Kindergarten

Wow, I can't believe it has been a year since I started the whole process to come to Korea. Since then I have gotten to Korea and have been teaching for 11 months. Wow! Time really does fly. So much has happened in the last year as well. Lately there have been more changes at school as well.

This time the changes at school have been for the better. Ha, for once! The school just hired two new foreign teachers. One guy is from the States, and the girl is from Australia. It's been fun to introduce them to Korea so far. I also have a new schedule. I am mainly a Kindergarten teacher now. I teach Kindergarten from 9am-12:30pm. Then I have a two hour lunch break and come back to teach elementary kids from 2:30pm-6pm. It's a long day but I was given a raise so that makes it a bit better. I may also move apartments again. (Yes, that will be my fifth time moving.) I enjoy my apartment now but I am commuting to school. Because I commute, my school is offering to move me to a closer location so that I can just walk to school. That would be nice because where I live now is at the very edge of the city. When I move I will be slightly closer to things. We'll see when that happens though...

My first kindergarten class is a 6 year old class. They are wonderful students. I'm pretty sure they're all geniuses. Everyone in that class learns really fast, they participate, speak English, and have good attitudes. Seriously, an angel class. My other kindergarten class though, is a different story. They are 4 and 5 years old. A bit young if you ask me. They have never spoken English before, never been around a foreigner before, and are used to spending their days with Mom. So on the first two days of this new class of mine all they did was cry. And I'm not talking about a little bit of pouting. I'm talking about full out wailing, tears flying, body convulsions...the works! Of course I don't have my own children and I'm not trained to teach first timers, or any children in fact, so I had no idea what to do. All the crying actually made me feel like I was going to cry too. It was an odd sensation to have. I'm glad I didn't cry though, otherwise the class truly would have been a mess. Instead, I just stood there with my hands up in the air. What do I do?!, I thought. So I tried singing, dancing, drawing pictures on the board, making faces...really I tried everything I could think of. Nothing worked! So I spend the rest of class going from student to student hugging them and saying nice things in hopes they would stop crying. Wow!

Kindergarten is getting better now though. My younger class has stopped crying and their personalities are beginning to show. I'm having a hard time controlling and teaching them though because first of all I just have no idea what I'm doing. Second of all, these kids have no experience with school, or teachers, or learning. Everything is brand new to them. So just getting them to sit down is a challenge for me. Teaching them English is a whole different ball park. I have no idea where to start. I guess I should start with the ABC's. Even that is hard though. We've spend all week on 'A' and they still don't understand it. I seriously need training for this job because I'm completely in the dark here. First year kindergartners are far more challenging than I could have ever guessed!

I only have three more months of this though, thankfully. I love teaching, but I am in serious need of a break. I just need to relax for a few months before I can even think about coming back here to teach some more.