This One Time, At English Camp…

I recently completed my first winter English camp as a teacher. At previous schools that I’ve worked at, there was no difference at all between the programs during school time and holiday time. I decided to teach at a different school for a two-week period to bolster Kris and my cash flow a little at the start of the year. I was expecting two weeks of drudgery, with seven-hour days filled with monotonous grinding through workbooks with a paycheck at the end. I was instead greeted with a friendly work environment, a host of (largely) charming students, and a fresh slice of a different teaching style.

During my interviewing for the position, I met all of the teaching staff at the school, including the other teachers that would be working the camp and the head of the English program at the school, including my eventual co-teacher. I did not pay much attention, as I was used to simply working in my own classroom with little interaction with the other teachers. As the camp wore on, I found myself bonding more and more with the other teachers. At the beginning and end of every day, all of the teachers doing the camp sat together in a staff room for half an hour, killing the required time before we could teach and go home respectively. I hadn’t taught in a workplace where there was a communal space since Kris and my first year, and I realized how much I missed spaces like it, particularly if the co-workers were engaging. It was comforting to sit and make small talk, discuss the plans for the day, or even just sit and people-watch.

After the morning meeting, we would all head to our respective classrooms and teach our classes. Each class was assigned two units of a special textbook to teach, with one unit being completed each day, complete with a craft matching the content of that unit. Students would rotate between classes every two days, meaning that if a class was particularly disruptive, you wouldn’t have to deal with them for more than two days before they moved on. It did also mean that the gem classes filled with ideal students were also only fleeting. By the time the camp ended, my co-teacher and I had taught the same content and made the same crafts five times. What started out as a tentative, experimental quest to try complete everything became a well-oiled machine after the first week.

This was largely due to the fact that my co-teacher was incredible. While I was expecting to do the majority of the work, I found that it had already been done for me. She had prepared the crafts, planned the lessons, made the presentations, and even printed out and organized all of the potential homework and worksheets. When she was in the class, she did most of the teaching. I would fill in to provide pronunciation, explain a particularly complex concept, or to allow her to leave the classroom to sort out some issue with the camp in general. I was in awe of the respect that the kids had for her, and her control of the classroom environment. I learned a host of techniques from her. It was a pleasure to work with her, and the highlight of the camp for me. Were she not leaving the school in March, I would be more tempted to switch jobs to work at the school full-time.

That is not to say that the school did not offer the opportunity to me. From the first interview for the camp, the school expressed interest in hiring me, offering me a position multiple times throughout the camp. By the time the camp dinner rolled around after our penultimate day, it had become a drinking game – myself and a colleague secretly finishing our drinks each time the head of the English program offered me a job. It was an unexpectedly effective game, particularly when everyone else figured out the one simple rule, and proceeded to set us up for regular drinking.

On my last day at the camp, nursing a slightly wonky gait and hazy memory from the night before, I said farewell to my homeroom class with more emotion than I was expecting. When I told the kids that I would be leaving and not coming back, they surprised me by rushing to hug me, say goodbye, and share how much they would miss me. I had not had such a farewell in a long time, and I was touched. I was expecting nothing more than a grind to a paycheck, and had instead grown as a teacher, made new friends, and apparently impacted a group of children. Not a bad way to start 2019.

Week One, Take Three

Eight days ago, I started my new contract in Seoul, after the chaos that was packing up our Wonju house and leaving for the big city. Some of the few things that I knew about the job included that I would be teaching five different levels of kids for at most five hours per day, and that I would have a Korean teacher to assist me for the first time. Although this meant many more working hours per week than 2016, it was a far better arrangement (time-wise, at least), than the nine-hour-per-day academy job I held in 2015. I didn’t know what the five different levels would mean – would they range from never-exposed-to-English-before to virtually fluent? I was also wary of the effect of a Korean co-teacher on the class – would they be helpful and make my life easier, or were they simply a set of eyes and ears that the school would use to keep tabs on me? In the first week, my work would go from the chaotic fog of the unknown into the comfortable familiarity of another year of teaching kids in Korea.

The first aspect of my work that I explored was the commute. Every day, I have a painless, four-subway-stop trip from our home, with a brief walk from the station to the school. Leaving the door of our apartment to reaching my classroom takes only thirty minutes – a brief commute for a city as vast as Seoul.

Upon reaching my class, I met my co-teacher. She is a lovely lady who is very capable at communicating in English. I was worried that I would constantly be piecing together what the school wanted to me, but my co-teacher instantly filled me in on the exact situation. I was relieved. The only unfortunate part is that I do not have her in my class for the whole day.

The kids came next, in five waves. Each class was more advanced than the last, although not by as much as I was hoping. Level 1 kids have had little to no exposure to English, whilst Level 5 kids are on about the same level as the mid-tier children I taught last year. My dreams of a purely conversational class where I would be exploring complex issues and fiddling with grammatical minutiae were dashed. At least they were all relatively well-behaved. The only times that I struggled were during the Level 1 and Level 2 classes. My co-teacher is not present in these classes, and they were not able to understand most of my instructions, and this frustrated both the children and myself. Of all of the levels, I’d rather have a co-teacher in lower levels (at least for the beginning), but we can’t always get what we want.

Despite some small niggles, I can see myself being comfortable at the new school. The first week was mostly spent giving children books, learning names, and playing games. Only towards the end of last week did we actually start to do any book work. Once that started, the teaching rhythm came easily. Another year, here I come!

The Winds of Change Blow Again

When Kris and I returned to Korea, we were simply expecting to have a relatively quiet couple of weeks, with Kris finishing off the last few weeks of her old school year and myself quietly waiting to start a full-time position at the academy that I was working at. All we were planning on doing was coasting until the new school year, where Kris would resume her position at her old school and I would move from part-time to full-time. That was the plan. That was not at all what happened.

In the days following our arrival, Kris did some serious thinking about her job at the time. She considered all of the extra hours and effort that she put in to her work, with no notice from the school. She was feeling unappreciated and undervalued. She expressed this to her liaison to the school, and even wrote and signed a letter saying that if the school continued to treat her merely as a resource, she would not re-sign her contract. The school accepted this decision. Kris was out of a job, and we thrust ourselves into the job market once more.

After frantically ravaging Facebook’s various Korean job boards and groups for a few days, a friend connected us with an employer that would offer Kristen shorter hours for higher pay than she received last year. She jumped at the opportunity. This meant that we were moving from Wonju to Seoul, Korea’s capital and largest city. As for myself, I followed a couple of leads towards a communications company where I might have a chance to do editing or writing work. Sadly, those opportunities didn’t work out. I was disappointed, but soldiered on. I decided to work with the same company that Kristen had signed on to. The shorter hours would mean that I would still have time to write and pursue my hobbies, while retaining a full-time paycheck and a visa.

Once our jobs were settled, we hunted for houses, settling on a slightly expensive but very modern and wonderful apartment. We are now two minutes away from two subway lines, with a 10-minute walk to a third. There is even a gym in the building, to help me work off the weight I put on eating all of the food in South Africa.

A slow running down of the clock may have turned into a panicked search for new opportunities, but Kris and I are optimistic about the change. It will be an experience to live in Seoul, and hopefully our positions work out for us. We start our contracts shortly, so we will soon see whether we jumped out of a cozy nest into the lion’s den, or whether we simply upgraded into a job that is better for both of us.