Our Teaching Positions

It's been a while since I've posted, so I guess it's time to actually describe our teaching positions. As I wrote earlier, we arrived Friday night, met our principals the next morning, and started school two days later. We'd both been under the impression that Orientation would come before we started work, but this was definately not the case. So Monday morning, I walked into class, fresh out of University, with absolutely no training or experience as a teacher, and no idea of my goals for my students, or even what level of English they speak. I had no textbook, and no other materials, and I didn't even know what kind of equipment I had in my classroom. All I knew was that I'd be teaching classes of 40-44 high school girls, and that I was supposed to be creative. Now, I don't usually mind creativity, but I usually like to know what it is I'm meant to be creating, and what kind of materials I have at my disposal!
So on Sunday, Justin and I had both worked on lesson plans. Although he is teaching middle school and I am teaching high school, we planned similar lessons for the first week, just to get a feel of their English proficiency. I made a little fill-in-the-blank worksheet with a little story about myself, my family, and my pets with cute little pictures, just to see what kind of things they have trouble with. It was all very easy, and I even had the correct answers at the bottom, and read the story aloud, including the information that was left blank on the sheet. All they had to do was fill in the few missing words as I read them.
I read the story two or three times to make sure that everyone could get it, and then we began to take up the work. That's when half the class told me that they didn't have pens. So these kids had been sitting in my class the whole time, letting me read again and again without letting me know they didn't have pens. In fact, more of them had brought pillows than pens! Now I'm not saying that I've never slept through a class, in fact, I've slept through many. But it was never on purpose, and I never put my head down on my desk, and I certainly never brought a pillow to ensure a comfortable sleep! The problem is that these students do not get marks for my class. Although it is manditory, and attendance is taken, if students do not plan to work in the business sector or travel to English-speaking countries, these students have no motivation to pay attention in my class unless I am more entertaining than anything else they could be doing. That first class was a HUGE disaster. None of them paid any attention at all - they wee either sreaming at each other, or sleeping. I was seriously just counting down the minutes until the lesson was over. To make matters worse, my co-teacher didn't help at all. At the beginning of class, she actually asked if she could leave, because Gary (my predecessor) had always let her go. I'd told her that since it was my first day, I'd prefer if she stayed. But she just sat at the back of the room and let me suffer in the front.
Luckily I had a few hours before my next class to quickly scramble something together that would be more entertaining. I found a Power Point game Gary had found on the internet, and I modified it to make it a little more challenging, and a little more fun. I also put my story on Power Point and added pictures of fluffy animals and Niagara Falls to make it a little more flashy. Now all the students had to do was listen to my introduction and then answer questions about it for points. The game was a big success, and over the week I became more and more confident. I also found out that the grades are divided into higher acheiving classes and lower acheiving ones. The first class I'd taught was one of the worst classes, so it was bound to get better from there anyway.
Some of my co-teachers are more helpful than others as well. Some even participate, but they are only there for discipline, and not to actually teach.
At Justin's school, he is teaching side by side with his co-teachers. They have textbooks, and they plan lessons together. In a way, I'm very lucky, because I have more freedom: I can teach what I want, how I want, and I have my own classroom where I stay and work on lesson plans on my downtime. On the other hand, I am constantly busy, going to work early, and staying late, trying to make my lessons fun and informative. Justin also has a desk in the office with the other English teachers, so he has already really gotten to know them, whereas I am mostly isolated. Every now and then, a teacher or the VP will come visit me to practice their English and get to know me, and I ALWAYS have students coming in to chat. Some of the students are 19, so I'm actually only a few years older than they are. Do far I've only had 17-year-olds, but soon I'll be having classes with the older students too. These additional classes will have fewer students, and will only have students who want to join, so I'm very excited for these. In October, I'll actually be teaching a class of second year (18 year olds) students who I will see every day. This is so exciting, because I will actually be able to help them improve their English. I only see my 17-year olds (first years) for 50 minutes every week, which I don't think is enough to make any difference at all, even if I taught them for ten years. Justin teaches all levels at his school, and only sees some of his students once every two weeks.
The whole education system seems somewhat disorganized, and in the two weeks I've taught there, I've already had one class moved, and another two cancelled. It seems that if you want to plan ahead, you have to be very flexible.
All in all, I actually love my job. It's very challenging, but also very stimulating. I'm having a lot of fun planning lessons and learning from my mistakes. This week we'll be playing Fliegenklatcher, a game Frau, my high school German teacher played with us. I am actually very lucky to have had Frau as a teacher, because she not only taught me German, she taught me what it is that makes a great language instructor. She always had games and stories and funny little cartoons, and she managed to make learning vocab fun.
Justin also loves his position. In a way, I think he might wish he had more freedom than he does, but I think he's also happy to share the load with another teacher. The only problem is, we come home from work after long days of speaking very slowly and using very basic English with everyone, and we continue to speak to each other as if we were 4 year olds. Hopefully we won't end up losing our English, because we haven't made much progress on our Korean yet.
Anyway, that's it for me.
Kris