My first week

My busy week of teaching is finally over, which now gives me a chance to write about it. I began working at Gimpo SLP Language School on Monday October 15. Michael (my roommate/co-worker) and I grabbed some Korean-style breakfast and then showed up for work at 11:30am. The school is about a twenty minute walk from our apartment, but we take the bus sometimes. When I arrived at the school I met my employers and my other co-workers, three foreign teachers and four Korean teachers. The other teachers were relieved to have me there as they had been filling in for my classes since the beginning of October. I was immediately thrust into the kindergarden class, teaching one period before lunch and one after. My duties also include feeding these students their hot lunch, which the school provides. When I first heard that I was going to teach this age-group I wasn't all that worried, but after spending a week with these wild children I'm starting to wonder. It's not uncommon for them to hit me or each other, rip pages out of thier workbooks to make airplanes, steal each others toys, and generally run around the room screaming. It takes two teachers just to control twelve students, let alone try to teach them anything. There are really only three boys who cause the most trouble, but they're so disruptive the whole class suffers. So I spent my first week of kindergarden doing all I could to get these munchkins to listen to me and my voice is hoarse as a result.
The afternoon classes are much better though. These classes are smaller and the students are older, ranging from six to fourteen years old. My schedule is divided into Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes and Tuesday/Thursday classes. I teach six, forty minute classes from 3:00pm - 7:30pm. All the students follow the SLP program, so as teachers all we have to do is use the books provided to teach each lesson. There are of course other tasks I need to do, but generally the lesson planning is all done for me which is sweet. The biggest stress for me this week was orienting myself to each class. With twelve different classes/levels to keep track of it has been difficult for me to figure out how much material the students have covered for half the month. But I now feel caught up and once November rolls around I'll be almost fully prepared. Basically this week has been a blur of activity and I'm so glad it's the weekend. There is of course a lot more I could talk about, but I'll pace myself and keep it to one subject at a time for now. More to follow. I am also trying to figure out how to properly post some pictures, but I've been tinkering for about an hour and I'm gettng nowhere. I promise that pictures will be available soon.