Becoming a teacher: A Metamorphosis

Greetings from the Orient!

This week we have seminars on preparing lesson plans, acclimating to the teaching environment, relating with our Korean co-teachers, etc. There are people here who have been teachers for years in America, Canada, etc. There are people here who have taught overseas before, in China or Korea, etc. There are newly-graduated Education majors who have student-taught and have some classroom experience.

And then, there's me. No education classes. No professional teaching experience. Never had my own classroom (unless you count Sunday School).

This used to stress me out.

However, I'm beginning to see that all of this may be to my advantage. I don't have any expectations. My only concern is that perhaps, in some kind of sugar-induced craze (EVERYTHING HERE IS LOADED WITH SUGAR), my students might go berzerk and start stabbing each other. This is worst-case scenario, of course. Anything else is minor.

I won't have to test the kids (they're not tested on English, weirdly enough). I won't have to discipline the kids (that's my co-teacher's job). I have a text book. I have a website with over 1,000 powerpoint activities and games. I like children (may feel differently by the time I come back).

And so, I don't have to worry about fitting "my technique" or "my teaching style" into everything. And that's good, because I don't have either one of those things. They keep stressing that our main job is to have fun with the kids, and hopefully they'll retain something. That works. I can be a dancing monkey for 22 hours a week and not feel like I'm wasting my precious professional educator time. Because I'm not a professional educator. Nothing is beneath me. Kind of like being an intern.

My main goal is to survive without embarassing myself (amongst adults) too much, and to just enjoy being with these kids. Hopefully that's attainable :)

By the way, these people try to sneak fish into everything here. I have to be very suspicious about what I eat - the menus are only in Korean. I found a tentacle floating around in what I had judged to be vegetable soup yesterday. Sneaky.

Tomorrow we get to visit the National Korean Museum. I'm sure they'll have a kimchi exhibit, and you know I'm looking forward to it.

Au revoir,

Jess

Daily Menus, etc.

Here's a smattering of the daily menu offerings at the Hyundai Learning Center:

Breakfast:
-Rice
-Sliced hot dog stir fry
-Mystery meat sausage
-at least 2 kinds of kimchi (spicy cabbage/radishes/greens)
-Milk (1% or strawberry)
-White toast with butter and strawberry jelly (my saving grace)
-Coffee (instead of replacing the grounds every time they just pour more water in, so by the third round, you just have brown water)

Lunch:
-Rice
-Meat stir fry (either fish or pork or beef or combination)
-Mystery soup (one day we had miso, but that's all I've been able to identify)
-At least 2 kinds of kimchi
-Nori packets (dried seaweed)
-Yogurt drink (tastes like melted skittles)

Dinner:
-RICE
-Grilled or sliced meat/fish, sometimes omelet-like things
-Mystery soup
-Last night we had potatoes
-At least 2 kinds of kimchi
-Yogurt drink

As I've said in the past, I would like to try dog while I'm here...but judging by what I've eaten so far, I may have already eaten it and just not known :)

Yesterday I went to church and it was really neat to worship in a different country. We went to an English speaking service and the worship was so...genuine. Everyone seemed so sincere. It was a breath of fresh air. Hil and I decided we want to start a Bible study, and there are a fair amount of other Christians here, so we might meet up with them. There's one really nice couple, Nate and Jessica, who seem really interested.

Yesterday we also had a traditional Korean dance lesson. It was like 3 hours of aerobics. Very interesting, though...the guy who was teaching us is a very famous traditional dancer here. He was pretty amusing.

Well, I have a seminar about Korean culture in half an hour, so I better go.

Until next time,

Jess

I'm here!!

This post is coming to you from halfway around the world! That's right - I am typing this blog while sitting in the Hyundai Learning Center south of Seoul, So. Korea. By the way, everything here is named either "Hyundai", "Samsung", "LG", etc. You can certainly tell who has the money here.

We (Hilary and I) left from O'Hare at 1 PM on Thursday. We were searched thoroughly they said because we had one-way tickets. I told Hil that it was because she looked suspicious. After it was determined that we were not terrorists, we were allowed to board the plane. It was rather large, though about half of the total space was taken up by first and Prestige classes who got those chairs that lie flat when you push a button. Very nice. It was a 13 hour flight and it certainly felt like it. I think I slept for about 2 hours total. We each had a small tv in the back of the seat in front of us and had probably 40 movies to choose from. Unfortunately, I don't really have the attention span to sit through a whole movie, but I did manage to finish Meet the Robinsons, probably because it was funny and colorful.

We landed in Seoul at 5PM their time on the following day (Friday). The airport was NICE, very modern. We found some other teachers who were on our flight and stuck with them until we found the meeting place. We then got on a bus for a 2 hour ride to the Hyundai Learning Center.

The Learning Center is kind of like a corporate retreat center with nice dorm-style accomodations. There's a gym, an internet lounge (where I am currently), a convenience store, etc. The dorms are attached to the lecture building where we have classes/meetings. I share a room with a Kiwi (a girl from New Zealand) and she's very nice. Her name is Leigh and she's taught in Korea twice before, and then she taught in China for 2 years. I love her accent.

Some things I have noticed already:
-The beds are very small and very hard, and apparently they don't believe in sheets here
-People are very nice and I've already learned how to say hello ("annyong haseyo")
-Most of the other teachers are American, but there are some Canadiens, some Brits and a Kiwi
-Everything in the convenience store is loaded with sugar - I don't know how these people aren't all diabetic
-By the time I leave, I will have eaten a significant quantity of rice. Extremely significant.
-When people here sweat, they only sweat from their heads. Its the weirdest thing I've ever seen. They say its nearly impossible to buy deodorant here because they just don't need it (that's why I brought 3 with me)
-There are a ton of churches, and all are designated by a red neon cross on their steeples
-Kimchi (spicy cabbage), though normally delicious when served cold, should never, EVER be served warm. I had warm kimchi yesterday for lunch and it was like eating sauerkraut. YUCK.
-Metal chopsticks are difficult to use when you've been using wood ones your whole life
-The AC is either on or its not, so its either wickedly freezing or stiflingly sweltering, there's really no middle ground.
-I really like watching the BBC, even though they re-run the same 5 stories over and over

I've been mentally preparing myself to hate it here (because one always plans for the worst case scenario) but so far its been really nice. I'm actually excited (GASP) about teaching in this school system (its very interesting and progressive). Here's the website: http://www.sen.go.kr/HTML/eng/index.html

I would say that I'm adjusting fairly well and that I am not too anxious about my job or living here. I was not prepared to feel this way...I don't quite trust it yet.

Well, its 5 AM here (thank you, jet lag) so I should probably be getting on my merry way. Today is church followed by learning how to play with traditional Korean instruments. Sounds interesting. :)

Hope you all are having a good Saturday - Sunday is quite nice.

Sending you love from across the International Dateline (which is not a "1-800" number :),

Jess