Breaking my radio silence (I think I avoid updating because it reminds me of how little time I have left) to share this adorable student work.
Right now they're watching School of Rock, in which a very minor subplot revolves around the growth and development of Tomika, the black girl with an amazing singing voice and no self-confidence.
I think Tomika is very good singing voice. She is can sing. And she is not fat. She is cute. Dewey is true. Maybe, they will love her singing voice.
This student is new, so obviously I won't have her long enough to get to know her better. Sadface.
Anna (of the Anna and Lina I mentioned earlier) is participating in an upcoming English speech contest. I've been helping her and the other students practice during my down time at work.
Anna's speech is about Dokdo. Yesterday she had a massive memory fail and closed her speech with these words:
"I want to let the world know clearly: Dokdo is Japanese territory!"
The resulting giggle fits could not be stopped for the next five or six minutes.
Happy Chuseok, everyone. I'm not going on any awesome trips because I work (half a day) on Tuesday. Off to see the Suwon fortress am I.
There is an English speech competition soon, and part of my duties as native speaker include editing (and later recording into cell phones) students' speeches. These contests happen periodically within school districts; this one is a national tournament, so far as I can judge from the poster in the hallway.
Here are some thing I've learned, whether about Korea or my students, silly or serious, from editing past and present speeches:
Pollution is basically to blame for every evil that befalls us in this modern age.
My elementary school students have more focused ambitions, dreams, and goals than I did at their age. Heck, they have more of them than I do now.
Hangeul is the greatest thing ever.
Except maybe for bibimbap, which releases poisons from the body and also cures asthma and diabetes.
Korea's brand of oriental medicine is the best in the world.
동의보감 was put on UNESCO's "Memory of the World" register in 2009.
We just concluded our summer intensives session. Like the winter intensives, the extra classes culminate in student presentations. These are always my favorite because I get to see what my students are interested in. This time around it was:
Make-up artistry
Hamsters
Four Things (a series on the show "Gag Concert")
B1A4
A student also gave a presentation on the movie we watched. He did this for the winter intensives, too, so I don't know if he just really likes both of these movies ("Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," "Tangled"), or if he couldn't think of anything else to talk about and hastily assembled his PowerPoint at the last minute.
I've been remiss on the last Multimedia Monday, because I feel like I've been a chicken running around with its head cut off (and because the latest two chapters in my advanced textbook haven't been video-worthy). I'm still here and I'm still alive, I assure you.
I've been at this job for eight months now and I still don't know how I feel about Beckham.* Most days he is not at all interested in English, but he recently (and in my opinion, prematurely) switched to an advanced class. I wasn't happy about this at first, since he switched into my absolute favorite class. The class I use to take the edge off teaching his old class, actually.
Fortunately, he's now separated from his other two musketeers, so on his own he's much less disruptive. I have no idea how this is going to work in the long term, though. The first class was an unmitigated train wreck, but that could just be first class of the semester jitters. The second class is worth documenting.
As soon as I walked in the door, he announced, "Teacher! Couple shirts!"
A spontaneous greeting from Beckham? Unprecedented.
We were both wearing gray shirts, you see. Except mine was a light, semi-sheer t-shirt over a tank top, and his was a dark gray long sleeve thing.
"What? But they're very different!"
"Color is same."
"Well, that's true. Okay, couples shirt."
"Okay!"
After some small talk about their recently-finished exams ("Every subject easy, I am genius."), we got down to brass tacks. I had Beckham and Kristin (the only two students that day) use the mind map in the book to think of ways to describe their best friend.
The next ten minutes of class was dedicated to the biggest whopper I have ever heard a student tell. Beckham told me that his best friend was Park Ji-sung, and then from there it exploded into a ridiculous tale of how he was going to fly to England the next day to visit and play for Manchester United. Oh, and his dad is his own private pilot. And his mom comes with them and cooks food for everyone. And his friends are going, too. And I can come, if I want. His plane is so big it can fit everyone in England. It's the size of South Korea; in fact it's so big that when it takes off and lands, sometimes people die.
"But I am always survivor," Beckham explained, "Because Jesus is my father."
Apparently Jesus is his pilot, not his copilot.
Also, Barack Obama calls and asks him to dinner all the time, but he is too busy studying. And Beyonce is head over heels in love with him, but he rebuffs her advances because "she is not my style."
Hopefully I have more classes like this and less like stony silence.
*Yes, the name references what you think it references.
This post is straight-up useless, but for me this is particularly relevant.
The latest fad at my hagwon is Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger." I've mentioned before that a lot of the curriculum with lower-level students at my school is based on English language pop music. Even with the advanced students, we (both myself and the Korean teachers) will play a song or two to kill some extra time in class. "Moves Like Jagger" is one that's been popular lately.
"What's Jagger? What is that? Who is that?"
"Dancer!" one girl suggested. Which, I mean really, is not that far off the mark.
"Ehh, almost."
"Singer?" she tried again.
"You got it."
I tested the waters to see if they knew which band, but no. I told them it was a band from England and the only answer I got was The Beatles. Cue my School of Rock inner fantasy.
Just to provide them some amount of context for the song, we're watching this montage of young Mick Jagger. Not the whole thing, mind you, I think the first thirty seconds ought to do the trick.
I already showed this to one class because they had been singing "Moves Like Jagger" when I came in. Since we finished early, I decided to be lazy and see how they'd react to this. We had the same discussion I just quoted above, more or less, and then I opened the file.
"This is Mick Jagger," I explained.
The revulsion was palpable. "Teacher, stop!" the most vocal student pleaded. I obliged.
"You don't like it?"
"No, it's very old. I like Green Day, like Basket Case. And American Idiot. And Holiday."
Back when Min-ji's class was reading and talking about NYC, I asked them to work in teams to come up with reasons why either Seoul or NYC is the best place to visit. Min-ji and her partner, Kristin, had Seoul.
"Korean food is very delicious," she suggested to Kristin (more on Kristin in another post). Kristin enthusiastically agreed and they started listing delicious Korean food. This class is pretty late in the day so food comes up a lot no matter what the subject is. Everyone always seems to be hungry, myself included.
"Ddeok bokki!"
"Samgyeopsal!"
"Galbijjim!"
"Boshin—" but Min-ji caught herself before finishing. (Boshintang, as you may or may not recall, is dog meat stew.)
"Why not? Boshintang is very delicious," I suggested.
"Really? Teacher? You had boshintang?"
"One time. It was good."
The look on Min-ji's face was a mix of surprise and...not quite anger. Admonishment. Scolding. "Teacher, that is terrible. You shouldn't eat it. I have a dog!"
"But your dog isn't the kind of dog that's in boshintang, is it?"
"No, but that's still bad. My dad really likes boshintang, but my mom says he can't eat it now."
"Well, it was a long time ago. I'm probably not going to have it again."
I have two rounds of presentations within the next month. The first I just finished up today, with the students in my Winter Intensives course. It was pretty hands-off and I just ate Pringles and judged their performances. Second only to sitting on a couch while slave labor fanned me and fed me fruit.
For the record, finding this image was way more difficult than I expected it to be.
I have another round at the end of February with my regular course advanced students, and with this group I'm helping them a bit along the way (mostly with correcting the English in their PowerPoint presentations). This whole week, I've been bombarded with .pptx files and stilted English malapropisms. What's really fascinating about this particular round is that both groups were given free rein over the topics. In no particular order, here's what I've heard or will hear about:
Korean TV programs (Running Man and 2 Day 1 Night)
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (This from an intensive student who spent all of January studying this movie, I suspect he didn't really make anything else in time and he/his mom/his teacher threw this together in a panic.)
The girl who presented on her family, Hanna, made an old-school poster instead of a ho-hum PowerPoint, with photos and everything. She has a great little personality, as evidenced by this selection:
"My second aunt majored in voice at University, but I don't think she is a very good singer. She has two children. The daughter is in seventh grade. She is very good at English speaking. She likes watching basketball game. The son is in fourth grade. When he was younger, he was very cute, but now I think he is a little bit ugly. He likes soccer, baseball, and basketball."
Note well that Hanna's little cousin, Roy (the ugly one), was also in the same intensive course and was in the audience when she was giving this presentation. He took it well and just suffered from giggle fits the whole time, even when she called him ugly. I suppose insults sting less when they're not in your native language?
I'm looking forward to the Minecraft presentation especially. I'm tempted to see if I can whip up a hanok in game, screen cap it, and show it to my students in class, but really I'm too lazy to be bothered. Yiruma I'm looking forward to a lot as well, because popular Korean musicians who aren't K-pop groups always interest me.
But the best part about all of these are a little peek under the lid of my students' heads. Teaching is a lot more fun when you get to know your students as people outside what you do in the classroom. I can't wait to see what they come up with.
I'm generating material for a new textbook. If I understand my boss correctly, the franchise headquarters is considering dropping their kids' hagwons (like ours) in favor of focusing exclusively focusing on adults. The owners of this particular branch don't know if or when this will happen, but they want to have material ready just in case it does. My boss and I both agree that the movie/music/novels curriculum is much preferable to just straight-up textbook drilling, and that even if HQ drops us, we'd want to keep that curriculum style. This is why I'm writing questions for, and summarizing scenes from, Shrek.
I like Shrek a lot, I'll admit it, even if DreamWorks is monetizing the life out of it. I like it for a lot of reasons, but what's nice about Shrek compared to the other movies they've studied so far (Elf, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Ice Age) is that it has a pretty good soundtrack, with lots of good pop songs to choose from. Yeah, even the song by Smashmouth. I'm sorry. I'm not including it here, though, because I don't think it's really a good song for EFL students (lyrics don't exactly make sense). Also, everyone hates it.
Here are some good ones that people still like, as far as I can tell.
Oh, The Proclaimers. National band of Scotland. If nothing else, I'm sure the trippin' balls music video will entertain my kids.
The version in them movie is apparently a cover by Halfcocked, and not the original Joan Jett. But since Joan Jett is the queen of rock 'n roll, I posted the original. Minor controversy here, since the refrain does have low-level profanity in it, but since my kids are studying Green Day's "Basketcase" ("I went to a whore, he said my life's a bore...") I think it's kosher enough for this particular classroom. Besides, "I don't give a _____ about ______." is a great idiomatic expression to learn. (Activity idea: have a contest to see who can come up with the funniest thing to fill in the blank: "I don't give a ________ about homework!")
So I lied, I am totally including the other Smashsmouth song from the soundtrack, which I honestly prefer to the Monkees' version. And unlike All Star, the lyrics make a bit more sense than just a bunch of almost-puns. (Thanks, Neil Diamond.) Trying to track down the version I remember from the "Jukebox" bonus feature on YouTube—the one where Eddie Murphy sings—is pretty impossible. The only one I can find has the dialog in Spanish, which is not really helpful for me. So, instead, have one of the myriad versions of the Eddie Murphy-less one matched up with a Shrek AMV.
And finally, Leonard Cohen as covered by Rufus Wainwright. (Even if John Cale's version is better.) Not sure if I'll use this one—it's a bit too mellow and melancholy to capture the attention of frenetic nine year olds. But if they could get into Cat Stevens, they might like this. Still, the other songs I listed will definitely get the higher priority.
For other videos, there's always the Multimedia Monday tag. And if you need to pull any of these videos from YouTube on to a thumb drive or hard drive or whatever, you can't go wrong with YouTube Downloader HD.
My school just finished up the much-anticipated Christmas Song Festival, which was heartwarming in all the ways that seven-year-olds singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" can possibly be (and more). Behold, the festival program! (Warning: there is loads of YouTube embedded in here, apologies in advance if it chokes your computer.)
"Happy!" by Mocca
This one was performed by two classes.
First, my youngest and lowest-level class (except the girl in the back, Pisa, who is an English genius and also Travis' best friend at this school).
And from the second round of the older elementary school kids (who ended up winning their "division"). At the line about "life is a bowl of cherries," they actually threw cherry candy into the audience. A cute idea, but also a potentially deadly one.
"Santa Claus is Coming to Town," by Mariah Carey or Justin Bieber
The version performed depended on the class, two of them used Mariah Carey's version but one class used (grudgingly) Justin Bieber's version.
For the full creepy effect, here's the Mariah Carey video they used (they set up a laptop with a projector to display the video and lyrics for the students to sing along to). I apologize in advance for the nightmares this is about to fuel.
One of my younger advanced classes, they're all adorable students and very chatty. They won their "division" on the first day of the festival. One of the girls (not pictured) also sang Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You." Alas, I don't have a picture of it.
One of my "intermediate" (the school calls it "Step 2") classes. They also won their division, for which I am thankful, because I think Travis (all the way on the left) may have had a meltdown otherwise. He came close to one after a very awkward solo and a cappella performance of "Sorry Sorry" (individual students could also opt to perform as a sort of talent show, if they wanted). From left to right: Travis, Sophia, Jasmine, Timmy, Diane, Cindy, Lina.
But look how happy Travis is during it all! And he's a pretty good little dancer. Just not a very good singer. Plus contemporary K-pop doesn't sound all that good without synths and such.
The other boy in that class, Timmy, also did a solo a cappella performance, which was much less awkward. I think it was my favorite piece of the entire day, because Timmy is a consummate performer. Bonus points: one of the slightly incomprehensible quotes that are showcased all over the building: "After death, to call the doctor."
Two of the girls from that class (Cindy and Jasmine) also did a duet of Avril Lavigne's "What The Hell."
"You say I'm messing with your head / Because I was making out with your friend....You say I'm messing with your head / I like messing in your bed" Think about those lyrics, and then go back and look at the picture to see exactly how tiny they are. But Cindy is funny little diva (and English genius to boot), I wish I had a picture of this performance. Another picture I'll have to wait to borrow from the school's website.
This class used Justin Bieber's version of The Worst Christmas Song of All Time, which is basically the same as the Mariah Carey version. They were miserable the entire time, though, so instead I opted for a picture of them during the talent show: recreating a skit from a Korean variety show (in Korean), which they did VERY well. I about peed myself laughing. The smaller girl, Alice, however, is a pretty good little dancer and got a special spirit award for doing such a good job with it during their otherwise lackluster dance routine. I didn't get a picture of that (but I hope to gank one from the school's website some time next week).
"Jingle Bell Rock," Bobby Helms
Two classes chose this song.
And here's the only class who performed it that I actually teach:
From left to right: Albert (who showed off his hula hoop skills), Tom (who gave a solo recorder performance of "Roly Poly" by the K-pop girl group T-ara), Mark (who acted like a crazy banshee the whole time, to the point where the other boys actually took it upon themselves to restrain him), Leo, Paul, Alex (number one nose-picker), Sally, and Amy.
"I Like to Move It," Reel 2 Real
Though the video they used was from Madagascar, the song sounded like the original and not the version from the Madagascar OST so who knows.
One class performed this, and a few of the boys from one of the basic classes (that I don't teach) also did a tae kwon do routine set to this, for which they won first place.
Another intermediate class. The little boy in the big coat in the back is Harry, and his enthusiasm for everything is absolutely uncontainable. His Korean teacher said he got into a fight with one of the other boys the day before because he wasn't being excited enough. He's adorable.
But really, the winner for "most awkward" performance had to go to the only older advanced class to participate. Or rather, "participate": One of the kids actually sung (and rather enthusiastically) while the rest hung back and looked embarrassed. I guess middle school is too old for anglophone pop song talent shows?
Maroon 5, "This Love"
Again, think about the lyrics to this one: "I tried my best to feed her appetite / Keep her coming every night / So hard to keep her satisfied..." and "My pressure on your hips / Sinking my fingertips / Into every inch of you / Cause I know that's what you want me to do..."
And then instead of Adam Levine singing, you have this:
The other teachers and I couldn't contain ourselves. Giggle fits ensued.
And here's what I wish they had sung:
"Father Christmas," The Kinks
John Lennon, "Happy Xmas, War is Over"
(Not the original music video, since that one's kind of NSFW with gory war images and all. You can watch in public at ease.)
The Jackson 5, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"
(The only version of this song I actually enjoy, because it's funky enough that I can ignore the creepy/emotionally abusive lyrics, though there's no small amount of irony in the fact that it comes from one of the most exploited child stars of all time.)
Now I'm off to LotteMart, as I owe some people my trademark "way too much whisky" whisky chocolate truffles and I need to get cracking.
We've finished their book early (somehow?) so the last few days have been just bullshitting about celebrities and me occasionally blowing their minds. Lina started off ragging on Justin Bieber's fashion sense.
"His pants are terrible! They...you can see his panties!"
And then just him in general.
"I hate Justin Bieber. He's racist!"
"Racist? Why?"
"He loves Japan!"
Lady Gaga is racist, too. But her clothes are better. Also, Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian. And crazy.
We spent a very productive half hour talking about why Japan is horrible. (I am inclined to agree, or at least agree that the Japanese government has not taken the moral high, or even middle, road recently, but played neutral party to carry on the discussion.) I also proceeded to explain the sad state of world (especially non-European) history in many American schools. The fact that we have "AP American History," "AP European History," and then just "AP World History" pretty much says it all: we privilege dead white men.
"Many history classes in America don't talk about Korea until America goes to war in Korea," I explained. Stunned looks all around. It's hard to convey in someone's second language that your country gets glossed over not because it's insignificant, but because our perspective is extremely myopic. (Hopefully that has changed/is changing/will change soon?)
"I don't think Korean women should marry American men, or Japanese men. Only Korean men."
"But what if the American man is very handsome?"
"No. Handsome is not important."
"Then what is important?"
At this point, a student named Christine interjected: "Money money money." But Lina and the other girl in the class (Rosa) sort of rolled their eyes. They came up with a list:
1. Loyalty
2. Kindness
3. Money
4. Diligence
These were ranked in order of importance. Just for a laugh, I gave them my top four considerations for a man (four traits which my boy possesses in abundance):
1. Kindness
2. Intelligence
3. Sense of humor
4. Personality
"No money? You don't care about money at all?"
"I can make my own money."
"But raising a child! It's expensive."
"Well, maybe I won't have children."
Jaws dropped. I could have told them I was a lesbian, or a space alien, and they could not have been more shocked. Lina could not deal with this.
"Your family! There will be no more!"
"I have a brother. He'll probably have children."
"It's good to have a family, though. It brings happiness."
Sometimes I don't know if she really means the stuff she says, or if she says it just to fool me into thinking that she really thinks it. I can no longer distinguish the difference between earnestness and irony. Her parents also don't believe in eating fast food or (if I understand today's discussion correctly) shopping at LotteMart (it's that Japanese thing again). I'd be curious to meet her mother, I'm sure the two are very similar.
I still think that teaching is pretty much the least "blog-worthy" part of my life, but since my dad has been asking and since the school is a bit different than most other hagwons, I figure a brief rundown of my day isn't entirely vacuous narcissism. BEHOLD, MY LIFE:
My day officially starts at 2, but I try to get to work at least ten minutes early because I dislike arriving later than the Korean teachers (who all start at 1.50). It just makes me feel privileged and pampered.
The first hour of the day is given over to time for lesson planning. If I have to, this is when I hammer out the Power Point presentation I'll be using for the next couple of days. Otherwise, I correct written assignments or plan activities for my more challenging classes: making worksheets, generating puzzles, downloading relevant videos from the Internet, etc.
At 3, we all have lunch. One of the moms or other relative of a student prepares lunch for us, presumably in exchange for a discount on tuition. It's pretty good, there's a nice variety (though it's obviously always Korean), and there's plenty of it (as opposed to Cassandra, which always had the same lineup of kimchi, jjigae, and rice, and never enough for the teachers). I do miss my daily dose of Kimbap Cheonguk and dolsot bibimbap, but I'll gladly take a free lunch! Especially when the free lunch has a good chance of being budae jjigae, as done properly by a Uijeongbu ajumma.
After that, it's back to planning until my first lesson, which is anywhere from 3.40 to 4.35. The curriculum at this school is largely based around pop music and American movies. They watch one movie every two months, for November and December it's been Elf. My job is to review scenes of the movie with the students and make sure they understand what's going on. Since the clips are never longer than like ten minutes (and mostly falling in the three- to six-minute range), there's not a whole lot of content and I teach in short twenty minute blocks. With most of the classes, I put together a Power Point with screen captures from the movie and questions from the students' homework book, and then tag on a Power Point game at the end, usually Bingo but I'm always on the lookout for something else.
I have two of these movie classes that are forty minutes in length, so I spend a bit more time prepping those. It can be difficult to stretch out a three minute movie scene for that length of time, but on the other hand, it's nice to have the time for proper warm-up activities, giving feedback, etc.
Three of my classes are advanced beyond the point of the movie curriculum. Instead, I teach them from a "Speaking and Writing" textbook. It's a pretty low-budget affair (typos, no proper bookbinding, WordArt graphics) and the topics can be hit and miss. "Identity Theft"? Not really that interesting or relevant to a 13 year old Korean. "Green Profits"? Lots of stuff about the environment to talk about. "One Laptop Per Child"? Great time to talk about charity, poverty, and the ethical and moral obligations surrounding wealth. These are the classes I show videos in: first of all, they're forty to fifty minutes long, so there's plenty of time. Second, sometimes the topics are boring, so the videos help maintain interest. And sometimes I think they're just good for cultural awareness, like the ad campaign for One Laptop Per Child. The more access Korean students have to other cultures and accents, the better.
My last class ends around 8.50 or so, depending on the day. I go home at 9 or 9.20, depending on the day, but I usually stay a little later to finish marking written assignments I've accumulated through the day or to brainstorm lesson plan ideas for the next day. Again, I feel like a huge jerk leaving at 9 when everyone else is stuck there until 9.30.
Everyone takes turns washing the dishes from lunch. My day to do that is Tuesday. Sometimes other miscellany comes up but it's never unmanageable: help some of the students practice for an English language speech contest, proofread and edit my boss' son's essay for his SAT prep hagwon, etc. Then I come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and do it all over again the next day.
I will be quiet around here again, for a little bit. This time, I will be writing a novel instead of working at a crappy school, so don't worry! My silence means good things! But since today was the first day at my new school, I wanted to share the highlights of my "getting to know you" day. I showed them photos of my friends and family and important places back home. Two pictures in particular I want to pick out.
This me and my family on Thanksgiving. Clockwise, starting with the person who is very obviously my grandmother: my Mom-mom, me, my brother, my mom, my dad, my Uncle Steve, and my cousin Haley. (Not pictured is Aunt Donna, my mom's sister.) A pretty textbook "American" picture. Everyone knew it was my family, my older students knew it was Thanksgiving. Then I asked them if they could guess who's who. Every single student who saw this picture was convinced of two things. One, that my brother was my father. Two, that my father was my grandfather.
Before they saw that one, though, I showed my kids this one.
This me and the boy on a springtime cruise to Helsinki. I asked them: "Who is this?" A not insignificant number replied, in all earnestness: "Your mother and father."
My lifestyle must be aging me faster than I realize!
And going to Immigration is only a couple steps above going to Prison, but definitely not as fun as going to Camp. (Confession: I haven't seen a single Ernest movie.)
Anyway, I have successfully done whatever it is I had to do to change my visa and not be a questionably-legal worker in Korea. It took the better part of my morning and I did it all without crying! ("Cry until something works" was actually my plan B, in case the plan A of "Hope that someone will speak English and babysit you" didn't work out.)
A word, then about the Immigration Office in Yangju.
First of all, Yangju is a speedbump on the way to the DMZ. My good friend Maddie has a grandfather whose quote often got tossed around between all of us (back when we worked together): "Uijeongbu?! That shithole's a speedbump on the way to the DMZ!" Not so anymore.
So I don't understand the decision to move the immigration office to Yangju, which by all means seems much smaller, poorer, and more difficult to get to for most of the people concerned. Nonetheless the building is nice, and new, and probably the nicest and newest thing in the entire dong, if not the surrounding ones as well.
Second of all, despite it being, y'know, Immigration and dealing with, y'know, people who are not Korean, there is a dearth of helpful interpreters or signage in any language but Korean. I'm not trying to play the "I'm an English teacher and my life in Korea is SO HARD" card: I mean to say, a government office providing extremely necessary services to a group of people who might not speak Korean, or might not speak it well, should probably take that into consideration when setting up its office. I mean, even subway announcements are in Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese. Would it be too much to ask the same of Korean Immigration as well? (Honestly, they probably only really need English, Chinese, and Russian.)
They did, helpfully, check off all the boxes in the forms you needed to fill out beforehand (literally every copy of every form had checkmarks, grandfathered in from whatever master copy years and years ago) as well as provide a sample guide so you could see exactly what to put where (though only in English). Unhelpfully, the forms were in no way labeled and there were quite a few there to pick through. What US military needs is (presumably) different from what I need is different from what a student or gyoppo needs. Seoul immigration does have the helpful "1345" foreign language hotline, which I suppose you could call in a pinch,
Other blog accounts of this office spoke of understaffed desks and long wait periods, but while I was there every station was manned and I only waited a couple minutes to speak with a clerk. The first one I talked to was a fellow whose English seemed limited, and after looking at my papers provided me with the correct forms to fill out to transfer and extend my visa. I finished those, took another number, and talked with a younger and more fluent girl (fluent enough that she commented to her coworker, in Korean, on the "Konglish" in the Korean forms). She got me squared away and was probably more patient with me than I can imagine, as fatigue, vague illness, and stress were doing their best to make me an impossible human being to deal with.
It would have been easier with a native Korean with me, but everyone at the new school is too busy working so the unspoken assumption was that I'd take care of it myself. My mom commented on my self-sufficiency back when I was considering leaving my job in Bundang, but really I'm not. If I had not had the sheer dumb luck to have a clerk with a relatively high level of English fluency, I probably would have cried, at which point things would either sort themselves out (to get the fat blubbering foreign girl to stop being an awkward production as soon as possible) or I would have gone home in defeat. Neither way is a very graceful way to handle failure.
Beyond the stress of foreign paperwork, it was a beautiful day to be out and about for four hours. All of the cabbies in Yangju drove with the window down to take advantage of the mild weather and the sunshine. The leaves are just beginning to change in places, and while it's getting chillier (down to single digit Celsius temperatures in the night), the humid summer air has evaporated away into the refreshing clarity of autumn.
I have to go back and finalize everything in a few weeks (things get outsourced to the big office in Seoul instead of being taken care of in the assorted provincial offices) but 95% of the remaining bugbear hounding at me since I changed jobs has been taken care of.
I suppose now that I have moved house, it's an appropriate time to say that I no longer work at Cassandra Academy. I've settled back in to Uijeongbu and am due to start a new job one week from tomorrow. I'm really excited both to be back in Uijeongbu and also to start this new job because it seems like a good one. And once again the header of my blog is relevant to my locale!
Even with all the excitement, however, there's also more than a little resentment and bile below the surface—after all, I did leave the job for a reason. Many reasons. The first instinct is to spew that bile far and wide over the Internet, even though I realize that's not entirely fair. The school was simply not a good match for me, and they can't be blamed entirely. Not only that, but there are plenty of other English teachers who get treated even worse—to say nothing of the manic work schedule of a typical Korean. There is a little bit of entitlement in my anger, I realize. In the interest of moderation, I will enumerate my reasons (because hey, it's my blog and I do what I want), but avoid naming names.
Cassandra Academy used to be to a branch (or franchise, I'm hazy on how these things are sorted) of the mega-chain POLY. That's the most identifying information I'll name, mostly because its history as a POLY school has a lot to do with how it's run now. The books and curriculum are all (I'm 90% certain) POLY's material, as are the hours (9 AM to 7.30 PM). Cassandra has two campuses, with plans to open nine(!) more; right now one campus has typical hagwon hours and the other campus has atypical hours. I worked at the atypical one.
My first and foremost complaint is the hours. While there is a ninety minute block in the middle of the day to prep for your afternoon classes, plus another hour for lunch, the fact remains that you spend ten and a half hours every day more or less tethered to your work. If you're the kind of person who has boundless energy, both mental and physical, then it's not an entirely untenable schedule. When I first arrived in Korea, even, I could manage it, since the sheer and utter exuberance of being back in Korea carried me through the hours to scheduled dinner dates with friends I had not seen for a year and change. Once I got settled in, however, it didn't take long for me to wear down.
That's why my updates have been so intermittent and lacking in depth since I've been back: I don't have the time to sit down and set down my thoughts in anything other than a cursory, skim-the-surface manner. The longer entries I've posted (for example, what I wrote a while back about "who owns Arirang?") have taken weeks, due in part to the fact that just as I would hit a good writing groove, I'd check the time and realize I had to go to bed. Then factor in revisions and editing and spell-checking, and you add even more time. There are still two more drafts sitting in the Internet ether, waiting to be finished at a time when I have more brain juice.
Not only that, but the broad expanse of hours means that doing any kind of life maintenance is impossible. Your only real free time is the weekend, but most of the things you need to do are closed on the weekend. Either that, or they're the things you don't WANT to spend your weekend doing (like getting teeth pulled). Your only window of opportunity for life administrative duties would be your lunch hour and part of your prep. Otherwise, you have to call off and then everyone else who does work gets screwed over because they have to cover your classes.
The other big reason I left was an absolutely toxic work environment. My manager at Sherlock was not the most popular guy, but I've never carried as much sustained rage at his shenanigans as I have at the (former) head foreign teacher at Cassandra, a woman held in utter contempt by each and every teacher who worked under her. In one of those twists of fate you kind of come to expect in the corporate world, at the company picnic on Saturday the owners announced that she was being promoted to Vice Director. The fact that they did this despite numerous complaints from teachers about her is, paradoxically, both mind-boggling and par for the course. Clearly they value her decision to stick with the school (and the pretty sweet gig and cozy schedule she set up for herself) above the complaints from teachers who come and go after a year, or two at the most. Even when they keep hearing complaints from a number of different teachers.
There's a whole litany of complaints I have about her, but I will sum it up as neatly as possible: she is in a managerial position without even an iota of managerial training, and it shows. She micromanages, she undermines your authority in the classroom, she delegates work to teachers that should really be under her purview, and she is not one to rise above petty disagreements. Even the students—or at least most of the ones that I taught—dislike her. One of my older students called her Voldemort. And I say all of this as a teacher who managed to get treated pretty well: she only dumped work for me to do during my free periods (named, of course, "R&D periods" so they can justify giving you more work to do) a couple of times and never pulled me aside for awkward confrontations.
Other little things came up that contributed to my decision to leave: lack of communication between the owners, other administrators, and the teachers; the fact that they do the bogus "base salary plus a monthly bonus" bullshit so as to cheat you out of money on your pension and severance; useless and inefficient "teacher meetings" (but then, is there ever an effective and efficient meeting?); lots of little bullshit that we were some how required to do despite it not ever being mentioned either in the interview or in the contract.
In the interest of being "fair and balanced," I will say this: those who work at the other campus with more typical hours and without the same head foreign teacher enjoy their work and seem to be treated pretty well. It is not a problem with the whole company, per se; just that the particular campus where I worked was not a fun place. If the managing situation was different, it could easily be a tolerable, if not fun, place to work. And while the "low base salary plus monthly bonus" is a bunch of crap, they still send you home every month with very decent pay, all told. The actual teaching is a breeze, as there is a lot of content in the material (maybe, in some cases, too much) so you're not stuck with wondering what to do next. Coming from a school that used utterly contentless books (try spending ten class periods teaching fifth graders the concept of comparatives and superlatives after they get it on the first day, from a book targeted at seven year olds), I had a lot more fun in my classes at Cassandra than I did at Sherlock. It just wasn't enough to counter the fact that the hours were soul-sucking and that the management was subpar.
I would hate for this to be anyone's first experience in Korea. My prior life here meant I had loads of networking opportunities available: people recommended recruiters to me, forwarded job openings, and eventually I found my new job via the Uijeongbu Crew Facebook group. Many other people at Cassandra, however, don't have that prior experience to draw on, which makes leaving much more difficult. Hopefully I can provide them even just a fraction of the assistance I received, should they make that decision.
Anything else would be too personal to provide in a public forum, I feel, but I am amenable to any questions asked of me in private. I'll just let Johnny Paycheck and David Allen Coe play this entry out:
One of my lower-level classes read an article about Ban Ki-moon being reelected as Secretary General of the UN. This was the worksheet they did after the reading.
DON'T JUDGE ME FOR USING COMIC SANS I TEACH LITTLE KIDS OKAY??
While I'm sure this student had help from his parents, I'm also sure he understands exactly what he wrote. My favorite line is: "It was [a] dark age for Korean[s]." Quite the poetic turn of phrase!
The views expressed herein are entirely my own and are in no way reflective of my employers, who shall remain nameless in the spirit of good common sense.
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