A Little Bit About Class

So today I figured I'd tell you a little bit about what it is like to teach here.

First off I work in a 'hagwon', which basically is an after school learning program. It is situated on the 3rd floor of a building with 6 tiny classrooms to teach within. I work with 5 very nice co-teachers (one foreigner, Ashlyn, who went to Bishops with me) and the director and his wife.

The one I work at is called Jeju ESL English Academy

Generally the kids come over after a long school day to learn english. (Are they excited to learn English? I'll let you figure that out).

Most of the kids are between 8-14 and have varying degrees of english. Keep in mind, just because they're older doesn't mean they know english better. The classes are no more than 12 people, but most of them are between 5-10 years old.

The kids... well they can be loud and rowdy as one would expect from the age group. Sometimes they can be real jerks as well. Basically they're just being honest, but they simply lack the maturity to realize that some truths don't need to be told.

Occasions When I Wanted to Beat Some Respect into the Kids:

-When we were discussing Jelly and a kid pointed to my leg

- Multiple times where the kid is 'testing' me by either ignoring me or just staring me in the face

- The kid who called me ugly

-Kids who make fun of me because I say 'yap' instead of 'yes'

-Kids that say my writting is very ugly

It isn't that I go home at night and cry myself to sleep, I just have a low tolerance for disrespect and I know that the kids usually know better than to say some of the things they do.
The kids of course aren't all bad. In fact, sometimes they're truly adorable and I just want to take them home and put them on a shelf. Some of the dresses they wear are absolutely gush-worthy and I just want to hug them for the entire class (until I notice them put a pencil up their nose as a way of holding it)


As I previously mentioned, there are intense punishments for those who don't pay attention or mouth off. These are a few of my favorite punishments (that I wish I could do, but can't).

- Standing on one foot while facing the wall and having your hands above your head. This is of course accompagnied by a good dose of yelling

- Holding a chair above your head for the rest of the class

- Touching your toes while in the middle of the classroom for the duration of the class

Often what I find is that their style of learning is complete memorization. Basically they can get to the point where they can pronounce words perfectly and know the meaning of most individual words, but at the end of the story NONE of them will know what it is about. This gets frustrating as even after they reread half the story they still don't understand what it is about.

Furthermore, many of the textbooks were clearly written in America. I don't like it when one of the test questions reads:

"What is California?"

a) A country

b) A city

c) A state

d) A province

No one got that question right, and I really don't expect them to. It is a useless question, and one that doesn't really test their English skills.

Anyways, this is a mere dose of what it is like to teach in Jeju! I'll have more stories later on I'm sure. And many more moments where I'll want to give a good whipping to the kids.