Marchy

There are a lot of things about Korea that confuse me, and one of them is the academic culture. I could write novels about it, but one thing that I know will strike my American friends and family as odd is that they go to school year round here! NO BREAKS. No 3 month summer vacation to spend swimming and sunbathing at the country club? Blasphemy. Instead, their semesters run from September to March, and March to September. In other words, we just started a new semester at school! We go two new kindergarten classes and the whole elementary schedule changed! I still teach about half of the same classes and students, but have picked up quite a few new ones. I'm only on Day 4 of the semester and it's already proving to be quite the challenge. I went from teaching the highest levels in the school (which I still teach!) to teaching a LOT of beginner classes. When I say beginner, I mean I've sang the ABC song so many times this week I've lost count. Anyone who knows me knows that patience is not one of my virtues, so these classes are absolute torture for me. The children are absolutely adorable and precious and I want to squeeze them, but teaching them is a huge challenge for me. That being said, I accept the challenge and am taking it as an opportunity to grow as a teacher. And play silly games.

My other major challenge lies in a class we'll call Purple Class. A week ago, they were a kindergarten class at SLP. But, they graduated which means they all go to regular elementary schools now (think private pre-school then public elementary). Because of the emphasis on academics, they also still attend private institutes in the afternoon: English institute, Taekwondo institute, Math institute, Jump Rope institute (yes, that's a real thing). You get the point. Well, all the Purple Class graduates come to SLP now as their afternoon English institute and guess who is their teacher? Teaching kids who went to SLP for kindergarten has its pros and cons. On one hand, their English is great, they already know me and the curriculum, and I already know their personalities. On the other hand is their personalities. They were hilarious and fun when I only taught them "science" for 50 minutes once a week. Now I see them for 1 hour, 3 days a week, teaching them full blown English rather than "blow up this balloon and rub it on your head". Those 3 hours are the hardest hours of my week. Disciplining them is extremely difficult. We've gotten all of our work done, but not without me raising my voice more times than I'd like to. I hate yelling, especially at children, especially at adorable children who I love. The problem is that I think they're hilarious. I'm a big kid at heart, so when someone makes a fart joke, I have to yell at them, but it's damn near impossible to yell at them without a smirk on my face. I think the hardest part about being a teacher is drawing the line between fun teacher/favorite teacher and stern disciplinarian. I definitely lean toward the fun teacher side, but I know how to discipline them when I need to. If only they knew how to listen...

All that being said (and I apologize for the boring-ness of it!), I had a few really great moments this week. I lost one of my favorite classes and was pretty bummed about it. The second day of new classes, one of my Korean co-teachers came to me and told me that Danny and Jennifer (from that favorite class) asked why I wasn't their teacher anymore and were very upset and wanted me back as their teacher. Melt my heart why don't you?! She also told me that Jennifer got very upset when she thought I had gone back to America already. Melting even more! The best part of my week though, was on the first day with Purple class when one of them asked "Molly Teacher, you will still teach us science right?". Bless his little heart. I felt so bad breaking the news to him that science was only for the kindergarten babies, but I promised that I'd show them some cool science stuff if they behave. Oh, did I not mention that all the kindergarten students think I'm a scientist? About that...