It's getting personal

So I've been at my new schedule for two weeks, and let me just say I am busy, busy, busy, especially compared to how things used to be. Long story short (and trust me, it's a loooong story involving much frustration), the extra third grade class was cancelled, so I'm steady on with 33 hours a week. When I initially signed my contract to work in Korea, I didn't understand how I could work only 30 hours a week - this sounded like quite a deal to me. However, after teaching for almost seven months, I realize how much 30 hours a week teaching is. Teaching itself isn't the hard part, though it's certainly not easy to simultaneously control, entertain, and educate a roomful of faux-jaded 13-year-olds, it's the planning that gets you. Good lessons don't materialize out of thin air, especially my after-school classes. I find curriculum classes to be much easier because you have a book you follow that comes complete with visuals, CDs, exercises, and games, whereas my after-school classes are just whatever I decide is worthwhile to teach - anything ranging from phonics to songs to verb charts to red light, green light if the little ones are being good. I have to think up a topic, then try and somehow complete the trifecta of fun, educational, and useful.

It's definitely getting easier as time goes on, though. I'm learning more and more what works and what doesn't, I have lesson plans from last semester that I can fall back on, and my new main school coteacher is much more strict with the students, so I don't spend as much time (fruitlessly) trying to discipline them. She also speaks quite a lot of English and is very intent on increasing the students' English levels. We have eight classes on Monday and Tuesday, so four in the morning and four in the afternoon. A lot of my in-between class time is used checking students' homework (my coteacher assigns noisy students English dialogues they have to write), or more often than not class runs over into the 10 minute break time. Sometimes I don't even have time to run to the bathroom! Honestly though, I really am taking more pride in my work - I feel like a real teacher, and I'm pleased to see the students doing what they're supposed to. The longer I'm at my schools the more connected I feel to my students, and especially my main school students, the troublemaker school. My coteacher confirmed that lots of my students don't have parents, and most are very poor. I kind of figured this because the town I teach in is mostly a farming town that looks pretty rundown. However, it hit me pretty hard today. I had typed up listen and repeat dialogues for the students to see on the projector, and several complained they couldn't see it. Later my coteacher told me she asked the kids why not, and one of my fourth-grade boys said that he had bad eyesight, so she asked why don't his parents take him to the eye doctor, and he said they have no time because they have to work so much. How sad is that? A little boy's parents don't even have time to take him to get an eye exam because they have to work so much. One of my sixth grade girls apparently cursed at my coteacher because my coteacher assigned her homework for not paying attention in class, and my coteacher said she spoke to the girl's homeroom teacher, who told my coteacher that this girl has problems at home, namely an alcoholic father. Really makes me re-think my own problems.

Now that I can talk more with my coteacher, I'm learning more and more disheartening news about my students' education levels. In my remedial classes, the sixth grade homeroom teacher sent me six students who failed their beginning of the year English exam. My coteacher said the kids need a 40 out of 100 to pass and get into middle school. I have four sixth graders who only got 40s, so they got sent to my remedial class as well. This means I'm now up to 14 students, which is too many for this kind of class, so I'll have to speak to my coteacher about it. I feel bad because I don't want to kick out my students who really want to learn more, but I need to devote my time to those kids who really need it to pass their test. In my remedial class today, I learned that five of my sixth graders don't remember the alphabet. I was really perplexed by this as a few of them weren't actually remedial students; in fact, they can read! How do you not know the alphabet but can read? I'm so baffled by this.