First Day of School

A gallery of rogues
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How scary. My last first day of school was way back when, I still wore knee high socks and Adam and the Ants were No1 in the charts....

On the Sunday morning I'd moved into the apartment and unpacked. Didn't take very long. What had seemed like an awful lot of stuff when I was trying to fit it all into a backpack didn't spread itself around my new room very well. I'd left some stuff, the most summery vests and sandals, behind in Melbourne yet, what I had brought seemed really inadequate for the icy cold Korean winter. Help! In the afternoon I took a walk into the centre of town to get my bearings and check out where the school was. Its a brisk 20 minute walk from Sam-Jin and the surrounding scenery looked a little bleak at best. I did keep reminding myself that it was winter and therefore not expected to be pretty but even so it wasn't too inspiring.

The kids were very curious about where I'd come from (and where the last teacher had gone)

My classroom
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I'd briefly met the teacher I was replacing and she'd promised me she'd left lots of notes. However having had a look in my classroom the "notes" consisted of a list of text books they'd been using and what page they were up to. Despite this, on the Monday morning I was surprisingly calm. Perhaps it was because of this and perhaps it was also that Young-Hun, the school director, had been very laid-back about what I was expected to teach. I decided then that all I could really do was spend a few days assessing the classes and take it from there.

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I have the younger spectrum of pupils, compared to Rachel and her middle school to adult classes. My classes range from early kindergartners (3years old) to elementary school students (11-12yrs old). On that first Monday I had a 10am class of the "elite" kindergarten in my classroom at the hagwon, then over to the kindergarten itself for 20-minute lessons in four of the younger kindy classes. A break for lunch and then some breathing, relaxing, assessing time before launching into my classes proper: 50-minute lessons at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm & 5pm of school children. We also have contracts with some local companies and for these we go out to their premises. I have one company to teach and for my last lesson of the day Young-Hun drove me out there for 6.30pm. More of this to come later.

I have my own whiteboard!
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The kids were very curious about where I'd come from (and where the last teacher had gone) but they were enormously friendly. I have a register book and there was lots of hilarity as I pronounced all of their names completely incorrectly. We spent the first lesson making a "rogues gallery" for the wall, of everyone in each class so I got to find out their likes and dislikes, how many brothers and sisters they had and where they all lived. Without any real idea of how I was going to organise my lessons and classes I decided not to give them or me any stress on Day 1... I think it was amazingly to their credit that they accepted me straight away and accepted that in order to communicate with me in class they were to use English. I dread to think how much horror a new teacher could be put through if they put their minds to it..I have the definite disadvantage in not understanding what they say in Korean; yet I, on the other hand, am the better bluffer, so the longer I play my hand, the longer I can keep control... ;-)

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So, with all my classes finally over, I headed back to Sam-Jin and a well earned glass of red wine to reflect on the day. I was still surprisingly calm and had started to gain a new confidence in myself that I might just be able to do this after all....