The Beginning of My Korea Adventure

I have been in Korea for a few weeks now and I have experienced so much. Living at the CJ International House has been wonderful. I have been able to meet people from all over the world and have made many new friends. It has been quite amazing learning about other people’s cultures and learning some common words from their many languages. The area that we are staying in is great too. There are many restaurants, pubs, cafes, and a few shopping areas. I have had something fun and exciting to do every day.

In the next couple weeks I hope to venture more outside of Anam (the city where I am living) and see some historical sites in Korea. I would like to visit all of the palaces and temples. There are also many mountains you can travel to as well. Another thing I hope to do is attend a Buddhist ceremony. One of my friends said that one Buddhist temples has a special ceremony on Sundays for foreigners. They teach you about their religion and show you how they perform their ceremonies. They also teach you how to do some of the meditation that the Buddhist monks perform. Apparently they have you meditate and doing breathing exercises for almost two hours. That part doesn’t sound like too much fun, but I think it is worth experiencing.
The one thing I didn’t expect and was upset about at first, but am now appreciating is the amount of walking we have to do. Our dormitory is up a steep hill that is about 1km long. In order to go anywhere you have to go down it and then to return you have to come up (which is the worst part). The first couple of days the hill and the rest of the walking was killing me. I was so tired and frustrated, but now I don’t even notice it. I will have to confess that sometimes if I am returning to the dorms late at night and I’m exhausted I take a taxi up the hill. It’s relatively inexpensive, about 2 dollars, but it makes me feel a little lazy. Oh well, it’s definitely worth it.

Aside from having a great time here, I am having an interesting time at the elementary school. I am currently in the second week of observation and it has been quite an experience. For the first week we observed four classes a day. That seems just fine, but the issue I had is that these classes were all taught in Korean! Now I know some “Survivor Korean,” but in no way did I understand a single word the teachers or the students were saying. So in my opinion the first week was definitely not very beneficial. I think watching perhaps two or three Korean classes would have been sufficient for me to see how the teacher teaches and how the students respond which is the knowledge I was hoping to gain from observing. Michael and I talked to our cooperating teacher about this problem and she managed to have us observe three English classes and one Korean class each day for the second week. So this week has definitely been more beneficial and meaningful to me. It has helped me to see the English speaking ability of the students and how they respond to what the teacher says. I have noticed that the English speaking abilities of the students is extremely varied. Some speak English wonderfully, while others when asked “How are you?” respond with “Hi!” I think I will definitely have my work cut out for me. One thing I find interesting is that those students who speak English well, are enrolled in afterschool private English tutoring. Parents here believe it is extremely important for their children to speak English since it is considered an international language and they are willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money on the tutoring.

The other big issue that I have with my student teaching is the schedule. We are supposed to be at the school from 8:40 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. every day. This would be just fine except for the fact that on Mondays and Wednesdays classes are over at noon and Tuesdays and Thursdays they are over at 2:00 p.m. So after the classes are over I have nothing to do. This was especially true these first two weeks because we had not been given the material we will be teaching. Thus I found myself reading magazines, surfing the internet, and just trying to pass the time. I have spent some time working on my portfolio, but the issue with that is first of all I feel so much more comfortable and am able to get more done in the study room at my dorm or even in my own room than I can in the teachers’ lounge and secondly I have a lot materials I am using to work on my portfolio and it is inconvenient to carry so much to and from the school. The school is about a 45 minute subway ride away from the dorm and then a total of 20 to 25 minutes of walking. It would be too much for me to try to bring everything I need to work on my portfolio. I feel I would get more accomplished working at home from noon/two to four-forty than I am getting at the elementary school. The teachers at this school use this time for lesson planning, but they are teaching a lot more than we will. We are teaching two lessons per week to eight different classes. So it is a total of teaching 16 times a week. However, since it is only two lessons per week, I know I will not need 15+ hours a week to create these two lessons. In addition this is something I would also feel more comfortable working on at my dorm. This is the biggest issue I have with the student teaching.

I know I may be complaining a bit but there is one more issue that I have. The cooperating teacher here wants to treat us as though we are real Korean teachers, which is wonderful, but this means she wants us to attend weekly faculty and grade level meetings. In America I would be more than happy to do this and I would enjoy that kind of experience, but here it is a different story. Both of these meetings which each last about two hours are entirely in Korean! This means for two hours twice a week I am sitting in a room full of people not understanding what is being said. I really wish we had a translator, because it would make these meetings very beneficial. But since we do not have a translator, these meetings have become a little like torture. I am not sure how I can resolve any of these concerns, but I would really love to so that this entire Korean teaching experience will be beneficial, exciting, and something I will remember fondly.

Aside from having a few issues/concerns with my teaching situation, I am finding this to be an interesting experience. I have noticed quite a few differences with Korean teachers/schools versus American teachers/schools. First of all in Korean schools all the students and teachers wear slippers. They do this for two reasons: 1. to keep the school cleaner, by having shoes you only wear inside and 2. for the teachers to be more comfortable while they are teaching. Another difference is that the students and teachers do a lot of work here. All teachers are responsible for cleaning their own rooms. This includes sweeping and mopping the floors. The students help out with this every day. They are always working hard. The students also take turns working as the “lunch ladies” (I couldn’t come up with a better term). They have to go and get the food from the cafeteria (the students and teachers eat lunch together in their classrooms) and then the students have to wear aprons and hats and serve their classmates their lunch. After they finish eating the students clean return the food carts to the cafeteria and help clean the dishes. Another difference I have noticed is that Korean teachers generally don’t assign homework. The only teachers whom I have seen give students homework are the foreign English teachers (they are from the U.S., U.K, Australia, and Ireland). In America there are special teachers for music, art, and physical education, but here in Korea the homeroom teachers are responsible for teaching those subjects too. The students here in Korea show their teachers a lot of respect. They always bow to their teachers and other faculty members when entering a room or passing them in the hallways. They also always stand up in class when they are responding to a question. In America all teachers are addressed as Ms. Smith or Mr. Thompson, but here students just call their teachers, “teacher”. They do not use names; however, they call the foreign teachers here including me by their first name followed by teacher. Thus I am called “Amanda teacher”. One thing that I do not like about the Korean school system is that all the schools are given textbooks and the teachers are to teach directly from the textbooks. If they have time, teachers are allowed to include their own lessons, but they usually don’t have extra time so most classes are spent reading from the textbook and lecturing. There are not many hands on activities or group work being used in these Korean classrooms.

Overall I am having a great time here in Korea. I will admit I am enjoying my time spent at the university much more than my time spent at the school. This is because of the issues I mentioned as well as the fact that our situation is pretty unorganized since we are the “guinea pigs” of this project and everyone is just kind of making things up as we go along. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks things will get better and we can get into more of a routine instead of just showing up and waiting for them to decide what we will be doing for the day. I also think it will be better once I actually start teaching instead of just observing. I am scheduled to start teaching next week and I can’t wait!