KMK: Public Schools

I’m well into the third week of my new public school job so I think this would be a good time to give you all my impressions so far. First, I’ll throw in a little context. I came to the public school system from two years of hogwon indentured servitude. Hyperbole aside I had dealt with no pension-giving-tax-dodging-don’t-know-what-a -break-is directors long enough. So, public schools seemed like the next stepping stone.

Now, I didn’t know what to expect so I did my due diligence: eslcafe.com. Wading through alll those posts was like swimming in the sea of negativity, but I did come out of it with a much better picture of the public school system in Korea. First, and foremost being employed by Korean public schools means you get pension, health insurance and your pay check paid on time with no shady shenanigans looming before pay day. That alone sold me on the public school system.

A little messaging on eslcafe to individual posters led to everything from horror stories of oversized classes filled with A.D.D. juvenile delinquents to blissful accounts of month long vacations. Both possibly tall tales. so I assumed the truth lay somewhere in the in between. In hogwans my classes never went over fifteen students with the most of them having five to ten kids. As for vacations, well, ten days was the max not counting public holidays (if the powers that be didn’t want to make a few bucks more by having the kids come in anyway).

The next step after deciding on teaching public schools was to determine which public school system I wanted to work for. Rummaing through the threads revealed my choices included a handfull of awkward sounding acronyms like GEPIK, EPIK, and SMOE. From those posts I managed to glean a little something about each orgranization and dreamed up my own answer for what each acronym stood for:

Get Expat Patsy Instead of Koreans
Expect Petty Incompetence Kay?
Soon Mothers Overhwlem Everyone

Drowning in indecision between the big three I discovered that within Seoul there was also one more school system I could possibly work for: gangnam public schools. They operate their own seperate system apart from the other Seoul schools. Most of the posts and threads on the Gangnam public schools were filled with positive reviews. Since Gangnam is one of wealthier disctricts of Seoul and I was already living and working in the area I ran with that and got the job.

Which brings us back to the present and my first three weeks in the Gangnam public school system. I’ll tackle what’s probably the top question on your mind. No, the large classes are not as scary as I thought they would be. I don’t even really notice anymore. The kids have so much energy and keep you so busy bopping between them to answer questions that I don’t have time to be overwhelmed. Plus, they’re too cute to be intimidating. It would be like being terrified of a toy store full of stuffed bears.

Second, and I think this may due to the area, but the level of English already mastered by the majority of these students is impressive. Most of these Gangnam kids go to English hogwons after public school and it shows. I’m teaching fifth and fourth graders this semester and based on the text books they should be low level students, however the majority can easily understand me and the lesson which forces me to up the difficulty level. The danger being that the few kids in the class who do not attend English hogwans may be in over their heads. So ultimately I tailor the lesson to their needs since they are the ones who need the most help. I keep the attention of the more astute kids by using them as helpers to teach the lesson or by making their specific activity more difficult.

Another change I am adapting too is having another teacher in class with me at the same time. In the hogwans I would teach for an hour to eighty minutes and then my Korean co-teacher would teach. Now that’s all scrapped and I’m in the class with the co-teacher. I have two co-teachers and with one it works very well. We go in like a WWF tag team and lay down the English smack down. It’s fun. With my other co-teacher it’s a little more difficult because honestly I don’t think we need each other. She could run that class by herself since her English is practically perfect. We’ll have to devise a strategy where we both equally take part in teaching the lesson while making it both fun and interesting for the kids and us. It’s a work in progress, but we will get there eventually.

Now the last and most important aspect of teaching in Gangnam public shools is the food. That’s right we get lunch served up and ready to be devoured everyday at 12:10. I haven’t eaten so healty since I went home on vacation. Um, well, that’s not entirely true since I went home for Thanksgiving and you can imagine how those double helpings of Mac N’ Cheese might’ve not been the most healthiest of choices. In any case, Gangnam PS makes sure I’m getting my veggies.

I hope this has shed some light on the public school system. So, far I wouldn’t return to a hogwon no matter what. Though, it has only been three weeks. I’ll post again after a bit more time has passed.