A whole semester has passed me by!
I am sitting in my office and it is a-buzz with commotion. Teachers are hurriedly packing up desks, shredding important documents, throwing old lesson materials into the paper bin. Boxes are stacked with belongings as each teacher prepares to be relocated, myself included. Rubbish-filled bags, divided into paper and plastic, are crowding the corridors. The students are finishing their cleaning, helping to close up boxes, asking last minute questions. There is a sense of desperation behind their every movement. They are dying to finish, dying to go. And so am I.
School is over, and for the next month I will have the luxury of waltzing into school somewhere around 2pm to teach my classes before leaving promptly at 4. There will be a week of summer school where I will have to leave at 5:30 (the horror!) but I am sure that I shall survive.
It's hard to believe that it has been a full semester since I arrived in, what was then, a freezing Korea. Thankfully, since I was mostly teaching the first graders, most of my students were as new to the school as I was. It was a fresh start for all of us. But, as the students have grown confident and comfortable within their school surroundings, so have I. Hey, they still have a helluva advantage - they are able to speak Korean, connect with the other students around them, tell someone when they are having a problem - but I still think that I have settled into this school as well as can be expected.
Someone was telling me yesterday about how it is common in Korea for co-teachers to resent their Native English speaking counterparts. I looked at her as though as was crazy.
"Why on earth would they resent us?"
"We are coming here and taking their jobs away from them!"
This made some sense to me, I suppose. After all the xenophobic attacks two years ago in South Africa, I can kind of understand where they would be coming from - here we are, young and naive, coming to their country and taking their jobs, earning more and, in some cases, even doing less work. After all, the Korean teachers have to work every second Saturday, have to plan exams and test and worksheets, do not take sick days and do not get vacation.
But then I thought about my school.
If I was not working here, there would be no other teacher taking my place. Each teacher at my school has a very specific role, the English teachers especially. Jinny teaches the low-level first grade students, the teacher that the kids have nicknamed Avatar (and whose real name escapes me) teaches the mid-levels, and Sunny (who also likes to be called Cindy depending on the mood that she is in) only teaches high-level first graders. If I was not here, this would not change. A new teacher would not take my place. Though they have to accompany me to classes, and I can see how that would be kind of annoying, I am essentially relieving them of part of their responsibility. It is the same with my second grade teachers, though I feel that they really should hire a third permanent teacher for the second grade. I don't think that my presence here is what is stopping them, however.
I might not work every second Saturday, but I have more classes than my fellow co-teachers during the week. The first time that my co-teachers looked at my timetable, each one of them tutted about how busy I was going to be and how crazy it was to expect me to work so much. 22 hours of teaching?! Unheard of! On the other hand, their free time is spent hard at work, while mine is spent frantically trying to get as much relaxing in as I possibly can.
I certainly don't think that my co-teachers resent me! I have always been treated as a part of the staff. I am awarded the same heart-felt, friendly greetings when I walk into the staff room, they show sincere concern for my well-being when I am sick and interest in my everyday life. Every one of them is excited to meet Grant when he comes to visit. Some ridiculously so. And I have become very used to the staff at my school. I feel like a part of something here, even if I do occasionally feel useless. But resentment? If I am resented, they sure are good at hiding it!
I am sitting in my office and it is a-buzz with commotion. Teachers are hurriedly packing up desks, shredding important documents, throwing old lesson materials into the paper bin. Boxes are stacked with belongings as each teacher prepares to be relocated, myself included. Rubbish-filled bags, divided into paper and plastic, are crowding the corridors. The students are finishing their cleaning, helping to close up boxes, asking last minute questions. There is a sense of desperation behind their every movement. They are dying to finish, dying to go. And so am I.
School is over, and for the next month I will have the luxury of waltzing into school somewhere around 2pm to teach my classes before leaving promptly at 4. There will be a week of summer school where I will have to leave at 5:30 (the horror!) but I am sure that I shall survive.
It's hard to believe that it has been a full semester since I arrived in, what was then, a freezing Korea. Thankfully, since I was mostly teaching the first graders, most of my students were as new to the school as I was. It was a fresh start for all of us. But, as the students have grown confident and comfortable within their school surroundings, so have I. Hey, they still have a helluva advantage - they are able to speak Korean, connect with the other students around them, tell someone when they are having a problem - but I still think that I have settled into this school as well as can be expected.
Someone was telling me yesterday about how it is common in Korea for co-teachers to resent their Native English speaking counterparts. I looked at her as though as was crazy.
"Why on earth would they resent us?"
"We are coming here and taking their jobs away from them!"
This made some sense to me, I suppose. After all the xenophobic attacks two years ago in South Africa, I can kind of understand where they would be coming from - here we are, young and naive, coming to their country and taking their jobs, earning more and, in some cases, even doing less work. After all, the Korean teachers have to work every second Saturday, have to plan exams and test and worksheets, do not take sick days and do not get vacation.
But then I thought about my school.
If I was not working here, there would be no other teacher taking my place. Each teacher at my school has a very specific role, the English teachers especially. Jinny teaches the low-level first grade students, the teacher that the kids have nicknamed Avatar (and whose real name escapes me) teaches the mid-levels, and Sunny (who also likes to be called Cindy depending on the mood that she is in) only teaches high-level first graders. If I was not here, this would not change. A new teacher would not take my place. Though they have to accompany me to classes, and I can see how that would be kind of annoying, I am essentially relieving them of part of their responsibility. It is the same with my second grade teachers, though I feel that they really should hire a third permanent teacher for the second grade. I don't think that my presence here is what is stopping them, however.
I might not work every second Saturday, but I have more classes than my fellow co-teachers during the week. The first time that my co-teachers looked at my timetable, each one of them tutted about how busy I was going to be and how crazy it was to expect me to work so much. 22 hours of teaching?! Unheard of! On the other hand, their free time is spent hard at work, while mine is spent frantically trying to get as much relaxing in as I possibly can.
I certainly don't think that my co-teachers resent me! I have always been treated as a part of the staff. I am awarded the same heart-felt, friendly greetings when I walk into the staff room, they show sincere concern for my well-being when I am sick and interest in my everyday life. Every one of them is excited to meet Grant when he comes to visit. Some ridiculously so. And I have become very used to the staff at my school. I feel like a part of something here, even if I do occasionally feel useless. But resentment? If I am resented, they sure are good at hiding it!
TEST! LOL