Teaching impressions so far...

Our classrooms are on the 2nd floor beside each other

Well, we have finished our first week of teaching and it has been extremely interesting and a big adjustment. Koreans have a much different way of viewing education than we are used to. High school students begin school at 7am and don't leave until midnight, 7 days a week with one day off a month. They take studying very seriously and everything is about memorization regardless as to whether or not you really understand the concept.

This is our school:

The students we teach are very intelligent in a lot of ways. 7 year olds can read and write in both English and Korean and probably do about 3 hours of homework a night. At the same time, they are very babied. Parents sit in on our classes (extremely annoying and obnoxious). I had one girl in my class sneeze and her mother came up and blew her nose for her. Some of the parents will talk to each other at the back of the room, answer their cell phones, send text messages and the worst part is they try to whisper the answer to their children when I'm asking a question. We've been told just to be very firm to them and ask them to leave if they're being disruptive, but it's school policy that the parents can sit in on their child's class.

By middle school, the children seem almost void of any emotion whatsoever. They have little to no enthusiasm about anything and it is almost painful to try to get them to talk. If you ask them a question, they whisper the answer and avoid eye contact. They seem more comfortable taking notes from a board than interacting with each other or the teacher. Of course, it has only been a week so this may change with time and how well they get to know us.

There are lots of advantages though! We get a $50 budget every month to spend on our class, we can order any books we want without question, there are only 23 teaching hours a week and after we get used to the classes we teach, there is little to no prep time. Teachers who have been working there longer than us pretty much do their lessons on the fly and take no work home. The Korean children are also VERY respectful. The biggest discipline "problem" at the school is not doing homework. I think it would be unheard of for a child to talk back to his/her teacher (probably because they are terrified of us -- not sure why yet). Anyway, here are a couple pictures of my 5th Grade students: