Thursday, May 31, 2007

Teaching at Plus Academy

We've posted about most of our main Korean experiences, but not much on the day-to-day life of living out here. Today that changes! Prepare yourself for some excitement.

We have to be at school at 2:30 every day to prepare our daily lessons. Each class usually sees 3 teachers each day - a foreign teacher, a Korean teacher, and a test teacher, all of whom teach only English. No foreign teacher starts before 3:40, and I don't think any classes at all are held before that period. So we get an hour at the beginning of each day to prepare what we are going to teach the little sponges.

Each class is 35 minutes, but some are double periods extending for a full 70 minute session. It is shocking the difference you feel between them. 35 minutes is a breeze, you can improvise and easily fill that without any real planning. 70 seems like an eternity in comparison, it is pretty much essential to have some supplementary material ready or you will be stuck with a bunch of screaming kids with nothing to focus on. Things like games, crosswords, handouts....the school has a bunch of extra books that have various activities that can be used. At the end of every 70 minute stretch is a 10 minute break for students and teachers.

Once your first class rolls around, you grab board markers, a pen, a stereo (each book comes with an accompanying CD or tape), and the teaching materials (consisting of homework books, student books to do exercises in class, story books, newspapers, and any other miscellaneous activities depending on the level of the class).

Elementary level classes follow the same general pattern: take up the previously assigned homework, assign some new homework (usually about 2 pages/class), do some in-class exercises using the CD, and read a couple pages of the storybook. The upper level B (for Basic I think) classes don't use story books, but the rest follows in similar fashion.

Middle school & high school kids are J or ISP coded, and to be honest I'm not sure what differentiates them. Either way, J classes are only 1 period per week with no homework, so you pump through about 3 pages of exercises with them and that wraps it up. ISPs are more involved, and are often the toughest classes to control. They don't have homework either (from foreign teachers at least, they may get some from their Korean teacher) but they use a different book that is often times too advanced for them. The book is called TOEFL and is used for language equivalency tests, so the parents recognize the name and assume their kids are getting a good education. Even though many of them don't really take anything away from the classes, the parents are happy and it is a business after all.

The most 35-minute sessions that either of us have per day is 7 (which for Ian is 5 35-minutes and 1 70-minute), which leaves a lot of time for reading, marking journals, checking email, or chatting with fellow teachers. We have to be at the school until 9:30 every night, but each foreign teacher teaches 1 class until 10:10 every week.

The work isn't that difficult, once we got over the initial hesitations of what we should be doing it can honestly take as little as 15 minutes to prepare each day if you want it to. I must say that Kelly is more involved in her classes, starting things like show-and-tell, as well as always coming up with new handouts that her kids seem to love. We both have kids from aged 6 to 16 or so, and the class size seems to average about 15 (biggest for me is 20 I think).

Most of the kids are pretty good, though it is tough for us to know what to expect because we are coming in mid-semester. My situation is especially unusual since my predecessor Russell was fired for having another job (which caused EXTREME office tension I am told, since his wife was the Head foreign teacher and was screaming at coworkers on several occasions) and they had a substitute for a week before me. So its tough for me to tell if they are just treating me like another sub, or even if they fully understand what has happened. Even as it is, most of the kids are pretty well behaved and threatening them with lines is usually enough to shut the yappy ones up.

One of the most difficult classes I have is an ISP class made up of early high schoolers that absolutely refuses to talk. You must ask an individual student a direct question and wait a good 15 seconds before they will answer. It doesn't help that the book is boring as hell, with topics like "What formed the great causeway?" I didn't even know what a causeway was and they certainly don't care what modern day geologists think, and who can blame them?

All the teachers, foreign, Korean, and test, are really helpful and apparently its like night and day since we replaced Russ and Chantelle. There are currently 3 substitutes in there to finish out a few weeks and its mostly good times. Tina and Rodney (who goes by the alias Brad for reasons I won't get into) are from Edmonton and are doing short-term things until they head back in August. Bernard (pronounced Bur-nurd and don't you forget it!) is a British dude who has a drama background and is thus a little odd. But he comes when he's needed and leaves when he's done, so we don't see much of him. New full-timers are coming sometime in the next month, which will bring some stability to the positions that I think the school is craving.

The final thing to remember is that the academy is a business. We are not a public school where grades really matter, we are there to keep the parents happy and try to help the kids as best as we can. The best thing we can do is make sure the kids have a good time so that the parents continue to enroll them at our academy. If anyone is looking to come over and "make a difference" for some poor, suffering soul, you've got the wrong idea. We teach the smart and/or rich kids. Which isn't so bad if you can entertain them for a while.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

totally stumbled onto your blog doing some research on teaching in Seoul. We have an interview for a job in a plus academy and were wondering what it is like? You seem to have had positive experiences so far. What area are you based in too?

We're aiming to be out there in a month or so.

thanks for any advice, tara

Unknown said...

hi
i used to teach at plus and i need the address for some job applications. would you mind giving me the full contact details of plus? including the phone number?
I think the area i was in was chang-dong so if you have the address of that branch it would be even better, but any will do.

thanks so much, btw, it seems like you are doing exactly what i did, all the same places, so amazing...don't stop...home (toronto) stinks :)