To reiterate what I was saying awhile ago about how I can always count on things to change, this new semester has brought some tumultous times with it. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that all my students have gone up a grade, and consequently I'm having trouble planning their lessons because I'm so used to the fourth grade being 10 students and knowing that the fifth grade are the troublemakers, etc etc and now I need to learn two new schedules and figure out new classroom arrangements and such.
I am SO not a fan of my new schedules. I miss the old setup so much - this semester has shifted classes more towards the morning so as to make time for "sports" in the afternoon, apparently. This means I teach four classes each morning with ten minute breaks in between each when I used to do two, then a 30 minute break, and then one or two more. At my second school I used to have first period free, and now I don't have that on Fridays. No more kindergarten at my second school either - I used to teach 1st/2nd together, but this semester those classes are separated into 1st and 2nd.
Working with my new coteacher is also a major change. It's good because she speaks good English, but by the same token, this means she actually wants to talk to me all the time. I'm very used to sitting down at lunch and just focusing on eating my food without accidentally consuming any fish bones or whatever, but now we talk during lunch. Also whenever I ask her questions about stuff she has a tendency to go on for awhile when really I just wanted a quick answer so I can go back to my work. A very nice lady though, and she's very gung-ho about English education.
Speaking of English education, here's the biggest change to my schedule: overtime classes. I work 18 hours at Seokyang, my main school, and 12 at Seokseong, my second school. Two of my 18 hours used to be teachers training, where I taught English to various Korean teachers from both my schools. However, this semester they are too busy to take the class, so my principal and coteacher were looking for other ways to fill this time. The principal suggested kindergarten/1st/2nd, but I had what I thought was a better idea.
My main school classes are fairly large (25-29 students), and their English abilities are really varying in each class. It makes it hard to teach everyone because some students can't even write while others look bored senseless. Anyway, so this was my thinking - I had three classes to fill, so why not make review classes for my students who were struggling? This was the perfect opportunity - I would only accept certain students, so there would be less students per class in addition to giving the kids more time to learn the material. I thought this was a better use of my time rather than teaching kindergarten, which I think is kind of a waste of time. I know that learning languages is much easier when you're younger, so I can see the thought process behind having me teach kindergarteners to give them a bit of a head start on their English education, but let's be honest - how much do you really think that one 40 minute class per week is going to teach them? Having taught one kindergarten class last semester, I'll tell you how much. Almost nothing. They pick up vocabulary like you wouldn't believe, but if you want to teach them vocab you don't really need me. I thought that spending an extra 40 minutes with my older students would be much more beneficial.
My coteacher was a big fan of this idea, so she approached the principal. Long story short, he liked it too (all the teachers thought it was a good idea), but he still wanted the kindy/1/2 classes. New proposal? I teach four extra classes. I was pretty leery of this idea because it means that I'll be teaching 34 hours per week. This means that out of a 40 hour work week, 34 of those hours will be spent actively teaching. That means I'm down to six prep hours per week, and if you've never planned lessons, it's hard to understand the work that goes into it. In my opinion the actual teaching is easy; like most things, it's the prep work that's where the real work lies.
Either way my coteacher was definitely pressuring me to take the classes, and to be honest I really wanted to make them happen. For one, they won't require any extra planning because I just want the students to show up with the material we're working on at the time and then just go over it again. Another thing is that I'm liking the idea of overtime pay. And finally, I'm really excited to get a chance to really help out my students that I know have simply fallen behind and never caught up. It's hard because I see them in class, not participating, but now I know that it's not stubbornness or a refusal to learn, it's more that some of them just can't keep up, so they can't participate because they just don't know the answers.
The new schedule starts this week, and I can't lie - I'm pretty nervous. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. Wish me luck!
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