Teaching English in Seoul

My school

 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. 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 mostly teach third grade, and a few second grade classes.   At my school there is another NSET.  From talking with other NSETs, it is rare for there to be two of you at a school.  

I teach 20 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 20 classes a week, my job requires that I teach 22.  To make up the difference,we are required to do a few extra-curricular activities, such as arranging monthly contests (English Pop song contest) or events (a sport, or maybe cooking).  We also have a weekly ‘English Cafe’ where students and the NSETs talk about a specific topic, and the students get credit for attending.  The last and my least favorite extra-curricular work is our morning English broadcast, where the other NSET and I blather on about a topic that surely doesn’t interest our students, and I think wastes everybody’s time.

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. 

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 am not sure when my school was built.  There are two wings, four floors, and a round building in the crook of the two wings that houses the library, gym, and main office.  Behind the left wing is a cliff side.  Between the two wings is the dirt yard used for gym classes.  My office is on the third floor on the right wing. 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.  There is a grounds keeper who lives on the first floor in a secret apartment.  I was told about it because in the winter teachers would go into that room to smoke, and I smoked at the time.   The entrance to the grounds keeper’s apartment is hidden behind a really really large mirror with a wooden stand.  

Behind the left wing and in front of the cliff 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 back there.  I always hear them crowing, but I’ve never seen them.  There is also a badminton court for the teachers.  Koreans love badminton, and I think that is great.  There are teacher tournaments.  I played with the history teacher against the principal and my head teacher.  We lost.  

The student body is 99.9% Korean.  There are two Mongolians and one Korean-American.  I fully suspect that some of these kids aren’t all Korean, but that it a taboo subject here, so I can’t ask.  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.  

Its a sweet job, and a good opportunity for travel and loads of other things.  Eating kimchi, burning incense, traveling by taxi for cheap…