Whoops it’s been a VERY long time since I last blogged. I guess you could say I took my summer holidays from blogging for a bit. If you read my last blog, you can probably guess I was over the moon at the referendum result, where “Yes” won by a landslide. So proud of the people of Ireland right now.
Anyway, I realise that I haven’t written very much about my actual job, the place where I spend most of my time in South Korea and my reason for being here in the first place. Recent events in my personal life have made me realise just how much happiness my jobs brings me. So without further ado, here is a little bit about my working life.
I get up in the morning and have to be in work by 8:30. This is pretty standard for public schools. Hagwons, or after school/private tuition centres, usually start later. For me, classes run from 9-2:40 with an hour’s lunch break, but I’m usually finished by lunchtime at 1. I have anywhere between 3-5 classes a day, each lasting 40 minutes and there is a 10 minute break between every class. I think having that little breathing room between classes makes a world of difference, for both kids and teachers. I teach in an elementary school, where kids start learning English at age 9 (third grade). I teach third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades, and my favourite are the oldest kids by a mile. For some reason it just happens to be a year full of lovely kids.
Whenever I’m not teaching, I’m usually sitting in the English office planning lessons, or procrastinating on Buzzfeed Food. I finish work at 4:30 every day.
Something I really appreciate are the school lunches- they’re so good! It’s generally kimchi, rice and soup plus something else, but they always manage to mix it up and keep it from getting boring (I guess it doesn’t hurt that there are 200 different varieties of kimchi!) I’ve met some people who are vegetarian or who can’t adjust to the kind of food their school serves, and that sounds awful. For me food plays such a big part of my enjoyment of life. I actually found Korean food was a little bit of an acquired taste, but after a couple of months I couldn’t imagine not eating kimchi every day.
One thing I’m pretty lucky with is that I plan one lesson each week for each of my four different grades, and then I teach that lesson five or six times. This is because my school is quite big, so each grade is divided into five or six different classes. It’s great because by the time I’m teaching my last class I’ve ironed out all the kinks that came up in my first class, and it’s much more exhausting planning four or five lessons a day and teaching them only once (which is what many teachers in hagwons and smaller schools have to do).
So, to sum up, the perks of my job are-
The hours. Yes, I do have to get up early- but I’m out the door at 4:30. I’m able to go to bed and get up at normal hours and can enjoy doing things like zumba and meeting my friends in the evening.
The food. I’m so lucky with my school’s cafeteria!
The type of work. I plan one lesson and can reuse that lesson five or six times, and have much more free time at work than I’m used to.
The kids. At first I thought this would be a fairly obvious point- but anyone who has worked with kids knows that they can be little shits. They really absolutely can. I’m lucky to work with kids under 12 (I’m a huge dork so I feel my personality works with that age) and the vast majority of them are wonderful. There’s always someone who makes me laugh every day, and this job is the reason why I’m considering with kids in the future.
Protection. Because my job is a government one, my contract has been written by the regional Office of Education, and as such offers me a higher level of protection than a typical hagwon, which is basically a business venture. Most of the horror stories I’ve heard about mistreatment of native English teachers in Korea comes from these hagwons. However, if my boss ever tried to break contract and screw me over, I could ring up the Education Office straight away.
Last but not least, my 5-10-minute commute. On foot.
And the downsides? For me personally there are very few- but I am the only native English speaker in my school. There are many lovely staff members working there, but if it weren’t for one particular Korean English teacher with whom I’ve become very good friends, I would be quite lonely. This is especially true when I go to teacher events, like staff dinners. It usually involves me sitting listening to Korean being spoken for a long time, and my Korean is okay, but not good enough yet to fully follow the conversation or contribute much to it. There are other things I dislike in work, but these I’ll address properly in another blog.