First Day(s) on the Job

Monday marked the beginning of my soon-to-be-wildly-successful career as an English teacher. It certainly had its ups and downs. I had to get into work at 1 for my 4 pm class, but first I wanted to drop off my ARC paperwork at company headquarters (without an ARC, you can't buy a cellphone in Korea). Unfortunately, HQ is in the opposite direction of my school, but only by two subway stops. However, I still needed to leave half an hour earlier to allow time for these extra two stops, so 11:30 am found me rushing out of the hotel feeling late already. After hustling down the street on a mid-80s day to the KT Tower, where HQ is located, I had to face the rest of my hour-long commute and day wondering if I smelled bad. Plus I ended up getting in to work about 10 minutes early...so much for the need to rush.

At work, I had a meeting with my Head Instructor for the Memory program. One of my fellow new instructors was also in the meeting with me, and (selfishly) to my relief, he seemed to have even more questions than me. My HI took me up to my classroom on the sixth floor of the building, and I must admit I ended up with a pretty awesome room. All the rooms are basically identical, with a whiteboard and teacher's desk with a computer at the front, and about 13 desks in a U-shape in the remaining space. The thing that makes my room awesome is the back wall: basically huge windows from wall to wall. It's one of the few rooms with such large windows, and since most of the neighboring buildings are shorter than six stories, you can see a good deal of Mokdong.

I taught one class on Monday and one on Tuesday, with varying levels of success. My class on Monday was a real grab bag, with personalities ranging from the hyperactive genius to the apathetic teenage girl. I ran into my first huge problem about half an hour into class when I began our first activity and realized I could barely understand the kid's accents. It was pretty obvious I couldn't tell what the students were saying, and the class became rather amused with my inability to hear them. So much for pretending I'm not a new teacher. My class on Tuesday went much more smoothly. Even though the kids are a little younger, I can understand them much better. Plus the personality range is much smaller, so the class is a little easier to handle. Some of the kids are really curious, which is cute, except for when one of my Tuesday students took my attendance list from me to try to see what was on it. Luckily, she didn't spot the column where I was writing distinguishing features of each student to help me remember names ("tiny!" "pink glasses!"). Close call.