The middle school where I teach

My school

If you want to be an ESL teacher in Korea you can either work for a public school or a hagwon.  Hagwons are private schools with classes starting in the afternoon and continuing until the evening, maybe ten o’clock.  I highly recommend that a prospective teacher work for a public school because the hours are better and you get a lot of vacation time.

I used Footprints Recruiting to find my position, and I’d recommend them.  My job is with SMOE (Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education).  That means I am hired by the government.  Contract’s are commonly for a year.  They provide a a year’s worth of rent and a roundtrip ticket.  A pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.  I don’t think it is a sweet deal because they are angels or suckers, either.  The Korean government is trying to entice foreign workers, and they are fighting much bigger Asian attractions, like China and Japan.  Not to mention Korea’s traditional  instinct to stay away from strange foreign riff-raff.

I teach at a public middle school in central Seoul.  My job title is Native Speaking English Teacher (NSET for short).  The hours are from 8:30 to 4:30. If you work at a public school it is very, very unlikely that you will work with another foreigner. There are three grades in middle school: first, second, and third grade.  These are equivalent to seventh, eighth and ninth grades in the states.  We are a co-ed school, but they segregated the classes into boys and girls classes at the start of my second semester teaching here.   Also, my classes are broken into skill levels.  The lowest level classes are also the smallest classes.  That means I can show students who need more attention more attention.  The low level girls classes are significantly more capable and better behaved than the low level boys classes.

I teach about twenty classes a week.  My 550+ students see me once a week, and they see their Korean English teacher three times a week.  I teach a conversational English class.  I am bound, however, by the text book.  My classes mostly consist of listening and repeating, role play memorization and performance, and my desperate attempts to infuse my dull subject matter with humor.

While I teach only twenty classes a week, my job requires that I teach 22.  To make up the difference, I am required to do a few extra-curricular activities, such as arranging monthly contests (English Pop song contest, etc) or events (a sport, or maybe cooking).  We also have a weekly ‘English Cafe’ where students and I talk about a specific topis for a few minutes.   The students get credit for attending. We also do a morning English broadcast. When I first started working we did the broadcast three or four times a week, but now I only do it once a week.  I used to really dislike it, but I’ve finally come to enjoy it.

In every one of my 20 classes there is a Korean co-teacher.  Both co-teachers (the NSET and the Korean) are on new, undefined territory.  I have 6 co-teachers.  In my higher level classes they typically only provide discipline and a few choice translations, but in my lowest level classes they provide constant translation.

I think it is fair to say that Korean middle school students are far more exuberant and lively than what I remember from my American middle school days.  And by lively I mean chasing each other down the halls and screaming.  It is also a culture that encourages far more physical contact.  Girls and boys pet the same gender’s hair, hold the same gender’s hands, and sit in the same gender’s laps. There isn’t a cafeteria for the students.  Food carts are wheeled in front of every classroom by the kitchen staff and the students serve themselves and then eat in the classroom.  The students also are responsible for cleaning their classrooms and the teachers’ offices.

Behind the school there is a narrow strip of garden.  It is behind an eight foot fence.  It is the school’s land, of course.  I am not sure who keeps it up, and why.  There is a fluffy dog chained up to a dog house.  No one ever walks him or pets him.  He chases birds that get too near.  There are also chickens and rabbits back there.  I always hear a rooster crowing, but I’ve never seen it.  There is also a badminton court for the teachers.

It’s a sweet job, and a good opportunity for travel.  It’s also a good place for recent college graduates to cut their professional teeth.

If you have any questions about jobs and life in Seoul, please feel free to leave a comment and I will get back to you quickly because I am half woman, half laptop.