Teaching English
I thought that perhaps I should write about my job, and what I am even doing here. I'm sure at least one person is thinking "Does Meghan just hang out with cool friends and go shopping all the time?" The truthful answer to that is yes.But I also work. I have a pretty cool job where I work (officially) about 24 hours a week, though I spend more time there and more time at home. I work 4 days a week.
To give a little background knowledge: South Korea has a huge market for English schools. They are private schools that are usually after school or on the weekends. Private schools like this are called hakwons (or hagwons). Some students go to many hagwons after school or on weekends. You can go to a hagwon for science, math, english, korean, etc. Apparently these are used as supplements to the public school system. They all cost money for the parents.
So anyway, a big business here is the English hagwon, many whom hire foreign English teachers to come and teach. My company is no different. I work at a fairly small school (6 teachers). My classes are from 4pm to 10pm. yes. I have middle schoolers in my class until 10 pm. Most of them will go home and work on homework from school and various hagwons until maybe midnight or 1am.
So all of my curriculum is prepared for me, and I spend most of my time guiding my students through their work. We do reading comprehension and talking and listening. One of the best parts of my night is with my elementary students (who are upper elementary age). We make up sentences from the key words or phrases provided for us (from our reading). You can imagine that this might turn into chaos, as the kids like to one up each other and make fun of each other in their sentences.
For example: If I tell the students we need to make a sentence with "arrives", we would add a subject, correct the subject-verb agreement, and then add a place.
So, the other night we were doing this, and one boy suggested, as a joke "the girls". The sentence turned into "The girls arrive at the PC room" (which is an internet cafe). It was somewhat humorous because girls don't really go to PC rooms much.
So I decided to help the girls get them back. I gave them the subject of "The (insert class name here) boys" and the girls provided the rest of the sentence, which concluded "The (class name) boys arrive at the girls' bathroom". Uproar ensues. You can imagine that we have a lot of sentences about the bathroom. I also have this funny, entertaining interchange between two boys in one of my classes who love to make up sentences about each other. They mostly revolve around how one of them lives in a box. The other student will try to use "so and so's box" in EVERY sentence. Most of the time I have to tell him it will not work.
That's my evening. Sometimes it can be fun, and sometimes it is a struggle to keep their attention. Some of the time I feel sorry for them because they have been in school all day and then I have them for 3 hours! And I might be the 4th hagwon teacher they have in a week. I am learning a lot about how to discipline with love, which is not the norm here. I have to be firm, but I also want them to enjoy coming to my class.
I am also learning a lot about English and how hard it is to explain the things we say :) My middle schoolers do not generate sentences like mentioned above, but do some pretty in-depth reading on various subjects. I end up having to explain sayings to my students, which becomes difficult. How do you explain the vocabulary word "exist". yikes. It is some good experience, though, because I have thought about teaching ESL, and pursuing that for my Master's degree. It is good to work with students who are learning English. Plus, at least the little kids are pretty cute. Even when they blow boogers on their hands or spill juice all over my floor.
posted by Meghan @ 6:35 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home