Teaching English: Hitting the Ground Running

After a gruelling 20 hours of transit between Montreal and Seoul, yes, about one week ago today I finally landed in the city that will continue to be my home over the next 12 months. It was an immediate whirlwind, as my apartment was not yet ready so I was checked into a hotel for the night. After meeting some of my colleagues and going for my first Korean meal, I passed out in the hotel room in eager anticipation of my first day at work.

Before I go on, here a photo of that first Korean meal:

It was essentially a stir-fry with ramen noodles, vegetables, some rice and chicken, among other things. Had I not been super jet-lagged I surely would have enjoyed it even more, but it was indeed pretty good. Gotta get used to that spice though, because there's no avoiding that here.

On Monday, and, well, throughout the week, it was a real whirlwind introduction to my first ever teaching experience. I was given my syllabus, my books and my schedule and was sent off to my first class of the day.

There were four students in the class, all around 6-7 years old, and I had to teach them basic vocabulary in English. They were learning words like "cat," "boy" and "doll," among others. Before I knew it, I had whisked my way through five classes on that day, including a private tutoring sessions with a kid called Nick where we had to read some book together. It was the end of the day, and I finally moved into my apartment, which I talk about in this post.

The bulk of the rest of the week, however, was spent teaching. At this private language institution (here called "hagwon"), there are Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedules and Tuesday/Thursday schedules, which therefore means that some students come in thrice a week and some others twice. I was responsible for about five classes per day, each lasting about 35-40 minutes. Beyond the classroom, however, this week was the start of a new term so my new colleagues and I all had to scramble to prepare term syllabi for each class as well as acquaint ourselves with the system and the new lifestyle. Altogether, quite the exhausting week, consisting of early mornings and late evenings. I got home at around 8-8:30 ish every evening and my still jet-lagged body just crashed.

So how was teaching kids? Really, it was not that bad. I particularly enjoy teaching responsive and motivated students, but I especially enjoy conversation students who are just curious. I do believe that the easiest way for them to learn English is just to speak, so I'll try to import that philosophy into my classroom. Some of the kids are problematic and misbehave, but a little bit of discipline never hurts I suppose. One of my classes is actually quite silent and it's probably the most strenuous class to teach, I really need to try and make that class more animated and fun.

Beyond the aforementioned lessons, however, I was assigned additional lessons to do. Now, every Wednesday morning at 11:00 am I will be teaching a conversation class to adults where we'll read articles together and they'll answer questions. There adults are all actually quite conversational and very friendly so that was quite the pleasant lesson. Additionally, I was asked to teach an English Essay Writing class twice a week (Tuesday/Thursday morning) to some advanced students. These students are around 17-18 years old and are studying hard to try and get into some prestigious universities in English-speaking countries, and their level quite impressed me. On Thursday I actually taught them journalism writing (I never would have thought I'd be teaching my Major so soon...!), and assigned them an essay analysis on the lesson that we'll go over in class. Was actually quite an interesting experience.

Finally... finally yesterday (Saturday) I wandered into Seoul and visited some of the city, which I'll write about in another post, and it was a pretty great day. The weather here, I must mention, is horribly. Humid, hot, and you never see the sun due to the thick rain clouds and the pollution in the city. I hear it gets worse in August, but that the Spring and Fall are beautiful, so I look forward to that because this Seoul summer is gruelling.

Feel free to check out some of my other posts as I'll write several blogs this week documenting many different aspects about my first week in Seoul!

-Daniele