Here's a rundown of everything you need to know about our new jobs as teachers.
We work at a hagwon, which is a for-profit private cram school. Our Director, Helen, is the owner of 2 SLPs in Pohang, SLP Bukbu and SLP Namgu. We both work at the Namgu (South) location teaching elementary kids and middle schoolers. For about 1 week now I have been substituting a Kindergarten class at the Bukbu (North) location. So to say my work week is busy would be an understatement. Our usual working hours are 13h15 to 21h15 but I'm currently 9h30 to 19h45 to accommodate my Kindergarten class. From 13h15 to 15h00 we prep for the day's classes, make learning calendars and update report cards since the students are still in school until 15h00.
Each class lasts 40 minutes, with 5 minutes in between, except for the evening classes that are 50 minutes. With my old schedule, my craziest day is Friday because I have 6 different classes back to back. Each of us have about 60 students, with our largest classes consisting of 11. Usually we have the same group of students on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and then different groups on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We teach just about every level from units about food to debate classes.
Just like every teacher we do have a few kids who are notorious for being lazy or class clowns but in general our kids are pretty awesome. Majority of them come excited to learn and usually have a lot to say when we ask what they did that weekend.
Our training week with the couple we were replacing, Katie and Jordan, was a lot of go-go-go and piquing the interests of our new students. They gave us the rundown of our classes and Katie even made a Training Manual. Super helpful and nice of them! Seeing as our training week was their last week it was touching to see how attached the students were to them. I was pretty nervous about the big shoes I had to fill! We both had our first days of teaching on the Friday that week. It went swimmingly and I had already received a letter from one of my students!
As a blog feature I think we are going to do a weekly post of things our kids said / did because some of them are absolutely ridiculous.
~ Julia Teacher