During quieter moments, I often wonder how life would be different for me if I were Korean and had to go through this school system. They study roughly sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Up until recently, that included Saturdays as well, which means only one resting day. Aside from art class, most of the curriculum is comprised of memorizing ginormous amounts of information. I have no doubt that were I in one of their places, I would be much less likely to be the writer I am today. Their legal system is completely different, so I would imagine the whole process of getting published is also completely different. I love their equivalent of Borders, though.
Nevertheless, they are who they are, and I am myself. Once more a semester has ended, and another new one has begun. Most of it is the same, but I have two new textbooks to teach to fairly low level kids. Aside from the usual grappling against altering my own style to suit these books, there are a few more challenges this semester. One of them is the familiar challenge of kids staring at me because they have no idea what I'm talking about - I'm just the strange foreigner who's telling them what to do and they're trying to figure it out. The other is that since Sean quit, everyone in the office has at least one day per week where we teach five classes in a row. This makes for really long days, and for me, they are Monday and Thursday.
Some students leveled up, and others didn't. Every class is new, because there is at least one kid I don't know. But there is a comfort level with the kids that I do know. The other challenge is that not all the textbooks came at the same time, so there are some classes where we had to basically make up some random thing for them to do. The head teacher decided to make them write a self introduction essay and then present it. I got called in for a talking to because some kids said others were playing with their cell phones, and also some say I was under prepared. It's not just the kids who don't have books sometimes, though - we teachers don't get copies of the books for some classes.
In terms of personal challenges, sometimes I feel that maybe because Koreans grew up in such a competitive society, they get used to acting like they always have something to prove. Literally everything is a competition. Today I was told that it's common for students to put their test scores on their resumes for consideration by colleges, and then later, as graduates for consideration by jobs. Everyone seems to have a do or die attitude.
The academy owner likes to annoy me by keeping close tabs and coming into my classes in attempts to point out things that I've missed. For example, after I got a talking to about some students playing with their phones, he caught someone and took the student's phone in front of me. I'm sure that in his mind, he's trying to help and this is his way of motivating me or something, but I really just feel harassed.
Then I feel like this is the way this society works. If someone higher than you in status feels like you're not doing something that you ought to, they'll just harass and alternatively make your life miserable until you hide all your feelings of scorn and contempt for them, even if you take only the most minimalist steps in doing what they want.
From what I gather, the whole atmosphere when it comes to foreigners has become somewhat more hostile. Because another coworker is quitting soon, the academy owner is urging us to turn our documents in to him again, to make sure that the organization has hold of our visas, with the excuse that it's an order from the government. The government itself is making the contracts of even the public school teachers much more dependent on their staying for the entire duration of the contract. In somewhat related news, I just got my national criminal background check, but I wonder if it's worth the effort to find another job in this country if it means staying here for a longer period of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment