"Teaching"

In case anyone forgot "to teach" means to impart knowledge or skill; give instruction. Being in Korea I think I often forget what it means to teach. Yes, I am theoretically an English teacher and I spend a sizable chunk of my work week "teaching", but I often wonder if what I do is actually teaching. First let me break down what a typical (although there isn't really such thing as a typical week here since my schedule seems to change without notice every two seconds) week entails. 


Monday: Work from 8:40-4:40. Co-teach four classes of 6th grade in the morning (all the same lesson).


Tuesday: Co-teach four classes of 6th grade in the morning (same lesson as Monday). Teach one after school class of 1st and 2nd graders with minimal English knowledge. 


Wednesday: Co-teach two classes of 6th grade (SAME lesson as Monday and Tuesday--this is where I contemplate suicide), and two of 5th grade (this is where we start to question the word "teach). Teach teachers' English (well the two teachers who show up) for approximately two hours (although this has changed every week so far). 


Thursday: Co-teach three (but sometimes four or five, the schedule seems to change every single week) classes of 5th grade (same lesson as Wednesday). Teach after school 1st and 2nd grade. 


Friday: Co-teach four (sometimes more sometimes less) classes of 5th grade (SAME lesson as Wednesday and Thursday--again contemplate suicide). In Konglish: pinishee (finished!). Bring on the weekend!


Now let me do a little math for you:


-There are approximately 30 students in each of my regular 5th and 6th grade classes.
30x10 classes= 300 individual 6th graders
30x9 classes= 270 individual 5th graders
20 1st and 2nd graders. 
Total students= approx 600 individual students!!


-I teach the same lesson every week to my 5th and 6th graders
1x 10 classes= 10 times of pure torture (besides the first and second lessons where it's semi fun to see students reactions)
1x9 classes= 9 times of pure torture (and there is virtually no enjoyment when it comes to 5th grade)
2x 2 classes= 2 times of fun with adorable Korean children who I can do whatever I want with


Conclusion: My job can be pretty boring. There is no possible way to get to know my students because I see so many of them. 5th and 6th graders study English three times per week, they see me one time per week. Am I helping them much? Probably not. 


So this all sounds a bit negative. It's not all bad, really. There are a lot of things I enjoy about teaching but the problem is what I do 80% of the time is not what I would call teaching. In a perfect world where the contract that I signed and what I learned at orientation is followed, my lessons would go something like this: My co-teachers and I would share equally the teaching and lesson planning load. My job is to be a pronunciation guide for the students and something of a novelty since I am from a different country and look different from every other person in my school. My co-teacher is supposed to be the disciplinarian, the one who teaches grammar concepts (because las a native speaker you really don't know grammar all that well), and a translator when I explain something in English. In my 6th grade classes my co-teacher and I achieve these goals relatively well. It doesn't mean that I'm still not bored out of my mind by class number ten of teaching the same lesson but I think we both still manage to have some fun in the midst of the monotony and I think most of the students enjoy themselves and don't leave the classroom hating English. 

This is about the enthusiasm most of my 5th graders
have for English after I'm finished with them. 

5th grade on the other hand is a different story. When teaching in Korea, you never quite know what you're going to get when it comes to co-teachers, schools, apartments, and location. I was lucky in my location, my apartment, and my main 6th grade co-teacher but of course there are things I would love to change. I am at least outwardly a patient and positive person, but "teaching" 5th grade tries even my outward patience. What are my primary duties? "Teaching" spelling (in quotations because I am NOT qualified to teach spelling therefore I don't think I'm actually imparting any knowledge to my students since I didn't have any spelling knowledge to begin with), playing games that bore me out of my mind (and I think bore my students as well), and assigning endless homework assignments that amount to essentially handwriting practice for the students. Some of the 5th graders are little devils (they know more English profanity than other vocabulary combined) yet there is little discipline in the classroom. I am the last thing from an expert teacher, but I have discovered that part of effective teaching is good classroom management and being aware of what is going on in all corners of the classroom. When a student is crying, likely because of another devil student aggravating her, in my mind something should be done.  


But this is not the place for me to rant on my teaching woes. In my little dream world I am a good teacher that my students will remember for a long time, and I am actually helping my students learn some English while enjoying the learning process. This can be a difficult to impossible task in Korea. Because of private English academies that middle to upper class families send their children to, the English abilities of students in my classes can vary from kids who could carry on a pretty good conversation with me, to kids who can't read English. Managing this huge discrepancy in levels, while trying to make the required textbook material interesting and fun is only possible with a co-teacher who can effectively manage the classroom, has a fun personality and perhaps remembers what it was like to be a student. I've accepted the fact that this goal will never be accomplished with 5th grade, instead my new more achievable goals are to amuse at least one or two students in class by my ridiculous behavior (also serves the purpose of keeping me amused), and have fun with and teach (the full definition of the word) my 1st and 2nd graders. 


While I may not always give instruction or impart knowledge, I can brag that I have a job where I get paid to be overly dramatic, sing, dance, sometimes shout, play, and draw. And at least I haven't quite stooped to the level of an English robot (but perhaps pretty close at times). Soon robots will replace Native Teachers in Korea so until that day I continue trying to amuse my students with my clown-like antics. See video below.   

  

Winter English Camp: Around the World in 10 days

After spending the past four years of my life in college busy taking too many credits a semester, completing seemingly endless engineering assignments, being involved in too many student organizations, running competitively for three years, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life, living and teaching English in Korea is often WAY too easy and mindless for me. So often my main job is to just to drill correct pronunciation into my students by making them repeat useless sentences after me. This task I could do in my sleep. Needless to say I was thrilled about winter English camps! I had free reign to choose the theme, plan lessons, and I had the challenge of having no co-teacher to translate for me. Naturally, my theme was "Around the World". American and Korean students have an alarming lack of knowledge about the world outside the borders of their own countries, so my goal was to give them a small taste of the world while learning English. Plus I'm a dork and enjoy learning about the world myself so it was my secret way to be a student again and learn new information.

I always go into new experiences with low expectations to eliminate any risk of me being disappointed and so it was with winter camps. But, my 6th grade students blew my low expectations out of the water (5th grade not so much but we won't talk about that). I had my students plan a dream vacation and expected destinations such as Korea, Japan, and China to pop up frequently. But no! My students' dream vacations: France (to see the Eiffel Tower), Germany (eat food and drink beer haha), Spain (to watch a bull fight), Greece (to see the Parthenon) and many more! Not only did my students choose non-typical Korean vacation spots but they used good English sentences to explain their reasons why they wanted to travel to these locations. Impressive!

Each day I enthralled my students with knowledge about each continent. I showed them pictures from my travels which drew responses such as: "Teacher! You very richy! You travel so muchy!" On Africa day I was very nervous about how my students would respond to the abundance of "black people" on this continent. In the past many of my students will gasp in horror when they see a black face, but I have tried to be optimistic that this response is only due to shocking lack of diversity in this country. To combat this lack of diversity and prove that Africans really are okay I intentionally overloaded my powerpoint on Africa with pictures of me and my African friends from my travels. Instead of gasps of horror the responses were:
-"Teacher! Boyfriend?"  "No, not boyfriend. Friend."
"Teacher! Husband? You have many husbands."
"Teacher! Children? Oh teacher you have many children!"
"No, no. No children." (me laughing and turning red which encouraged my students even more)
"Oh teacher! Your children miss you very muchy! Do you miss your children? Does your husband miss you?"

I take these responses as a victory! If my students are okay with me having African children and an African husband than they must be okay with Africans as a whole. Africa day was of course my favorite because I have such a personal connection to this continent (NOT country). I drilled into my students where my family lives and where Botswana is on a map. I can now proudly say that my Korean 6th graders (well 9 of them at least) know more about Africa than the average American. Please feel bad about yourselves now Americans and do your research on Africa. You should at minimum know where South Africa since they did just host the world cup.

The culminating activity for camp (besides the movie) was having my 6th graders write simple letters in English to the students of a school in Tanzania that our Engineers without Borders chapter worked with and Valparaiso University's SALT (Social Action Leadership Team) is raising money for this year. I showed my kids these two videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZpz1H49J9Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDgumswnwE8
The first video includes an interview with me so my students were convinced that I'm famous. I guess having your face in a youtube video classifies as fame, right?

With the letter writing activity I was once again blown away by my students. I gave them a very simple template to follow: what they like to do, their name, which school they go to, etc. However, I left the activity open. I told them they could write about Korea because the students in Tanzania don't know about Korea. One student in particular took this advice to heart. Instead of simply using the ample class time I gave my students to finish the letters he took his letter home and showed up the next day with a crammed (literally every inch was filled) full A4 paper sized letter. I was speechless! He was so shy about his extra work even when I praised him for all his efforts. This kid wrote about kimchi (Korea's national dish), how Korea is a divided country, how quickly Korea developed in the last 50 years, and how he wants to travel Africa (YES! :) ). Gold star work for sure and pat on the back to his great English teacher! ;)

These students and moments like these are the reasons why I do enjoy teaching at the end of the day. Yes, it's often mindless and I don't foresee myself teaching Korean elementary students for the rest of my life, but to risk sounding cliche--teaching is often about making a difference in just a few students' lives. I think winter camp fueled my growing passion to be a professor since I enjoy the act of teaching so much but find myself frustrated by the limited knowledge I can actually successfully impart on elementary students.

On the last day of camp my students left with sad faces to leave me which made me of course feel VERY good about myself. One of my favorite students: "Teacher! I don't want to go home! I want to study more!" Awww! How many teachers would give anything to hear that?