I spend 20 teaching hours per week in the classroom delivering English language lessons to middle school students at two schools in South Korean. Delivering information, maintaining order, and engaging with the students is exhausting work, but there is nothing like the feeling of having a class go well. It's an incredible high that, unfortunately, is still pretty rare for me. I'm having fewer and fewer terrible lessons, and more and more decent lessons. The great lessons are rare but deeply satisfying and motivating.
The second major element of my work is lesson planning. Basically, any spare minute at school when I'm not teaching, I am (or should be) preparing lessons for the next week. I'm more comfortable now with the flow of lessons, what the students can reasonably handle, and how long each activity should generally take. I have picked up intuitive little tricks when I need to speed up a lesson or slow it down to ensure that I cover the material within the 40 minute period. The biggest challenge is getting students to participate. Sometimes, I feel like I'm teaching to the same 3 or 4 students each class, while the other students just sit back with blank looks on their faces. I think the students understand now that I may call on them randomly if no one volunteers. I give out stickers to encourage participation, but I worry that the stickers may be losing their appeal after a few weeks. I need another reward that the students will want but won't break my budget.
A minor part of being a teacher at my schools, but by far the most enjoyable, is my random and informal conversations with students and teachers. Every chance I get I arrive to class early to mingle with the students to have a conversation or joke around. Also, I have random and short interactions with students in the halls between classes or during lunch.
Almost as a reflex, whenever I walk by a student, they will say "Hello Teacher!" Some of the students are exceedingly enthusiastic and I wonder why that energy disappears the moment class begins. But the shouts of "Hi Teacher" are a nice boost of confidence and adds to my pseudo-celebrity status as the only non-Korean at the school.
Some students try to tell me funny things about their friends to embarrass them. They'll say things like, "He's dangerous" or "He's crazy!" And the other student will say, "No, no, no. He's crazy!" It's not sophisticated, but at least it's in English.
A group of boys jokingly tried to tell me they were in the Blood Gang and flashed some gang signs. "Very dangerous," they said. Anything to shock the teacher.
A usually very quiet girl spoke to me at the end of class and said that "It's my birthday today". I gave her a sticker and wished her a happy birthday. This was one of my nicer interactions.
If I see a student with an injury (sprained wrist, scraped knee), I ask them to explain what happened. Usually, it's some sort of basketball injury or a trip and fall on the sidewalk. It's a good way to start a conversation and learn more about the students. I tell them, "don't fight" and they think that's funny.
Another girl always drinks this green lemon soda in class. The bottle looks just like dish soap. It even has a little lemon on the front. I joke around with her that she likes to drink soap. So, that's our thing. I pretend that she's drinking soap and she pretends that I'm funny.
In one corner of the school, there is a couch and several bookshelves for the students to sit down, relax, and read. I've never actually seen a student reading there, but I thought I'd grab a book and practice reading in Korean. I can read phonetically, for the most part, but don't understand the meaning of the words. I thought it would be nice for the students to see my trying to learn Korean, and perhaps they could help me understand a few words. I had a book in my hand and I had no idea what I was reading. A boy came to me so I asked him what the title meant. He paused for a minute, trying to find the right words. Then he said, "Stupid and Stupid". Yes, an apt title for how I feel in Korea.
One particular teacher at the school always speaks to me despite having some challenges with the language. While not an English teacher, he is dedicated to studying and learning English, and he has taught me a lot about Korea and the local area. One day he was talking about the change in weather. We are currently in the rainy season here in Korea and in a few weeks, it will turn into the hottest part of the summer. He said it will be "the dog days". I was impressed and thought, "Wow, he knows the expression, dog days of summer. That's really good." Not quite. Actually, what he was talking about was the tradition of eating dog at this time of year. In the hottest days of summer, people traditionally didn't have a lot of food so they raised a dog for the family who would then sacrifice it's body so the family could have nourishment and strength. He said that since the world has decided that eating dogs was bad, it was switched to chicken. Now it's the chicken days of summer. It doesn't have the same ring to it. I have no intention of eating dog even though it's apparently still available in the country.
The things I hear from the Korean students and teachers are amazing. I think it's an important part of my role to encourage fluency and interest in speaking with foreign people. Casual conversation helps me feel like a member of the school, and I'm impressed with the students' speaking ability and their willingness to try to speak English with me.
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