School of Thought

So I am here to teach. What is school like in South Korea? Well, kinda different than in the States. I teach in a Kindergarten/Hogwan. Children can enroll in Kindergarten at age 5 which is really like our 4 since they count ages differently. We have four levels that kids can be. They can be in our school four years. Each class is called something different. From youngest to oldest, the classes are Rainbow, Yellow, Red, and Ocean. There are both English teachers and Korean teachers. Usually every English teacher has a Korean counterpart. I teach Math, pictionary (vocab), listening, phone/situation English, and story. The kindergarten classes run from 10:00am to 3:00pm. They include a lot of other classes like phonics, gym, music etc but I'm not sure what all they are since I don't teach those.

I come in about 9:30 every day. Since I am not a morning person, this is great for me. Our classes are 35 minutes long for each session. The kids usually stay in one classroom and the teachers just rotate. We usually to three classes in the morning and lunch at 11:35. At lunch, the directors wife's mother cooks the food for us. Its great food. I think this is why I love Korean food so much. We get great homecooking every day. Each child brings a tin tray. It looks like a miniature cafeteria tray chopsticks. (Yes everybody eats with chopsticks! I am learning how to use them but it can be well... interesting at the best of times) We serve the food in the classroom. After lunch and playtime, we have what they called Mother Goose Time. This is just story time in each classroom. We read books to the students for about 10 minutes. Though recently, we have been practing English stories and speeches for a local English contest coming up.

In the afternoon, the kids have about 4 more classes before they leave at three. After three is what we call hogwan. Kids from different schools in the area come for English lessons. They are in a variety of different subjects and levels. There are a lot more teachers both English and Korean that work here. I would say there are about 10-13 or more teachers in the Hogwan. Where as in the Kindergarten there is only about 5 teachers and 20 kids. I teach several classes ranging from 2 first grade boys to a group of 6th grade boys to one private student who is a college student. These classes are 45 minutes long. We do everything from English diaries, read newspapers, phonics work, workbooks etc to learn English.

On Tuesday and Thursdays, I do one Kindergarten class at another school. Its about a 25 minute walk to the schoool. Its a beautiful walk through back streets and a tree covered park and pathway. The school its huge. I've never seen a elementary school/middle complex so big. I teach a small afterschool English class to kindergarten. They are adorable but unfortunatly don't speak a lot of English. So they mostly repeat what I say or just stare at me. But they love to sing. So we sing lots in English.

My day ends at 6:00. Its a busy day but fulfilling. I love teaching the kids. They are energetic but very loveable. The kindergarten kids are the best. The stuff they come up with sometimes can be funny sometimes. For example, I was drawing stick figures of the class to teach the kids the word "most". I drew a stick figure of myself along with them. One child said very innocently "Teacher, why did you draw yourself small like that. You are very wide." and then spread his hands out to show me. I just had to laugh. Kids are still kids no matter what side of the world your on. Well, thats all for now folks.