On Wednesday I had the great experience of meeting with my head teacher. This will be the lady who I will teach with this whole year. I am going to be in a school called Sungsung middle school and will be teaching years 2 and 3 (aka 8th and 9th grade). My schedule is actually pretty full. I am required to teach 22 hours during the school week. My school starts at 9:00 and goes till 5:00. I will also need to stay 2 days after school and teach approx. 15 students who are more intersted in learning English than others. My head teacher and I will pick those students, I believe, sometime next week. There are many different classes that I will be teaching. Although I only have 2 preps I have 27 different classes, each with 35 students!!! If you calculate that number that means I have 945 students all together!! OH MY! That is a lot of students who do not speak English!! I hope that I will be able to help them out.
When meeting with my head teacher I came to realize that it is going to take some time to get used to understanding and comprehending what each other are saying. Her English was good but still very broken. A lot of people in Korea do know how to speak some English but they are very embarressed to speak to people whose first language is English. Mira Jo (my head teacher) kept apologizing through our whole meeting. I tried to encourage her and let her know that she was doing great! The things that we covered in our meeting ranged anywhere from what textbook I will be using, what type of slippers I need to purchase :) and how to actually get to the school. She is very sweet and told me that she is not able to take me to school but that she can drive me back to KNU on most days. Most of the native teachers here take public transportation to and from their schools so it was very sweet of her to offer to take me back to KNU. Also, I was told that the teachers at Sungsung want to have a welcome dinner for me one night. I am very excited about that. I think it will definitely be an experience to remember. Overall, my meeting went well but I am still a little nervous about teaching. I will not have the opportunity to see the school till the first day of school which is September 1st. The semesters in Korea are switched here. First semester starts in March and ends in June and then 2nd semester starts in September and ends in December. So the schedule is a little different but I think will be good. During January and February I will be doing my 4 weeks of TESOL training.
This post is a little more informative than anything. But I thought I would let you know how my school experience has started out. I am very excited to get to know the kids (all 945 of them) and to also get to know the teachers. Based on first impressions, I think I am really going to like my school and head teacher. It will definitly have it's challenges, but I think I can handle it.
Tonight I am planning on going to Yawoori (downtown Cheonan) to go to Dr. Fish. This is the place where I can put my feet in a tub full of fish and have them eat the skin off of my feet. I've been told it's something I need to try, so me and a few others are going to go try this today. I will let you know how it goes!
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