안녕하세요! Cheers
from Changwon.
Since my last update, I’ve:
-->Stumbled through just under 80
hours teaching English
-->Become local locomotion savvy
between buses, bikeshares, and a new whip
-->Shot my weekend at a sleepover
SAT composition retreat
-->Blown minds with my mad chop-stick skills
Let’s
start with my contractual duties – teaching English.
During
the course of my senior year, you may have been (un)lucky enough to hear me
share my post grad plans. Better
captured as a cluster of buzzwords, I’ve been telling friends, admission
guests, and interviewers that I hope to eventually peruse an MBA and/or and MEM
(masters in environmental management) with the dream career of corporate
sustainability consulting. Those brave
and curious enough to wave away this lofty cloud of progressive jargon (or
pressed me before I was obliged as a
senior to have an impressive elevator speech prepared about my future) might
know that I’ve always considered teaching high school a potential career
option. I’d daydreamt of teaching
sociology, photography, and environmental science at a small high school,
shoving the prospect in my mind for something trendier and more
prestigious.
I
caught myself juxtaposing this fantasy with my starkly different reality –
teaching a different subject in a different country to very different students. I teach between 1- 6 classes, Monday-Friday
at Changwon Science High School. There are 174 students who spend M-F studying
and living at the school, often getting around 5-6 hours of sleep a night. Ten 50 minute periods constitute the bulk of
my class load, eight classes divided among 160 first and second year students,
another two classes divided among the small senior class of 14. Then there’s a daily conversation class (haha
sorry lunch “hour”), two English professor classes, and one class for
non-English professors. The change in
between is captured by lesson planning, private tutoring a student who’d lived
for 4 years in Chicago, preparing students for international science
competitions (I’ve got two in Italy this week!), and proofreading tests and
magazine articles. My apologies for all
the numbers – osmosis of the omnipresent STEM mindset is taking place.
Aptly
named, the STEM focus at Changwon Science
High School means English is at the bottom of everyone’s totem pole. The
slant for science and insignificant role of English has a drastic effect on my
role as the native language teacher.
The
Positives:
·
(near) free reign over my
curriculum – I’m teaching a semester long course on improving levels of
happiness specifically tailored for HS students in Korea!
·
I’m textbook free.
·
There’s little institutional
pressure to achieve specific grammatical ELRs.
·
A longer winter break – Who
would want an ENGLISH winter camp at
a science high school?!
The Negatives:
·
Mixed
levels. English classes are determined
by age, not ability – I have one table where a student who lived in Canada for
two years sits across the student who routinely yells at me, “TEACHER I LOVE
YOU….BUT TEACHER I CAN’T ENGLISH”
·
English
class is seen as a break from their otherwise science-packed schedule. This
affects everything from motivation to sleeping in class.
·
Requests
for supplies, testing days off, etc. are heard last from the English
department.
·
Tl;dr – English serves a novel role for most
everyone besides the English teachers.
Everything from classroom management to the overarching benefit (or
lack thereof) I bring to the students is specifically
tailored to the unusual scholastic situation of my 174 future science
leaders. It’s clear that I might never
grasp the dedication and pressure Korean students (and certainly those on
science tracks) have to study, I’m slowly identifying the clues. Some are more obvious than others. During the first week, co teacher and were
discussing health trends in Korea and the US.
I offered my thoughts on “standing desk” trend in the US – something to
increase blood flow and calories burned.
I was later led to the corridor of standing desks outside the study hall
where students who fall asleep while studying are instructed to stand and
continue working past 1am. One English
teacher in her late 40s has a head salted with grey hair. So does the boy in the front row of my
Thursday morning class. I’m often torn
between making sure each student speaks up alone at least once per class and making
sure the students have a mental break – a moment to focus on sleep or their
emotions rather than the homework they try to sneak beneath their
journals.
In order to better grasp the degree and nature of the educational
pressures my students face, I know that I’ll have to develop a better
understanding of what happens in classrooms other
than my own. How do other teachers
behave, and how do they shape the lives of their students? To explore this question, I’ve adopted a “Yes
Man” persona. “Want to play volleyball weekly with the other
teachers?” “How about spending the
weekend making SAT questions for the upcoming practice test?” “I think it would
be a good idea to get to know the other teachers over soju and beer after
class.” Yes! Sure! 내!
Understanding I’m underqualified to assess the pedagogical efficacy
of the Korean Educational system – let alone become an agent in it – I jumped
at the opportunity to serve as the native
English reviewer for the Gyeongsangnam Province practice SAT conference. The two-day event was held at Royal Hotel in
Bugok 부곡 – a former vacation destination famous for natural hot
springs. While initial investment in the town led to the construction of dozens
of motels, developers overestimated the town’s potential popularity. The Bugok hotel infrastructure reflected a
boom frozen decades ago. Given the town’s
history, inferable financial struggles, and relative isolation, the location
was perfect to house the influx of test-prepping teachers.
The
13 hour English section preparation that took place Saturday was simply
fascinating. Teachers are only allowed
to draw passages from a nationalized “Educational Broadcasting System” (EBS)
textbook. The theory behind publishing
the material that 70% of the test would be composed of ahead of time is to
alleviate the financial burden on families to send their children to
afterschool tutoring in English. Of
course, I would argue that students would then focus on memorization rather than
comprehension, and the actual goals for testing are brought into question. After spending the morning reviewing selected
passages and corresponding test questions that teachers had previously
prepared, the group of ten or so English teachers gathered together to express
their concerns and critiques. I had too
many to count. While I only had
stylistic critiques on some passages, other passages were painful and downright
confusing to read. Riddled with subject-verb
disagreements and unnecessary gerunds, trudging through such erroneous passages
was in itself a trial in skimming for contextualization.
With the test bleeding from my edits, I joined the circle of
teachers to discuss the minefield.
Although we were all taught English, the meeting was held in
Korean. After five minutes, I was asked
to give my opinion for the first question.
I delivered my diagnosis – One subject verb agreement, an awkward
phrase, and a run on sentence. The group paused, then moved to the next
question. Misuse of a proposition, a
missing article, and another run on.
Another pause. “James, I’m sorry
to tell you this, but we are only here to discuss if the answers make sense,” a
veteran in the program smiled politely.
Almost daily, this was the kind of culture shock I encountered that is
almost impossible to prepare for. It’s
not about homesickness or adjusting to odorous cuisine, but about more ancient
values that seep into more modern systems that go unnoticed until they’re
experienced. One teacher jokingly called
the EBS textbook “the bible” – “it’s a sin to edit it,” the group chuckled. Out of 45 questions, we did end up making a
handful of integral edits to the EBS text in addition to the test
questions. I learned that to change the
text is viewed as insulting to someone higher up. Even in this professional setting – where the
quality of the work produced would directly impact thousands of students – the
unofficial priority was to help save face.
By the end of the conference, I stood my ground on a few irreconcilable passages
and do believe the team helped create a test that was passable (in both senses
of the word). I never would have
anticipated, however, how large a role culture would play in the process.
~~~~~
Outside of the classroom, I’m learning more about Korean culture by
stumbling through it. Yesterday I
presented gifts wrapped in towels in celebration of Chuseok (추석) and later but the head off a fried “money fish”
while out drinking with my host father.
I have the choice of goldenrod yellow water infused with barley or
self-boiled from my lil’ electric kettle as my choices for potable water in the
house. I’ve become a NUBIJA bikeshare
regular and am constantly in denial of the fact that that I’m juuuuust a little
too tall for the highest seatpoast setting.
My life is at the same time beautifully straightforward and wholly
complicated. I’m finding success in my
contractual teaching duties but am required to use a significant degree of
brainpower locate
and purchase some purell, tape, and white out (the lifeblood and currency of my
school.)
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