About a week into our little Korean adventure our director pulled us aside and basically said one of us (she said she would prefer Amanda) to go and teach adult classes at this school called BCM English Institute. The director there really likes foreign women, but since Amanda wasn't comfortable with our surroundings yet I was "volunteered" to do the teaching. I was very annoyed with this since it would mean getting rid of all of my prep time and taking on an entirely new class which I had no prep for. Luckily this seems to have scared the director into realizing I am not going to take any bull from her when it comes to a million extra hours. My first night teaching adults was a bit awkward, I didn't actually have anything planned out and kind of stood in the front of the class looking dumb. Little by little however I began to get comfortable, and by the end of the week I was pretty confident. The classroom atmosphere with adults is just so much nicer than with kids. Most of them are University students or business professionals who really just want a place to relax and talk after super stressful days at work or school.
I taught adult conversational classes so there wasn't any writing or testing involved in the process. I simply would go in, think up a topic, write a few questions and try to keep the class talking until the 50 minute mark hit. The topics I did ranged from relationships, sports, love, apartments, jobs, to even sex now and again. It was nice to have such a laid back environment where there isn't any real pressure. The only real downside of the adult classes is that 3 days a week I would be getting off work at 9:50 and not make it back to our apartment until around 10:30, only to have to go to bed an hour or two later.
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| God I have such a tiny head |
Teaching children is difficult, at least teaching my kids is. You can tell they understand a bit of the language, but as the weird foreign teacher they really don't want to listen to you. The worst two days of the week are Monday and Tuesday because you literally can not get them to pay attention to anything. I end up losing a lot of my voice those days just due to the sheer amount of times I need to yell at my kids to get them to listen, although I am getting better with getting their attention other ways. I just think a lot of this job will be dreading those two days, then by Wednesday the kids are a little more relaxed and I am just slowly waiting for the weekend myself. Since the kindergartners are still so young I don't have to worry about homework with them either, but it is just really frustrating to teach. The good part about the kids is that I can play with them, for example the boys like to get into fights and its fun fake punching them and hearing them yell out in "pain." Its also nice because I can give them a worksheet and let them do their own thing for about 30 minutes while I relax and let them draw to their hearts content. It is rewarding teaching both, but I think if I had to come back to Korea again I'd probably go the teaching adults route full time, even if the split shift is a real killer.
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| I will miss them! |
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