Back to school! - Teaching and Boin middle school life

Apologies for taking so long to post this entry. The first of 2 semesters is just about finished! Life has been very busy of late, guess that's a good sign ay!

The general atmosphere in School is fantastic. The staff room vibe is very friendly and relaxed. There are smiles and bows to beat the band. Bows are not generally expected of me but I do try and bow to people who I’d have more of a formal relationship with, especially the School Principle. I have already been pulled up for not respecting him with a loud “Annyong Haseyo”(hello) and a deep bow. It's a difficult thing to get the timing right though! I always feel like I need to be on a constant state of high alert. I’d be sitting there looking at my computer and I’ll inadvertently glimpse up and make eye contact with him just as he’s passing by. At that stage it's too late to prep yourself for a big “Annyong Haseyo”, stand up, and give a deep bow! So now I just try and clock him from a distance and prep myself accordingly ;-).
I do however miss being able to understand the banter and craic that’s in abundance in the staff room. Sometimes I just ask the girl beside me “what was that all about….” One can feel excluded, but isn’t that an obvious disadvantage of being in a foreign speaking land. And before you say it, yes I do need to work on my Korean.

Uncle Macs observations from another land.

• Women do not smoke in public, very much frowned upon, I was out with my vice principle the other day and we saw a girl smoking, he pulled a ridiculous over the top grimace! Disgusting I tells ya, haha – They will however smoke with no qualms in bars.

• Korean women have a tendency to cover their mouth when they laugh, very cute indeed.

• Korean women of over 50, known as ajummas seem to have free reign to do what they want here, including queue skipping and elbowing people to get by, they are a dark force to be reckoned with. They're usually identifiable by the massive visors they wear, see below. Some folks believe it's the ajummas that secretly run this thriving country.

The majority of classes I teach have 34 students. Generally in TELF(teaching english as a foreign language) teaching, this is about the most students you'll have to teach in one class. Unfortunately Boin high school is in one of the poorer areas of Seoul. Not that one would think that by looking at the school, the students, or the area. In fairness though, it would be hard for me to spot a korean scanger accent ;-). However, what this means for the students is that their parents can't afford to send them to english academy after school, which is the norm for most korean students. And for me it means I'm teaching students with very low english profiency, but god don't we love a challenge!

Some of my 2nd grader in class

I must admit teaching at first was quite terrifying. The first week or two was a rude awakening. I'm teaching kids in the range of 14 to 16 years old, grade 1's are 14yrs old, grade 2's are 15yrs old etc. It amazed me how remarkably different the character of each age group was. Grade 1's are pretty manageable in terms of discipline but then again the co-teacher I have for the grade 1's is a right little hitleress, just what one needs to be honest. Grade 2's on the other hand were a nightmare to start with. Kids at the height of teenage attitude and rambunctiousness. I was going to have to learn very quickly how to control them, because there were certainly moments when I nearly lost the plot and shouted expletives to quell the racket. Grade 3's, despite only being a year older were surprisingly more mature and thankfully calm. Their level of english is significantly higher than the lower classes I teach. I was so shocked and overwhelmed in those first few weeks that I had to take notes on the character of each individual class, so that I could be completely prepared/armed for the situation I was walking into for each class. Here's a few pics from class.

Me in the early days opting for the out-dated and totally ineffective "shhhhhhh"

I am very lucky as my class schedule is very easy going. I only teach 4 classes of 45mins a day. Thankfully these classes are spread out through the day as teaching 4 classes in a row would be very draining. Teaching is very tiring I tells ya! I’ve never been sapped of energy as an engineer in this way. My colleagues tell me that the secret to doing back to back classes is food food food! Fortify yourself with rice and lots of energy food and you’ll be fine they say. So, my Thursday 3 classes in a row are now a lot more bearable. Despite only teaching 4 classes a day my working hours are 8.30am to 4.30pm. So the times that I’m not teaching I have to “desk warm. Desk warming, needless to say is just sitting at your desk scratching your **** , lesson planning or just surfing the net. It’s great having free time but there’s only so much scratching your **** one can do. It amazes me how much time I find I can waste surfing the net and using that evil network, Facebook!

I have a dedicated classroom called the "english zone" to teach in

The english zone, where all the learnen happens!

So flying by the seat of my pants I slowly learned the most effective ways to control the class without having to resort to exhausting roaring. I nearly lost my voice in the first few days from it. In order of effectiveness here are the top five.

1. Escalating to the home room teacher. Only really used if the students are relentlessly noisy from class to class.
2. Randomly moving the kids around to keep them away from friends.
3. Slamming a stick on the board to make a loud bang.
4. Threatening them with being kept back after class for 10mins. (Not ideal as kinda shooting myself in the foot as I often only get 10 mins break between classes myself.
5. Put disruptive students out by the wall. (Never thought I’d see the day I would be doing this ;-))

The thing that takes up most of my school time outside of teaching is lesson planning. This is basically preparing the lesson that I’m going to teach for the following week. I have 3 grades so I have to prepare 3 solid plans a week. Lesson planning I must admit is the bane of my life in Korea. Well so far anyway, but it is getting easier. The majority of TEFL teachers here in Korea have a syllabus to teach from, whereas I’m unfortunate in that I’ve been told to teach, I quote “whatever I like”. This puts a lot of pressure on me to, firstly, come up with good effective material and secondly to deliver lessons that are of a suitable level for each grade. It took me a number of months to become familiarised with what the students had covered and the level that they were at.

My head co-teacher Mr Oh and I at my welcome dinner, back in my experimental goatee days

A more recent photo of my Vice principle and I. I've never met someone more hell bent on lashing out the orders, bossy personified, but a legend in his own right

Not many of my colleagues outside of the 5 english teachers I co-teach with can speak english that well. However, within the first few days it was quite apparent which teachers were keen on learning english and were happy to befriend me to meet facilitate that end. Let me introduce Mr Hong-Chu (who actually has a brother called "Ah"!), and Mr Pak-e-Man, yes the same as the 80's computer game. Two legends in their own right. Paciman is one of the most pleasant and benign people I've ever met. He always has this big gleaming smile on his face and never has a bad word to say. His english wasn't great to start but I'm amazed at how much he's learned since we've become friends. Mr Hong-chu on the other hand is a pretty slow learner and often gets a bit disconcerted and frustrated with his progress. Nevertheless he's an absolute character, who has a very unique closed toothed smile, it leaves a huge gape between the cusp of his lips and his teeth on either side. You could quite literally fit a spoon of kimchi in each side with his mouth closed. In my first week these guys invited me to go hiking with them where we hit it off immediately, ever since we've been good friends. I've probably learned more Korean off them than from my saturday morning classes.

Pac-e-man on the left and Hong-chue on the right with their respective wives at a scrumptious meal at pacimans house. sidenote - Hong chu revealed to me in mid-meal that he wears a wig and thought that I should know. I was in total disbelieve as he really didn't look like he wore one. Consequently he asked me did I want to touch it, I said I might wait till I finish my food, luckily he forgot. Dam good job though, I would never have guessed he wore a wig!

The canteen food isn't bad at all. The great thing is that the menu varies hugely from day to day. The teachers have their own private canteen which is great because you wouldn't be able to hear yourself think with the racket coming from 800 hungry Korean kids. As I enter the canteen I usually steel a glance at what's on offer for the day, hoping not to see that palate burning red spice that they insist on putting on most food here. Salads are even doused in it! Korean eating utensils are generally made from steel, including chop sticks, cups and trays. My first introduction to this was in my canteen, which I found quite strange and less comfortable to the western norm. Chops sticks are hard enough to use without having them made from slippery steel! Soup is served with every meal and is usually a broth, seaweed soup is also no stranger to the canteen table, nice n salty.

1st graders crowding to get into the canteen. When the bell goes off at lunch time the building almost crumbles with the clatter of stampeding ravenous students

The staff room and my desk with the melodious school bell going off. It got on my wick for a while after listening to it about 10 times a day, I am now numb to it.

Last year corporal punishment was illegalised in Korea, however all of the teachers still carry a stick of some sort, I even have one! They allegedly don't use them, however the Police were called to the school by a student last week, because my head co-teacher Mr Oh "verbally abused him". Yeah sure..... This is quite a common occurrence now that the kids know their rights.

Me trying corporal punishment. I forgot my stick that day ;-)

How happy are my students!!

One way that the teachers can get their own back on the students is by assigning them to cleaning duty. This I think is genius. It means they don't have the extra cost of hiring a cleaner and the students Hate it! Nevertheless there always seems to be a sufficient army of naughty students to sweep, mop and scrub the floors.

Funny students

The relationship the majority of the teachers have with the students can be very different from one day to the next. You could hear very loud intimidating roaring from male teachers one minute, and next you'll see them walking through the staff room with their arms around the kids having a great laugh. There never seems to be any shortage of banter between the teachers and the students either. I for one, have a great laugh with them. They are always very friendly to me and always insist on saying a big "hello Cormac". However, due to their innate pronunciation difficulties, my name comes out as "Como" or "Goma", which means "sea food" in Korean. (Korean people have awful problems with the letter "R")

Me trying to get the some of my 1st graders speaking english, NOT a very good reflection of my teaching skills ;-)

The same lads posing

Our astroturf pitch that doubles as the school yard. Every break time or lunch time this pitch turns into football anarchy! There can be about 10 games of footie going on at any one time, mayhem!

The tuck shop. You'll often see very endearing displays of sharing between the students here. They could have up to four of their friends gaping mouths looking for a bite of their sandwich/bar, and they never say no. It's really nice to see

I really love the vibe working in a school. My colleagues for one are just so nice and friendly, but I think what makes most of my time working in a school so easy, is that kids just radiate this effortless joyful energy. Kids are for the most part inherently happy, and when you have a 800 of them in one big building around you, that energy can only effect you in a positive way.

There was a very steep and sometimes scary learning curve to start with, but the more my teaching skills develop the easier and more rewarding teaching becomes. So that's the first semester over with, let's hope the second one is as enjoyable....