Hagwans) partly to help with the pronunciation of English sounds (the kids seems to have a lot of problems with R, S, particularly at the end of words, and double L), but also for the benefit of the English teachers. Since we don't speak Korean we can't hear or pronounce the difference between a lot of the names, and thus by giving them English names it prevents long discussions on how to pronounce their Korean name and why it is different from another kid's name. For instance, the kids roared with laughter when one of the books had a Miss Jones while there was a John in class. They knew Miss Jones was a girl and John was a boy. I had to attempt to explain how Miss Jones (or any Jones) was very different from John. So this is the reason we English teachers don't attempt to use their Korean names.

I know I promised pictures, but this ended up being a lot longer than I thought, so I will hopefully have pictures next time of my apartment and what not(I already took the pictures, I just have to up-load them).

I hope you all are doing well. I don't know if I am doing well, but I am alive and I haven't gone crazy yet (although that is in large part due to my fellow English teachers, it's nice to be able to speak normal English between classes and after class). I will attempt to update in a week or so, next time I will probably focus on Korea itself instead of the school, as well as my apartment.