First day

My first day of school went really well. I got up around 7:15 and arrived at my school around 8:40. At 9 we had an opening ceremony in honor of the new teachers and the new principle. We had to say hello to all of the kids. When it was my turn the kids started to giggle. I was warned that the kids might react a little differently around me because I'm the only white person in the whole school. The kids have have never had an english native speaking teacher before so this is understandable. There are 5 new teachers including myself and Matt from Maryland. We are the only native speaking teachers. Matt does the after-school program and I teach the day program. There are about 24 students in each class and 2 classes per grade. The students start learning english in the third grade which means that I will have to teach the third graders very basic conversational english, like "Hello", "How are you?", etc...


We didn't teach any classes on the first day. We spent the majority of the day cleaning up the english classroom and setting it up. The classroom was relatively clean except for the odd pile of books on the floor. In the afternoon I went to the Busan National Bank just down the street and opened up my bank account. Mr. Choi, the gym teacher at the school helped me open it up. Their banking system is very similar to ours at home.

Now that I have a bank account I have to get my Medical Examination then my Alien Registration Card. Once I do that I can get internet in my apartment and apply for my Health Insurance card. It will take another week or so before I have internet. Oh well, one thing at a time.


It's now my second day at school and today I will be shadowing Mr. Lee, my official co-teacher. There are no english classes today. English classes are on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; about 4 classes a day, 40 minutes each. At the moment I have a very light schedule. The total hours that I'm working is about 12 hours. I'm supposed to be teaching 22 hours a week. Mr. Lee said that I might be teaching the teachers of the school as well as the students to supplement the missing 10 hours of work.

I've made a few lesson plans already. At the first class I'm going to introduce myself to the kids, tell them where I'm from, how old I am and a little bit about myself. I want to get to know the kids and find out what level they are at so I'm going to get them all to make nametags and draw a picture of themselves. In order to make this a conversational activity, each student must pair up and describe their partner. Then the partner draws him or herself according to his or her partner's description. As they do this I'm going to walk around the classroom to assess how they are doing.


Many of the kids are at different levels. I met one student in grade 6 who can fluently speak english. He said that he lived in London for 4 years. It's really cute because he spoke to me with a little British accent. Very funny.

Anyway, class is starting soon. Gotta run.