Life's Little Frustrations

One of these shining faces is no longer at our hagwon, I found out today. P.S. The cake was tasty.

Happy Monday everyone (or the end of Monday for us here in Korea), or at least something like that. So I realized that, aside from needing to play catch up yet again, in talking about the positive experiences in Korea, you are not doing any favors by ignoring the negative parts either. Certainly, you could just gloss over the not as positive pieces, but I feel that is a disservice to everyone, especially those who will take the same route after we've come and gone. Zach has already sort of touched on that topic. 

This morning, in a sort of muddled conversation with our boss, I was informed that one of the students in my class of older girls was no longer attending our hagwon. I was preoccupied with preparing for class for my kindy kids, so I wasn't really that attentive to the conversation. I mentioned it to Zach later who had to talk to her about some other things and he filled me in on the information gaps that I wasn't sure of. Apparently the student had not placed well in her latest English test at school and so her mother pulled her from our hagwon.

I was under the impression that our director was not very happy this morning due to this, though it's hard to tell with her. I already know that she likes Zach more than she likes me (she has professed as much), so whatever. Though, he told me that she didn't seem to care all that much.

My bone to pick with this one is that teaching three to four 9-10 year old (international age, not Korean) girls is already hard enough when they're around the same skill level, but when three of them are more advanced and one of them just started learning English a few months ago, there's going to be a bit of an issue. These girls are already hard enough to engage and adding in them trying to translate things to her and her copying what they write really just makes it all the more challenging.

If I had had it my way I would have preferred to split the four girls into two groups based on skill level, with me taking one pair and Zach taking the other, but it was just not a viable option.

Anyway, I spent a fair amount of the day bent out of shape about this whole thing even though in the few months that we've been here, I doubt I could have made much headway. I like being a good employee, doing my job well, getting things done. The problem is when the task is unrealistic. If anything, the student who is no longer with us should have been placed in a much lower level class (like Zach's lower elementary class, or even lower) with an English speaking Korean teacher who could explain the concepts and build her vocabulary before putting her with students who speak decent English when she is struggling to form even the most basic of sentences.

I suppose in the long run this will help me in other ways too, to realize that while I really appreciate people liking me (as our director appreciates me as a currency sign, primarily), it's not the end of the world if someone doesn't. And also that you can't make everyone happy, you just have to do the best you can with what you have to work with.

It's also worth mentioning that today was actually a really good day in class. I had the three girls who are more advanced and I was able to engage them, not worry about attempting (with very little success) to explain concepts to the lower level girl, and actually direct them as a group much more easily. I think games are the way to their little hearts, and with students that are more skilled they are able to pick up the idea faster and not have to spend a good amount of time trying to help out their friend. It will be different two days a week when I only have 2 of the girls, but maybe this will allow me to go further with them since they're the two most advanced students of the group.