It's 7am.
Your cell phone turned alarm clock is blaring a weird multi-tone, diddy entitled "City of Mist." Your bed is unapologetically warm, lulling you back to sleep with all the grace a 5 foot electric heating pad can offer. You open your eyes again; it's 7:30. 7:45. 7:55. 8:00. Ok- it is no longer appropriate to stay in bed, even by your standards. You slip out of the warm, pink ruffle adorned sanctuary that is the princess bed, and into a pair of furry slippers, before spending the next ten minutes or so hastily brushing your teeth, running a flat iron through your hair (as it is transformed overnight into a mess of kinks, knots, and frizz), boiling a quick pot of water, and pulling together something that resembles a school appropriate outfit. As of late, said outfit consists of a dress with 2 pairs of tights, a sweater and a horribly clashing scarf, or the same sweater scarf set with a double layer, jeggings/legging combination. You root around to find a pair of SmartWool hiking socks (school induced frost bite? No thanks), pull them on, and grab your kopi and boiled egg to go, before heading out the door to begin the fifteen minute walk/daydream down the side of the highway. Despite your Merrel snow boots, you slip, slide, and trek through the back lots of restaurants, past a small frozen farm, and into the neighboring --dong, before reaching the gate of Banji Elementary.
You are awakened from your morning daydream by an abrupt, suddenly constant, flow of, "Hello Teacher!" " Hello." "Anyeong." " Hi Teacher!" "Emily Teacher!" and the occasional robotic, rapid Korean sentence that you have been told all students are trained to say when meeting a teacher, and translates to something along the lines of, "I will be a better student next time."
Assuming today is a normal day, you will take the elevator to the fourth floor, plop down in your office, and attempt to remember what grade you are about to teach and the lesson that you've prepared between one and five days prior. You will flip to the correct page of your government issues English Grade (X) text book and see what your favorite, awkward English speaking, cartoon friends have in store for the day. Likely, you will be reminded that, on Monday, you drew fat X's over two thirds of the government provided material and will set about double checking all of your replacement materials, before heading out the door to class.
The next 7 hours will generally fall into one of four scenarios:
3rd grade - You will spend passing periods dodging crazy children sprinting through the halls and punching each other, while screaming "HELLO, TEACHER!" In between you will teach five classes of 40, only slightly more subdued children. Said students will be persuaded, through your overwhelming displays of over excessive energy and theatrics, to speak, sing, and shout quasi-usefull English words and phrases, for which they will earn precious (yet entirely intangible) points on the black board.
4th Grade- You will spend passing periods dodging crazy children sprinting through the halls and punching each other, while screaming "HELLO, TEACHER!" You will attempt to teach and wildly improvise each of five classes, containing 40 children who sometimes seem to understand what you are saying, after a moderate amount of theatrics. Each class will host a few gems who seem determined to learn English, participate whenever asked, and police the remaining two thirds of the class who sole goal will seem to be ignoring everything you say, pretending not to have their English book or, my personal favorite, opening and closing their mouth without forming a single word (during listen and repeat exercises) and being generally shocked when you discover their clever ruse. You will spend a large portion of the class tapping a piece of chalk on the board, or teaching in a whisper to those paying attention, before the boys in the back of the class realize they will soon be in deep doodoo.
5th Grade- You will spend passing periods rejoicing in your ability to sit down, waiting in your very own English Village classroom, for the 40 crazy children, sprinting through the halls, punching each other, to plant themselves at the 6 pink tables before you. You will spend then next few hours teaching five, generally enjoyable classes, to students who, at least 50% of the time, understand what you are talking about. You will breeze through the text book materials, skipping the lamest of lame material, before completing a smattering of games and activities that generally engage most of the students. You'll grade a handful of vocabulary quizzes and, at the end of the day, feel content and relaxed.
6th Grade- You will spend passing periods waiting in your classroom, for the 40 crazy children sprinting through the halls, punching each other, to plant themselves at the 6 pink tables before you, at which point eighty percent of them will transform into the human equivalents of pet rocks. The other twenty percent will spend the next fifty minutes perfecting either the art of being amazing, wonderful, funny, curious, quasi English speaking students, OR finding out exactly how many pieces of paper they can tear the current chapter into and/or how many times they can hit their friend across the room with their pencil case, before Emily Teacher takes it away (Answer? One. Somehow they are always shocked.) After three out of five classes you will be content. The later two will leave you feeling like you just spent fifty minutes asking students to rebuild the Great Wall of China, translate Charles Dickens, or fight a war, rather than write a sentence or two, before watching a silly video and playing a game. Occasionally, you will leave the classroom generally baffled, after being told, for example, "Teacher, your legs... like ojingo!" You will spend the next 3 hours (or weeks) trying to figure out what "Your legs, like squid!" could possibly mean.
The last few hours of the school day will pass in a blur of cafeteria madness, after school class madness (both to be addressed at later date), lesson planning, chit chatting with fellow NETS, and some good old, mindless, internet browsing.
Next thing you know, you are daydreaming your way home, thinking about going to the gym and cooking some dinner. In a few hours you will crawl back into the princess bed, turn on your heat pad and get ready for round two in the am.
Well my friend, ignoring the fact that I began this post planning to discuss the difference between normal school hours and winter camp, you just survived your first day as an Elementary English NET in the ROK.
How did it feel?
Anyeong[hikheseyo].
에밀리
