My Schools

I suppose it is time to say a little something about where I work, so here is the first in a series of posts about my schools.

I am placed at two elementary schools, Kama and Tosan. Both schools are named after the tiny towns they serve. The two schools are less than ten minutes apart by car, and each school educates less than 50 students. The biggest class I have at either school is 11 students.

I spend Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at Kama where I am the main English teacher in 12 classes. Fortunately the homeroom teacher is required to co-teach with me. The homeroom teacher helps manage behavior, they translate the harder grammatical points, and they co-lead the games I plan. Monday and Friday I spend at Tosan where there is a full time English teacher. At Tosan, I am more of a classroom assistant than a teacher. I don't have to plan anything; I just show up and make sure the kids are participating. Every day I am free to plan from 2pm to 5pm.

It would be great if teachers in the United States had three hours of planning each day. At the beginning I needed every bit of this planning time, and then some for a mere 12 classes. For the first two months, I came to Kama nearly two hours early. This extra time was really necessary for organizing my classroom and being prepared for lessons. Now I'm a full month ahead in my planning, and I come in later.

My Korean co-teachers don't have as much planning time as I have either because they do much of the paperwork necessary for running a school. Since there are only 6 main teachers in each of my tiny schools, they have a much greater percentage of the paperwork than a teacher would have at a bigger school. All teachers want to be in a bigger city with bigger schools and less paperwork. Therefore the ministry of education requires each teacher to take turns working extra hard in small rural locations.