Be Cool, Stay in School

Well I have spent the past two days at the school in observation mode. It was sad to see my days of perfecting the art of doing nothing come to an end. I will miss them.

I can't tell you the details of what I will be doing at the school because I don't really know. The days are always different and now that I am here the schedule will be changing. What I can do at this point is tell you what has happened the past two days.

Monday:
I arrived at the school just after 1:00 and sat there staring at the wall. There are no teachers and no students there until at least 2:00. Then my boss told me to stop sitting and get up and talk to the children. Apparently he has imaginary friends because as I just said, there were no kids there.

Eventually school began and I was to follow Sheryl around for the day. Sheryl is from the Philippines and is the other foreign teacher at the school. English is not her first language though and she talks with a big accent. Her word order is also messed up sometimes and I cringe when she has the children repeat her mixed up sentences.

For the first 50 minutes we went from classroom to classroom for ten minutes each. Basically this is enough time that you have to have a plan, but not enough time to plan anything worthwhile. There are no computers or projectors or anything, so making the lesson interactive is not going to happen. The point of us in the class is to talk so we are discouraged to use worksheets or anything. After 5 classes we got a ten minute break. Then we headed one floor up and got ready for the "Free Talk" classes.

Free Talk is exactly what it sounds like. You are with the class for 50 minutes and the goal is to get them to talk as much as possible (in English) and have fun. Again, no worksheets or computer or anything is allowed. Basically you have to choose a topic and try and get them to stay on that topic for about 35 minutes and then you can play a game. This is what Sheryl did anyways. These classes are going to take a lot of prep work at home I think.

Some of the classes are small (the first one had only two students) and some are larger (12 students). Only one of the classes was well behaved and the other three were nightmares...absolute nightmares. I am not sure if they were acting up because I was there watching or because Sheryl is too nice. The problem is that we are not really allowed to discipline the students, the main goal of my boss is that the kids enjoy the class and don't drop out. It makes sense from a business standpoint but it's hard when you have 10 kids hitting and screaming and refusing to talk English to just smile and carry on with the lesson. I'm sure I'll think of some tricks though, I already have a few in mind.

The fourth Free Talk class was done at 7:20 and thankfully I was able to leave right after.


Tuesday:
I show up at 2:00 and no one is there. I sit and wait. A few of the Korean teachers come in and start cleaning their classrooms and preparing. No one wants my help. I sit and wait. Sheryl shows up at 2:15 and somehow sneaks in to her first class without me at 2:20. I think she is annoyed that I have to follow her around, but I don't care.

The whole day consisted of 10-15 minutes in each class for five or six classes and then a 10 minute break. This went on for 5 hours straight. That amount of time doesn't seem long but often you are teaching the same thing over and over and over again. The classes ranged from preschool to highschool. There was only one preschool class but I adored them.

The middle and highschool students refused to talk and it was agony. Sheryl can speak Korean and communicated with them that way and then scolded them for not talking English. I have no idea how I am going to teach these students. I have heard from most other foreign teachers in private schools that the older their students are the less they will talk. They understand but refuse to talk. Awesome. I already hate teenagers as it is.

Again we finished at 7:20 but the vice principal (my boss's wife) told me to have a seat in the multimedia room where she was marking student's workbooks. This was fine, but after half an hour of staring at the ceiling and wondering why I couldn't go home I was getting impatient. It must have shown because she went and called the principal in to talk with me. Our conversation consisted of him telling me that I had to have lots of energy to teach and that I needed to eat a big lunch before coming. Then I tried to ask about the schedule and if I would be doing mostly 10 minutes per class or the 50 minute Free Talks. Obviously I didn't get a straight answer and still don't know. I do know that he told me to follow Sheryl around like a monkey tomorrow... I'm pretty sure the saying is more about a puppy than a monkey... but what do I know.

There were a few things that brought a smile to my face today...

1. I saw a student's diary entry that said "Today is Tuesday. Very special day. We had new teacher come to class [that's me]. She has very pretty face".

2. I had a child tell Sheryl that she was just praying that she would be in my class when the schedule got rearranged. This is of course based completely on the fact that I have blonde in my hair.

3. The old men that are on the street corner near my house with a big silver drum with fire in it (perhaps they are cooking something I don't know) talked to me again. At least this time they managed enough English to say "Hi" and "America?!?". Maybe one day I'll venture close enough to see what is in that drum of theirs.

Well it's a school night so I should best get to bed.