6:30 a.m.: My alarm goes off early in the morning. I wake up and walk to the kitchen to make instant coffee. The apartment is quiet because everyone in my host family is still asleep. I savor the opportunity to have a slow, calm morning. Then, I get dressed and ready for the day.
9:15 a.m.: As I walk outside of my apartment complex in Seocheon, I feel the crisp fall air against my face. I walk out of the parking lot and cross the street to wait at my bus stop for 15 minutes. I may be a bit early, but I missed the bus a couple of times during my first few weeks here, and I do NOT want to repeat that experience.
9:36 a.m.: My bus comes to the stop. As usual, there are only ahjummas and ahjussis (older men and women) on my bus. I scan my T-Money card as I get on the bus. After making a quick trip to the train station, my bus brings me right to my school in about 5 minutes.
9:47 a.m.: I arrive at school and walk across the dirt field to get to the building. There are usually students outside for gym or tending to the grounds around the school when I arrive so I shout, “GOOD MORNING!!!” to anyone within earshot. I walk to my office on the second floor and get ready for the day. I insa (bow and say hello) to every teacher I pass on my way to my office, which happens to also be the nurse’s room.
11:00 a.m.: My first class of the day is the second grade (the equivalent to juniors in high school). I get my laptop and other materials for class together and cross the hall to their classroom. At my school, the teachers go to the students instead of the students switching classrooms. I slam open the sliding door and yell, “Good morning class!!! How are you??” This usually earns some “I’m so tired!” responses, but some students hype up to match my energy. I am doing a lesson on elections and voting since the mid-term elections are this week in America. We talk about political parties and the power of the vote. After we learn new vocabulary, the students design a political party with their own platforms for a class election by making campaign posters. Here is some of their work.
12:35 p.m.: After I finish class, I head back to my office to do a little bit of lesson adjusting. I usually change my lesson after each time that I teach it to make it better. At 12:35, however, the teacher all head to the lunch room to eat before the students eat at 12:50. Lunch is really good at my school. Today we have rice, soup, kimchi, spicy meat, pineapple, and mixed veggies. Honestly, it’s 10x better than school lunches at home.
1:18 p.m.: I head to the outside classroom to teach my lunch class. This is small group of students that voluntarily come and practice their English for 20 minutes. We usually play games that focus on starting conversations. Today, we played Spoons, the card game, and the loser had to say a tongue twister in English.
1:40 p.m.: My second class of the day is the other class in the second grade. This class is much smaller, so I am able to cover a lot of ground during this time.
2:30 p.m.: I am done with my formal classes for the day. Now, I must do the most challenging part of my job: lesson planning. The only experience I have with making lessons is making presentations for clubs at TCU or church Bible studies, so I find making up lessons very challenging. I want to balance all of the elements of a good lesson while also integrating games that makes learning English fun. I don’t have a textbook for my class, so my lessons are pretty much anything I want them to be. Also, my class is not graded, so I am able to play games a lot. It also took me a while to figure out what my kids like to do. Interestingly, my kids tend to like no-tech games better than PPT games, which is all I tried in the beginning. Now, I try to include some sort of game into every lesson I teach.
4:20 p.m.: At the end of every school day, the students clean the school for about 20-30 minutes. Each student is assigned a certain area to clean. Students take out the trash, wipe down tables and desks, sweep and mop the floors, and organize their classrooms. I LOVE this cultural tradition in Korean schools. I think it makes the students appreciate their schools and respect the janitorial staff more.
5:00 p.m.: After cleaning time is over, I head to the art room to teach my club class. These classes are also voluntary, and therefore extremely small, classes. However, my moments here are some of my favorite at this school. I really get to know the students, and we can do a lot of activities that I can’t do in a class of 20 rowdy students. Today’s club lesson is on giving advice, and we made fortune tellers out of paper to use the English phrases we learned.
6:02 p.m.: Finally, the day is over! I walk across the dirt field to my bus stop, passing the ever-present game of soccer happening on the field. A few teachers almost always join in the soccer game as well. I wave goodbye as I wait at the bus stop outside of my school (Side note: there are two HUGE spiders that live there. This is a very stressful time of the day). I catch the bus back to Seocheon.
6:14 p.m.: On a good day, like today, I go work out after school. My apartment complex has a free gym for its residents, which is awesome. It’s not very big or fancy, but it gives me a place to run, bike, and do some ab work. I don’t always work out, but it always makes me feel like my life is together when I do.
7:30 p.m.: I get home, and my host mom tells me it’s time for dinner. I sit at the table with my host siblings and eat kimchi stew, rice, seaweed, quail eggs, bean sprouts, and tofu for dinner. The meal is served in several small dishes in the middle of the table, and we use our rice bowls as plates for our food.
8:13 p.m.: After dinner, I’m usually exhausted. I watch Netflix and put on a face mask to decompress from the day. Once or twice, I fell asleep on the family sofa and woke up in the middle of the night to find a blanket over me, which is so sweet of my host fam. Tonight, though, I make sure that I get ready and go to bed before that can happen.
10:00 p.m.: I tell my host family goodnight, and head to bed. I’ve got to get some rest, so I can do it all again tomorrow.
Comments