Travel Light 2.1: Grade Levels
I forgot something very important in my last post.
Along with the urban/rural question, you'll be asked what grade you'd like to teach. As I said I teach elementary school. The other posts are middle and high school with the two often getting lumped together in one building. What follows is based on my experiences and those of my friends.
Elementary School
Elementary school introduces the language and focuses on learning vocabulary and understanding simple sentences such as: "I don't like fish. I like chicken" and "Where is the cat? The cat is under the table." I wish there was a bit more emphasis on grammar, at least in the building block sense of a subject and a verb make a sentence, but there's isn't, and if you talk grammar you're likely to get blanks stares from students and teachers.
Kids are energetic to say the least, loud, and noisy. If you can hook them, your class will be wonderful. If you don't, well find your zen place. Seriously. You can't really blame the kids. Imagine if you were in the second grade and your government decided everyone needed to know French. So when you come to class next semester your teacher says "Time for French class", brings in a French speaker who doesn't speak a word of English, gives the French teacher a smile, and then walks out the door.
"Zut alors", to say the least.
The Good: Your classes can be fun time with games, drawings, and songs. (I'm partial to anything that will get my kids to draw a picture.) You can get kids excited about a lesson if you devise a game that interests them, then your day is great and you can't believe you're getting paid to do this.
The Bad: Did I mention the songs? Some of these earworms will devour your brain. "Ally bally, ally bally bee, stand up, sit down, hee hee hee. Open and close, OPEN and CLOSE, ally bally, ally bally bee." Also kids generate chaos, either consciously or unconsciously (I have a few I refer to as Bad Luck Kids who if a ceiling tile were to come loose from the ceiling in the middle of class and drop on someone's head, it would be right above one of these kids). Then there's crap like bullying, in/out group dynamics, and a level of ignorance that can be pretty shocking when it hits.
Middle/High School
On to middle school and high schools, keeping in mind that everything I'm about to say is based on anecdotal evidence from friends.
In high school and middle school, there's more attention to fluency, competency, and comprehension. There's also more of an attempt to rein in the chaos generating factor, which has the big drawback of seeing teachers disciplining kids.
What I envy most about my friends' teaching posts is the potential to have or start a conversation and dialogue in class. My friend who teaches highschool has had classes centered on the use of nicknames (his class was hooked when he used Beyonce and Lady Gaga as examples). Another time he focussed on compliments and his kids ran with it. Also his students will sometimes ask pretty astute or surprising questions. They want to know about America, and he's willing to tell them about it as well as deflate their media-generated misconceptions.
On the other hand, he's complained about his students just not speaking, being more rebellious in a disrespectful way, and the general malaise of rampant puberty and teenagers. The kids are under a lot more pressure to conform, preform (university entrance exams), and I've heard (second hand) news reports of bullying that's now developed into gang activity (no one I know has witnessed anything beyond general high school dickishness).
A last thing, with the way Korea's education system is set up, kids start getting filtered into more performance based schools after elementary school and it's possible if you select to teach at a middle or high school you'll end up at a vocational or disciplinary school. But, take this with a grain of salt. The one guy I know who teaches at one of these schools loves it and says his kids are great.
Which brings me to another point: all of this is simply my experience. it's a collection of what I've seen and heard along with what I wish I'd known before coming into this. Or maybe not. Sometimes not knowing is better, if the fact that knowing is only going to lead you to needless worry that might or might not have anything to do with reality.
Along with the urban/rural question, you'll be asked what grade you'd like to teach. As I said I teach elementary school. The other posts are middle and high school with the two often getting lumped together in one building. What follows is based on my experiences and those of my friends.
Elementary School
Elementary school introduces the language and focuses on learning vocabulary and understanding simple sentences such as: "I don't like fish. I like chicken" and "Where is the cat? The cat is under the table." I wish there was a bit more emphasis on grammar, at least in the building block sense of a subject and a verb make a sentence, but there's isn't, and if you talk grammar you're likely to get blanks stares from students and teachers.
Kids are energetic to say the least, loud, and noisy. If you can hook them, your class will be wonderful. If you don't, well find your zen place. Seriously. You can't really blame the kids. Imagine if you were in the second grade and your government decided everyone needed to know French. So when you come to class next semester your teacher says "Time for French class", brings in a French speaker who doesn't speak a word of English, gives the French teacher a smile, and then walks out the door.
"Zut alors", to say the least.
The Good: Your classes can be fun time with games, drawings, and songs. (I'm partial to anything that will get my kids to draw a picture.) You can get kids excited about a lesson if you devise a game that interests them, then your day is great and you can't believe you're getting paid to do this.
The Bad: Did I mention the songs? Some of these earworms will devour your brain. "Ally bally, ally bally bee, stand up, sit down, hee hee hee. Open and close, OPEN and CLOSE, ally bally, ally bally bee." Also kids generate chaos, either consciously or unconsciously (I have a few I refer to as Bad Luck Kids who if a ceiling tile were to come loose from the ceiling in the middle of class and drop on someone's head, it would be right above one of these kids). Then there's crap like bullying, in/out group dynamics, and a level of ignorance that can be pretty shocking when it hits.
Middle/High School
On to middle school and high schools, keeping in mind that everything I'm about to say is based on anecdotal evidence from friends.
In high school and middle school, there's more attention to fluency, competency, and comprehension. There's also more of an attempt to rein in the chaos generating factor, which has the big drawback of seeing teachers disciplining kids.
What I envy most about my friends' teaching posts is the potential to have or start a conversation and dialogue in class. My friend who teaches highschool has had classes centered on the use of nicknames (his class was hooked when he used Beyonce and Lady Gaga as examples). Another time he focussed on compliments and his kids ran with it. Also his students will sometimes ask pretty astute or surprising questions. They want to know about America, and he's willing to tell them about it as well as deflate their media-generated misconceptions.
On the other hand, he's complained about his students just not speaking, being more rebellious in a disrespectful way, and the general malaise of rampant puberty and teenagers. The kids are under a lot more pressure to conform, preform (university entrance exams), and I've heard (second hand) news reports of bullying that's now developed into gang activity (no one I know has witnessed anything beyond general high school dickishness).
A last thing, with the way Korea's education system is set up, kids start getting filtered into more performance based schools after elementary school and it's possible if you select to teach at a middle or high school you'll end up at a vocational or disciplinary school. But, take this with a grain of salt. The one guy I know who teaches at one of these schools loves it and says his kids are great.
Which brings me to another point: all of this is simply my experience. it's a collection of what I've seen and heard along with what I wish I'd known before coming into this. Or maybe not. Sometimes not knowing is better, if the fact that knowing is only going to lead you to needless worry that might or might not have anything to do with reality.