Chapter Twenty-Two: People as Places as People

To answer a question
It'll probably take more
If you're already there
Well then you probably don't know
Well we were the people
That we wanted to know
And we were the places that we wanted to go --Modest Mouse
 

Considering a move to the hermit kingdom?  Blogs and recruiters will tout the financial and cultural benefits, both of which, depending on your lifestyle, can be very true.  But there are other, less obvious benefits available to those whom risk the change in continent, lifestyle, and career.  Here are five of my favorites.

Racism: The other side of the coin. 


Most of the teachers here are white, and most of us hail from North America, the UK, or Oceania.   Though our generation has been raised with an emphasis on racial empathy, it's good to live somewhere where you are a minority.  Further, it's good to live somewhere where many people disapprove of you based on your skin color.  It will primarily help you examine your own beliefs and preconceptions about minorities in your own country.  Secondly, it is freeing to live in a world where people are predisposed to find you an annoyance or, at best, a novelty.

Corrupting the Youth


This will depend on whom you teach and how old they are, but many teachers here end up with kindergartners in the 4-7 age range.  Taking kids who don't have English names and who barely know the English alphabet and turning them into English speakers who, for example, love the Beatles, quote the Princess Bride and Bill and Ted, and who sing "We Will Rock You," has made my year very rewarding.  What would you teach youngsters about western culture?

You don't need Twitter for Social Networking

By about the age of 25, most people have their friends set for the rest of their life.  Moving to a new country is a great equalizer; everyone is in the same boat.  You can meet so many more people, in the big cities in particular, than moving to another city in your own country.  The social networking for expats is excellent--you can easily find clubs and organizations for everything to soccer, hiking, rafting, drinking, and improv theater. 



It's the Great Outdoors.

Seoul won't be mistaken for Edinburgh, Melbourne, or Paris any time soon.  But Korea is a scenic, beautiful country--minutes of leaving the city reveal a rolling green countryside that belies the uber-urbanization associated with South Korea.  The valleys are full of rocky swimmable rivers, the islands have gorgeous, campable beaches, and everywhere you go are the mountains.  Seoraksan, pictured here, is a vastly scenic area replete with hiking trails, hot springs, hermit caves, and waterfalls.



Information Vacuum

In many ways, this is my favorite.  Korea is already a little out of touch with the rest of the world, and without a tv (or at least without English news) you can escape the over-dramatized uber-sensational programming mislabeled as "news" in the west.  Escaping the barrage of banality is a major boon; the mental equivalent of selling most of your useless stuff and paring down to the essientals.  If your ears ache from hearing too much celebrity gossip, I suggest you start developing a taste for gimchi and start thinking about what to pack. 


In fairness, you will probably have more challenges in Korea than if you stayed in your home city.  I have known many teachers here who had great difficulties dealing with how different the people, attitudes, and the culture is.  But dealing with challenges isn't always a bad thing, either; if you are open to new things or want to become so, then teaching abroad may be for you.  If it's ever crossed your mind, I say "go for it!" 

Chapter 6: Mr. Seoul

This week's title is brought to you by Buffalo Springfield, of "For What It's Worth" and "Bluebird" fame.

This video should provide a little insight into what it's like to teach at our school. It was slightly worse because they saw my camera, but you cannot keep these kids in their chairs. They are wild. In a given week, you will be punched, kicked, bitten, pinched, drooled on, spat on, sneezed on, have your "junk" grabbed, and a korean specialty of two hands put together and shoved up your butt.

And the kids are the good part of the job!

It's really hard to have perspective on what's normal, not having seen any other schools, but from talking to other teachers this is pretty much how it goes. Despite their abundance of energy, most of the kids do make an effort to learn, and they really do soak up English at an amazing rate. And once you get used to being a combination punching bag/jungle gym for them, it's not so bad.

Far more challenging is dealing with what the director wants, and the system of the hagwon. Most frustrating is the expectation to always know what to do, even if it's come up before. In most jobs, intuition and common sense can serve as a good substitute for training, but those won't get you very far in Korea. You have to leave those at the door and just do as told.

My classload looks like this: On MWF, I teach 9 classes. On TTH I teach 8. I have a total of 22 books I use, and a total of 40 minutes a day to plan for these classes. Unfortunately, we cannot even use this time soley for planning as we have weekly and monthly reports that take up a lot of time. I don't mind reports, but these are us just typing the same thing in the book over and over again. If it were streamlined, we could just click a button and be done. But ... it's Korea.

So there isn't much time for planning. A lot of planning is necessary since the way the lessons break down the official curriculum can last less than three minutes. See below:

My actual curriculum for a 40 minute class. It doesn't last long. We play a lot of Hangman. And now Tic Tac Toe as well.

Another thing I wish I had known is that when your contract is for 12o hours a month (30 hours a week, sweet!) that means actual teaching hours. We have to be at school for 45 hours a week, minimum, and we have to mandatorily spend our lunches and breaks with the kids, but only at half pay since we're not "teaching." I think that's the Korean way, and it's not the end of the world, but it is drastically different than my expectations and maybe even how the recruiter presented it to me.

An even more significant challenge is teaching the different age groups. One group of kids, I can spend 40 minutes trying to teach them the phonics of the letter B and how to write it in upper and lower case. And it might take 2 or 3 classes before they start to mutter along with me.

My oldest group of kids, on the other hand, I get to explain things like reflexive pronouns and subject verb agreement. The thing is, they don't know terms like "verb" or "article" so how I am supposed to do that is currently beyond me.

As always, any comments, suggestions, or queries are welcome.

Chapter Three: Seoul Asylum*

Runaway Train never coming back...wrong way on a one way track.

Now that I have a week of teaching under my belt, I have a few observations and stories.

First, these kids are very funny. They're not very disciplined (ie: not at all) but that's for two reasons. One they are very young (more on that later). And two the school I work at is apparently known as a fun school so kids who "can't cut it" at a stricter school end up coming here. It is chaos even with relatively small classes. Our biggest classes are 10 kids, which compared to some teachers I know who have 30 or 40 seems nice. But ten 6 year-olds bouncing off the walls can be a lot to handle.

It sounds almost condescending, but I'm surprised that they have such strong personalities. It's funny to think that, for the most part, the outgoing ones will be extroverts their whole lives and the shy ones will remain shy. Maybe there is something to the nature part of the whole nature vs nurture debate. Or maybe the first three years really are the most important.

I teach 7 classes a day, everything from phonics to library time to worksheets. Mostly it's just getting them to sing or memorize stuff but with most classes I find the sillier I am the better they learn it.

I have one class with two 7 year olds in it. Sounds like a breeze, right? Well these two kids' personalities are a violiatile mix. One kid is like a Korean version of Nelson from the Simpsons. He's the oldest kindergartner, kind of a bully, and he swears nonstop (the korean equivalent of poop poop poop is his every other word). He cries if he loses a game though he mocks other kids if he wins.






He is a cute little guy though.



It would be tough for any kid to be in a class with him, but the other kid is, in his own way, more of a challenge. He is sometimes brilliant; he has already outsmarted me a couple of times. But his social development is lacking and he hits other kids several times a day for either making fun of him or doing something wrong in his view of the world. Today, for instance, he dropped a toy and when one kid went to pick it up and give it back to him, the kid grabbed and punched him and fell to tears. He thought he wouldn't get the toy back, I think. He also has severe OCD and if I write a letter on the board slightly wrong, I can't move on until he has gotten up and fixed it. As I said, he is very smart but it's a challenge getting him to do the day's lesson plan and not, as he did today, write 1-100 over and over again for 40 minutes.





Here is a snapshot of the two of them at play.







I mentioned age before. It's calculated differently here. You are considered one year old when you're born. And everyone is considered one year older every January 1st. If, like one of my students, you are born on December 31st, this means the next day you are considered 2 years old. This makes for a large variety of ability even amongst a group of so-called "seven year-olds." My morning kindergartners were born in 2003! Seriously? That wasn't so long ago, was it?


Another strange element that takes some getting used to is that school is a business here. Without kids, there is no money and with no money that means no foreign teachers (aka us). This creates an asylum run by the inmates, where the smallest amount of discipline (giving a troublemaker less stars than the good students) can result in an hour long call from a parent or grandparent. We have to keep them happy but it's a fine line. They still have to pass the progress tests and some parents get angry if their kids don't get homework every night.

My Seattle class hard at work. Like any kids, they like the tickle monster way too much and think that being grabbed into the air and turned upside down is a major treat.

***
In miscellaneous other news, I don't have a phone yet, but had to take this picture when I saw it. What do the emergency services for phones do in your home country? I assume call 911 or 999 or whatever your number is. As in so many other areas, Korea is different.

While I'm a big fan of being able to request a mountain or a sea rescue, nothing beats the double-edged sword of using your mobile phone to either Spy (option 7) or Report a Spy (option 10).

And a picture of my bathroom. While it's not too terribly small, I basically have to fill my sink and (ironically) wash my washer every time I take a shower.

Oh, I have a Korean name! I don't know what it is in Hangul, but in English it's Typhoon Park. Typhoon because, well I guess that should be obvious, and Park as my family name because it seems to be the name of just about everyone over here.

*Will the Seoul puns ever get old? Gosh, I sure hope not.