So I have officially finished my first full week as a teacher here in Seoul. My classes are good and most of my students are really sweet. I say most, because I have a few students that are really smart, but lack motivation and focus in the classroom. So even though they are able to keep up and finish the work quickly, once they are done, they tend to goof off and distract their friends from doing the work. Unfortunately for me, I am really bad at disciplining my students (I want to be a nice teacher that they want to talk to, not scare them), so I am having a little problem with class discipline and management, but hopefully I can get it under control before I have mass chaos on my hands.
My schedule is actually not that bad either. I work Monday through Friday, with 2 days where I have 2 classes. So most days I am off by 7 pm (and on the days that I have 2 classes, I am done by 10 pm). It is a little more than what they told me I would be teaching, but in return I get to have a full weekend off twice a week (which is unheard of for new teachers at my branch). Most new teachers have to do most of the Saturday tutoring and proctoring for their first term, but because I have the extra day during the week, I get to have a few weekends off! So looks like I will be doing most of my exploring on the weekends now.
Other than that, not much is going on really. I have a one or two students from each class that I really like, but am trying hard to not favor them over the other students. But it is really hard since they are all really cute and always follow directions. Hopefully they keep up the good behavior, since they tend to balance out the less cooperative students.
I have got to hand it to all the teachers that I know. This is a hard job, you have to make sure that everyone is benefiting from the class, but at the same time you need to know when to let a student off the hook and let them save face. You have to be careful about your wording and keep in mind the English levels of your students. For example, I had to talk about what a Latchkey child was and also talk about Miranda rights. It was so hard to think of a way to talk about these things with out waiting precious class time to talk about the historical background and also not only reference movies and shows that they may or may have not seen. Where if I was in the States, I would have been able to describe these things easier and my student would have had previous knowledge about these. But here, it is a different story. Guess I just have to get more creative with how I describe things!
Maybe once I get to know my students more, I will write more about them and tell you all about funny things that happen during my classes. But for now, I need to finish up this post and get going to the grocery store before it closes/free up the table in the cafe I am at across the street from my apartment since I still do not have any WiFi in my apartment. That is ok though, because the Citron smoothie that I ordered is worth having to lug my laptop with me to work every now and then!
Very insightful post about the difficulty of teaching. Keep in mind that students will respect you and still like you even if you have to enforce the good behavior rules.
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