First Day of Class

The first of September was the first day of the new semester for the school I work at, and my very first day of teaching my own classes, a.k.a. the whole reason they brought me over here! And guess what.....made it!

I work at a private school (called a hogwan in Korean). All Korean students go to public school during the day until about 2:30pm. Then they go to whatever private schools (hogwans) their parents have signed them up for. Usually, the richer the parents are then the more hogwans they sign their kids up for. Korean parents all want their kids to have the most education possible, especially when it comes to English. There are tons of different hogwans offered in Korea....several that teach English, many for math, science, tae-kwon-do, computers, etc. The hogwan I work at is an English school. So after the kids go to public school for regular school work, then they come to our school for more intense English lessons. Then maybe they'll go to another hogwan, then home for homework, a little sleep, then wake up and do it all over again. Poor Korean kids don't have much of a life here!! It's all in preparation for the competitive entrance tests for colleges. Once they get to college, then apparently the work is not so hard.

Our classes have a whole bunch of names that I have to remember, like the ones I teach this semester are called JB, GB, AP1, AP2, and AS1. These mean that I teach 3rd graders, 1st graders, and Kindergardners. Our school has classes for grades K-6. Our school is big for a hogwan, I think there are about 200 kids enrolled. It is in the middle of downtown, so it's in a tall building, on the 5th and 6th floors. We have 6 foreign English teachers (white teachers) here, and about 8 Korean English teachers. They teach grammar and reading, and we teach speaking and writing and comprehension. I have 4 classes a day and the rest of the time I use for lesson planning. My class sizes range from 2 to 15 kids.  As you can see, some classes are a little crazy, hehe!