My employer is the Jeollanam-do provincial office of education (I'm pretty sure, since my contract is with them). I teach at three different schools in Goheung-gun, one of which is designated as my main school. It is the largest, and closest to where we live, although none of my schools are in the same city that we live in. I'm at one travel school Monday and Tuesday, another Wednesdays only, and my main school Thursday and Friday. My commute to both of my travel schools takes about an hour if you factor in walking time, while my commute to my main school takes about 10-15 minutes.
My main school has about 40 students total, my Wednesday school has a little less than that, and my Monday/Tuesday school has only 13 students. At each school I co-teach with that school's English teacher. What that means exactly is mostly up to each coteacher, but all three of my coteachers have opted to have me cover the speaking and listening portions of the textbook, and design and lead my own classes while they offer support on the days that I'm at their school. Because the schools are so small, each grade has only one class in it, and each class has English four times a week. What this means for me is that, based on my arrangements with my coteachers, I teach three 45 minute classes a day every day except Thursday, when the English teacher at my main school wants to lead classes herself. This is a very light schedule, since my only other responsibility is to lead an English class during lunchtime at my main school only. I had to design a curriculum for a teacher's workshop, when my coteachers would meet at my main school every Thursday to work on their own English, but that seems to have been for documentation purposes only, since none of my coteachers are actually interested in coming.
There is also a remote teaching program in the province where they have foreign teachers lead classes over Skype at schools that are too small and rural to justify hiring a foreign teacher. I thought this would be a good opportunity, since the pay for these remote classes comes in on top of your regular paycheck and I have such a light schedule. Unfortunately, in his email to us the province's language program coordinator stressed that we should check with our schools before applying to the program, since failure to do so reflected badly on us and our relationship with our schools (obviously). We still didn't have phones at that point, so by the time I had visited all three of my schools and checked in with all three of my coteachers, the program had filled for the semester. Now that I know I have approval, hopefully I'll be able to participate next semester.
My contract says that work is from 9-5, but the expectation is that people will show up about half an hour early for work. That's fine, but because I ride the bus I have to choose between showing up around 8:00 or 9:05. When you factor in the commute, that makes Monday-Wednesday eleven hour days in which I teach for a little over two hours. It's hard to complain because I get paid full-time, but sometimes it feels a little silly.
The atmosphere in the teacher's room at each of my schools is very friendly. The Korean teachers have more paperwork to do, but I don't think any of them have heavier teaching schedules than I do, so they spend a lot of time in the teacher's room socializing or taking care of personal business. Depending on the principal, teachers leave some schools to take walks after lunch. They're always bringing fruit or bread to school as snacks to share with the other teachers. So, the fact that you have to be there all day whether or not you have any work to do is offset by the fact that you're not expected to pretend that you're terribly busy every second of the day. I'm writing this from work on a Thursday, for example.
Classes themselves have been very mixed so far. This is a rural area and most students feel that English is not relevant to them, but it's a required subject. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle the fact that a good number of my students just don't want to be there. I personally don't think English should be required, since it only seems to be important for Koreans who want to work or study abroad, or who are going to work in specific industries that require them to interact with foreigners. The sense I get from observation and asking Koreans about it is that for most people, what English is practically for is their college entrance exam. The national curriculum has a lot of language in it about the importance of English as the lingua franca in an increasingly interconnected world, and how important it will be for Koreans to compete with other countries, but so far that doesn't sync with what I'm seeing.
Ok I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but I'll try to come back around. At each of my schools, most of my students' parents are farmers or fishers. You might know that Korea's population is heavily skewed old, and they're concerned about the effects that this will have to the point that they have all kinds of incentives to try to encourage people to have children. That skew is even more pronounced in the rural areas, and most farmers are past middle age. I don't think that my students' options should be any more limited than kids in cities with more access to after school study programs and things like that, but it seems like they're pushing everyone to learn English and go to university, but university graduates are having a hard time finding jobs these days, and somebody has to run the farms. I guess what I'm trying to say is that English seems to be important mostly because of the prestige people attach to it rather than any kind of practical need, and I feel ambivalent about my role in that.
As one bad example of that prestige, we were watching a Korean show where one Korean person tried to intimidate another in business by speaking in English. When it turned out that he had much better English than her, the plan backfired, she immediately switched to Korean, and she lost footing in the negotiation. It's a silly example because it's from a TV show, but I still thought it was interesting.
Aaaaaaaaanyways, classes end at 3:10, but working hours are until 5:00 because there are usually after school programs that teachers or students run. For example, today the students are playing sports in the soccer field as part of their self-directed sports club. Everyone is supervising them out of the corner of their eye, but no teacher is running the sports club and the kids are mostly monitoring themselves. Along those lines, the kids are also responsible for cleaning the school. Every day after classes end, before they go to their clubs or home or wherever, they have assigned jobs around school to clean up. As far as I can tell there's no hired on janitor, but it seems like they do a pretty good job.
One exception to the after school clubs thing is Wednesdays, when at my main school (and apparently most schools throughout Korea) the teachers get together to play volleyball. I'm at one of my travel schools Wednesdays, but the first week I was here my main school called my travel school after lunch on Wednesday to see if I had any afternoon classes, and when they confirmed that I didn't they asked that I be sent to my main school. It turned out they wanted me to play volleyball, but they didn't tell my travel school why they wanted me to go. The next week I told them, and asked if I could make it a regular thing. I got the go ahead, so I've been coming to my main school for volleyball every Wednesday. It's good exercise, and a good opportunity to bond with the teachers. Because most of the conversation that goes on in the teacher's room goes over my head, and because I'm the new guy and a foreigner, and because I'm only at my main school two days out of the week, coming to volleyball helps me feel like I'm part of the group of teachers here. As a sidenote, I'm terrible at volleyball and I've hardly played before, but they have me up front blocking and spiking because I'm tall. They don't rotate positions the way I think it's done in the U.S. You do rotate who serves, but then they have to scurry back to their position. Before we start playing each week, the P.E. teacher has been training me in what he considers proper form, which is already getting a little old, but I just appreciate that they're interacting with me at all despite the language barrier.
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