monday, march 6th was my first day of full teaching at my new school. i was a bit rusty at first, but all in all it went pretty smoothly. the kids are also for the most part really great, so that actually made it even easier.

the school consists of a three-story main building attached to a really nice auditorium/theater, and there's a large dirt playground, which is pretty standard for korean elementary schools. the school is also located on a larger campus that is home to a girls high school and an art college. the first floor of the main building is basically one long hallway with classrooms for the first and second graders off to either side. the teacher's room, oneenglish classroom, a small library, and the principle's office are also on the first floor. the second floor is laid out just like the first, it's home to the second through sixth grade classrooms. the third floor has the other english classroom, but the rest of it is one large, open cafeteria. there's also a basement with rooms for science, art, music, and phys -ed. each grade has two classes made up of about 36 students, so for example in third grade there's a 3-1 with 36 kids and a 3-2 with another 36 kids. so there's about 72 kids in each grade, with six grades altogether i guess that makes about 432 students. it's a private school, and apparently compared to public schools it's quite small.

there are four english teachers at the school, two korean and two foreign (american). one of the korean teachers, ally, is my partner, and we teach 1st grade, 3rd grade, and 5th grade. jay, the other american, is partners withhojung and they teach 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade. ally and i share the english room on the 1st floor, while jay and hojung are on the 3rd floor. i have a desk and a computer in the first floor english room, and that's where i do all my lesson plans and preparation. ally has a desk there as well, and she also teaches in that room. i, on the other hand, travel from room to room when i teach. each class is broken down into an A class and a B class with about 18 students in each group, so when for example ally is teaching 3-1 A,i'll be in the 3-1 room teaching the B class. with two classes in each grade, and each class split in half, and three grades to teach, that makes 12 groups of kids i teach. i see each group twice a week, so i have 24 classes in a week.

i get to work at 8:00a, and prepare until the first class starts at 8:50a. each class is forty minutes long with a ten minute break in between classes. during the break time the kids go out to the playground and manage to get all sweaty and dirty despite the fact that it's cold out and they only have ten minutes out there. i really laughed the first time i saw the sixth graders whose job it is to basically be hall monitors during the break time. they take their jobs really seriously and have signs they hold up in korean that say things like walk quietly or speak quietly. in korea people also stay to the left on stairs, so the hall monitors often stand at the top of the steps and use their signs to herd the kids coming up over to the left. almost every child also loves saying hi to me in the hallways, whether i teach them or not, so i end up saying hi now about a million times a day. the sound of me walking up the stairs is hi, hi, hi, hi, hi.... now i say things like what's happening? or hey dude! and then enjoy their puzzled little faces.

there are four periods in the morning, that last of which ends right at noon. after that it's an hour lunch break, and the food at the school is phenomenal. there's a woman whose entire job is to be the nutritionist for the school, she wears a white lab coat and as far as i can tell is responsible for amazingly delicious and healthy foods just right for growing boys like me. i'm sure i'll get lots of pictures of the food as the year goes by. i also don't have many pictures of the school yet since i didn't think it would be a good idea to whip out my camera and start shooting away when i should be teaching. so as time goes byi'm sure i'll get lots more pictures of the kids and the school. at 1:00p i teach one more class and by 1:40p my teaching for the day is done. i teach five classes a day from monday to thursday, and then on friday i just teach the four morning classes and then after lunch we have an english teachers' meeting. after 1:50p i usually prepare my lesson plans or whatever else i have to do until 3:00p and them i'm done. usually i'm home by 3:30p, which i don't have to tell you is quite nice.

to get to and from work i catch what they call a village bus, it's pretty much like the city buses only it's a little smaller and a little cheaper and it does a loop over a relatively small area, whereas city buses sometimes go all the way across town. because of the huge movie theater right next to my building, there's a stop right out front so i wait right in front of my building and then catch the bus. it loops around to stop at yonsei university and then comes back out to the main road i live on and goes out to where the intersection where you have to go left to get to my school. what the bus does at that intersection blows my mind. it makes a right turn, then a quick u-turn, then a left turn (so now it's going back the way it just came), then another u-turn, and then a left onto the street that leads to the school. don't ask my why, but as you can imagine the first time it happened i thought i made a mistake and caught the wrong bus. turned out it was just one of those unexplainable things, and now i'm used to it.

these were taken with my back to the school, so those other buildings are actually i think the art college straight away, and the high school to the right. lately i've been playing some basketball with my third grade students during the lunch break. it took a while getting used to the dirt field, but it's actually fine. the hoops are lowered, and all the kids kept yelling teacher, dunk shoot!. well, i'm out of shape so i tried it and couldn't quite make it. i mean, i can touch grab the rim, but it's another thing to get the ball in there. as you can see, the kids also have to wear uniforms, which especially the boys tend to get incredibly dirty during recess.

the first time i taught my 5-2 B class, on kid came into the room from the playground and gleefully announced that his name was dicaprio. i think he actually looks more like the korean jonathan taylor thomas. then a few days later i came across dicaprio and some classmates practicing some dance moves during lunch recess. so here's a video you can watch of them breaking it down, apparently in preparation for the sports day in may when i guess they'll perform it. with about 216 students, i don't know the girl on the left's name, but in front is yujin and dicaprio, he's wearing the light blue gym suit. in the back it's peter on the left and steve on the right.

dancing.avi (1.7 MB)

note: the video uses the xvid compression, if you don't have it and can't see the movie, you can get it and lots of other good codecs from the cccp (not the soviet union).