Saturday, March 12, 2005

The school is very nice and I'm really enjoying the teaching. Everyone here is friendly and helpful and I feel as if I've fitted in straight away.

One of the added benefits of teaching children rather than adults in Korea are the hours. Teaching adults you invariably have to start teaching at some horrendous hour such as seven in the morning for a couple of hours and then again in the afternoon or early evening until nine or ten at night. Something I don't think my body was prepared to withstand.

My timetimetable is fortunately okay and lessons are from 10.00 until 6.30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 10.00 until 3.00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, although I do I to put in a few more hours than this with lesson planning, reports and marking.

In the morning I'm teaching kindergarten between the ages of four and six and in the afternoon I'm teaching children who are a little bit older and are at school.

Teaching kindergarten is great fun although it is extremely exhausting. In fact some of the time it's a little bit like 'Lord of the Flies'. Fortunately no fat children have been speared so far(touch wood).

I'm enjoying it greatly and lots of the children love it when I pretend to be a lion or tiger and then chase them around the room. In fact I'm often greeted with cries of 'lion, lion!' or 'tiger, tiger!' from many of the children whenever they see me, although I am gradually running out of new animals to impersonate.

The kids are lovely even when they try to eat glue in my art class. Telling them to stop just encourages the whole class to do it. There have been some escapees in some of my lessons from the younger students, although I do make sure I get to the door first now. I have considered tying the students to their chairs with rope or maybe using straitjackets, though I've got a feeling this would probably upset the parents.

All the classrooms are named after Cartoon Network characters and include Dexter, Johnny Bravo and the Power Puff Girls(Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup).

This is either a clever way of bringing the children into learning and allowing them to relate more to their environment or it is an extremely cynical attempt by media giant Time Warner to control the minds of the nations youth in it's continuing bid for world media domination.

For all the photos click here.

0 comments: