TEACHING

Now that I’ve been teaching for two months I figure it’s about time to update you all on my job. Although it may look like I’ve spent the past 2 months leisurely touring around Seoul, I am in fact, employed. I teach at a private school, or hagwon, called Sarah’s English Academy. I teach Monday through Friday from 2-9pm and teach kids ranging in ages 5 to 13. Here’s a random tour of my school via youtube video that a teacher from my school posted:



Here’s my room sans children:

I’ve found teaching English to be like playing one giant game of catch phrase. Basically, you have to come up with millions of ways to describe simple words that cater to different English abilities. The majority of my students have a decent English foundation so they are learning simple grammer and reading short stories. Although I have to simplify the language I use, most of the students can understand directions and engage in conversation. 



I also have a few classes of kids that have spent a significant amount of time in English speaking countries so they have an extremely large vocabulary and I get to teach some interesting material. In one of my classes I get to teach English idioms like ‘soul mate’ ‘cool as a cucumber’ and ‘follow in one’s footsteps’ etc. Maybe I’m a nerd, but I think it’s kind of fun. I also just found out that I get to teach one of these higher level classes Harry Potter….needless to say, I can’t wait!


Although most of my kids are pretty advanced in their English ability, there are some classes that are not. I teach one class of 5 year olds who didn’t know any English when they first started. It’s fun teaching the really young kids because they constantly want to hug you and do dorky things like sing and dance,  but this type of class poses a whole new type of challenge. Because the kids are so young, they have a very (very very very) short attention span and because they don’t understand English they don’t understand directions. Working with each age level has it’s own positives and negatives and I’ve really enjoyed being able to teach a wide variety of ages and ability levels.


Although I’ve found kids to have universal similarities (ie: they all like to goof around, play games, show off,  etc) I’ve observed childhood to be very different in Korea than it is in the United States. All kids attend numerous after school academies (English being one of them) that keep the kids busy from after school until late at night. Most of the kids who attend our English school, also attend science academy, math academy, music academy and art academies. Each of these academies are expected to assign a significant amount of homework which means that kids spend all day at Korean school, spend their evening at assorted academies and then stay up late into the night finishing their homework for all these classes. Koreans take their education very seriously and devote much more time to studying than we do. I now have a better idea of where the “smart Asian” stereotype was derived…


For the most part, I enjoy my job and really enjoy the kids. Korean kids are adorable and some of the things they say are hilarious. One of my classes asked how old I was. When they guessed, they all decided I was 39. I know college probably took about 20 years off of my life, but shoot, do I reeeeeeeeally look that old? Uggh. They also call me “fish teacher” because ‘Maggie’ is the word for a type of fish in Korean. Haha…very funny. Guess it could be worse?  


It’s also been great because they like to draw me pictures. Pictures of which, I am naturally the subject of every one. One of my students wrote under the picture, “Maggie Teacher” pretty, nice and skinny”. Need I say more? She is now my favorite student. Also, last week I walked into a giggling classroom to find this: 

They told me it was "suicide by stapler". Very clever...