Welcome! Here Is The Deep End…

Hey guys! I know it has been weeks since I last updated on my time in Korea, but it has gone by so fast. One day it was the first week and then the next it was the start of week 3!

That is right, it has been 3 weeks since I started teaching and it has been crazy! Sometimes it feels like you are walked to the edge of the deep end and then they slap your back and say good luck. It sucks! But when your life is on the line, you swim. The first week kicked my butt!

For my schedule I am teaching 2 classes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I also teach 1 class on Saturdays as well. All the classes are 3 hours long with two, 5 minute breaks. You have to teach a reading section, read a passage and answer a question, and a listening section, listen to an audio and answer a question. The questions are on main idea, speaker/author’s purpose, factual questions, negative factual question and others.

Each section is split into diagnose, strategize, practice, simulate. For diagnosing you set a timer and let them read and answer with no direction and then after the time you move onto strategize. In this section you are teaching the steps on how to answer the earlier question, from diagnosis. After you walk through the steps you move to practice, for this you are giving them time like diagnose but they can see the steps and they have gone over it with you. Once the time is up you call on the students to walk through how they answered the question. Once you finish practice you move onto simulate and this one is a test. You set a time and let them answer without being able to see steps from earlier pages and without your guidance. Then you have them switch their books to have them graded and those grades go into the gradebook.

Listening is exactly like this except when they don’t read a passage, they are listening to an audio and talking notes. You have to go over how to take notes and you have to prepare your own notes to give them during strategizing, practicing and if they struggle with simulations, there too.

The trick with this whole thing is that you think you have time, but reality is not the same. You might fly through reading and then think you can take more time on listening, but everything always slows down with listening. When you have to write notes and make sure they are staying focused it flies faster than you could have thought.

The first week I struggled to get my time management down but by Tuesday I was good. I figured it out and was able to feel confident in teaching it. The second half of the week is different from the first. We call Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday classes A2. They stick to the format I stated above but Thursday, Friday and Saturday are different. They are called V1, and they are more like a book club and discussion based lessons. For this you are reading a book for home work so during class you are going over the events that happened in the homework reading. This one is WAY harder for me to get.

Time management gets me every time. I got a good handle on A2 by the first week but V1 drained me the first week and it wasn’t until week two that I felt a little better about it. You have a lot of information to get through with the class and at the end of class you spend the last hour working on a project and they do have to present it before they leave. You have to cut 10 to 15 minutes out of your teaching time just for the presentations and the same amount of time for working on the project. But 1 hour isn’t enough time to complete all the material in the lesson without rushing or skipping discussions.

Now you may have remembered that I said we have 3 hours but the first hour is for homework checks, vocab test, then grading the vocab, take a review test, organic learning which takes 10 minutes minimum and then you can start your lesson. By the time I get the lesson open we have our first break which leaves 1 hour to do the lesson.

For the V1 lesson, you have a title page that shows the book cover, and you talk about what part of the story we are in like exposition, rising action, climax, etc. Then you move onto review and first look where you summarize what we learned last week and what we might talk about in the lesson that day. Then you start the meat of the course. It is spilt into Acts, in them you go over theme, motif, setting, look in the book for some fill in the blanks, answer multiple choice on the fill in the blanks, answer multiple choice on subtext and look at art and discuss the question related to the book. That is for each act and time keeps moving even when the kids are struggling to answer simple discussion questions…

Now I will stop talking about the boring things. Let’s chat about my students! I love them. It has been so fun to get to know them and to let them get to know me. They are so cute and funny. I have all different kinds of students. I have shy kids, loud kids, disruptive kids, funny kids, smart kids, and some that are quiet in class, but I catch them being energetic after class when talking with other kids.

I have been adding pictures and information about myself when I can during the lessons so that they can get to know me since there is no time to chat during class. It is interesting to watch as time goes by how the kids get more and more tired or restless. Those last 10 minutes in class are the worst! They are trying to pack up every time I look away and I have to stop them. The rule is that you have to teach until the bell. Once the first bell rings they can pack up and line up, then a second one rings and then they can leave.

I have learned so much in the last month. It is crazy to think that I have been here for a month now! One month down, 11 to go! Also, we haven’t even hit summer yet, but it is SO HOT here! I sweat every day, and it is gross! It will still get hotter and then I will experience my first frosty winter. The weather is always something I have to worry about since I walk everywhere or use public transportation. I miss the privilege of my own car’s a/c and all the space back home. I also miss my one story house.

Living on the 3rd floor, which is really up 4 flights of stairs because the ground floor is the car port, has me panting every time I walk into my apartment. On top of that, this place is full of hills! I never said I was in shape, but DANG I didn’t know how out of shape I was until I got here.

It is like what my dad would always tell us, it’s like walking up hill to and from school. No matter what I take there will be a hill. Also, all the sidewalks are bumpy and tilted! I MISS FLAT LAND! At this point I am able to walk to my building and not be panting for air, PROGRESS. Stairs still get me though lol.

I could go on for hours compiling all that I have been through, but I think this sums it up. Hopefully I will be able to update sooner this time but most my weekends are spend prepping for the next week’s lessons! I did find a cute coffee shop close by to work at when I don’t want to stay home! The view is AMAZING! Oh I also got my nails done and they totally remind me of Spongebob, a little…lol

Talk soon!

사랑을 담아,

Samantha