Teaching Day Two

My second day of teaching went a lot like the first. Except I didn’t have to worry about figuring out how to walk to school, how to get to the office, where my desk was, or who my co-teachers were. So I could actually focus on noticing things about the school and the students.

The “Teacher so beautiful! Teacher I love you!” still hasn’t stopped but I’m starting to figure out how to use it to my advantage in the classroom.

When I got to my desk only had one period free and then it was off to see grade 2 girls. These are the girls who I mentioned in my last post that absolutely lost it when I could prove that I knew anything about Kpop. They were completely insane and fun and hilarious and I still have the image of the tiny girl who sat in the very front middle with huge glasses in my head. I had another girls class then a boys class.

This boys class was even more, shall we say precocious, than the last. They also cheered when I walked into the room and also asked me what my ideal type is, how tall I am, if I ever had plastic surgery (“No?! Wow natural natural!”) and who was the “best boy” in the class. At one point I mentioned that I played volleyball and when I had them all stand up and introduce themselves a suspicious number of them said that volleyball was their hobby. The school doesn’t even have volleyball.

But they were really fun and they paid attention well so I’m okay with it.

I had another girls class and one tiny tiny little girl came up to me after and with surprisingly good english asked me if I knew about Korean history. I told her that I knew a little bit but I want to study more, and I asked her if she knew about American history. She very proudly responded that yes she likes to read books about the revolutionary war and about George Washington. I love her already.

When lunch time rolled around all of the other English teachers were out of the office so another teacher just came by my desk to say “lets go eat lunch” but she didn’t speak any English. So I got to try to speak Korean again which was really fun.

At one point I had just sat down at my desk and two girls, who had been in my class yesterday, came up to me and asked, “teacher did you see our letters??” I looked down to see two little handwritten notes on my desk. It was so sweet and they told me they would come back at the end of the day so I could read them.

One of the girls wrote about her favorite American music, and the other wanted to ask me if I could help her improve her english writing skills. I’m still carrying them around with me 🙂

Unfortunately I had to leave school a bit early with my co-teacher to go to the immigration office, but I wrote them little notes back and left them on my desk. So I hope if they came back looking for me they saw the notes.

So around 3:30 we left school and the proceeded to spend three hours at the immigration office waiting to apply for my alien registration card. It was so long, but also a really good chance for me to talk to my co-teacher and bond a bit.

That night I met up with some of my other english teacher friends to talk about how things went and celebrate surviving our first two days. It was fun to see them all finally outside the context of orientation. We had a lovely evening and I got back to my house pretty late and entirely exhausted.

I am thankful to have the first week under my belt and ready to see what happens next. Thanks for reading!