Poly Hagwon

The outside of Poly Magnet

I promised to write about my work - so here goes! I work at what Koreans call a Hagwon, which is a sort of private academy. My hagwon teaches an intensive English-immersion program, mainly aimed at students returning from studying in an English environment overseas. Unlike the Canadian education system, the private schools here don't replace the public schools - the children attend public school in the day and then hagwons in the afternoon. If this seems strange to you, consider that many of the extra-curricular activities Canadian kids do (piano lessons or team sports, for example) are here formalized into hagwons. Of course, there are also academic hagwons for English, math, and so on.

I work an 8 hour day (1:30 - 9:30 pm), but the kids are only at the academy for two or three forty-minute classes each. My day starts with my two classes of Gr. 1 kids, and works upwards through the Gr 3s and 4s into the middle school Gr 6s and 7s.

Although I wasn't really expecting to teach such young kids, the grade one classes have actually been pretty fun. The material (reading, speaking and phonics) is easy to prep and present, so the challenge is keeping the kids engaged and interested, and the high-energy classroom is often a good way to start the day. I say "often" because I don't always start my day in the "ready to deal with six-year-olds" mindframe.

One of my Gr. 1 classrooms.

For their age, they know a surprising amount of English, and are very clever with ways to explain things when they don't have all the necessary words. I asked one of my students what "already" meant, and he replied "first done" - a fairly clever and concise way to convey the meaning of already, in my opinion!

The young kids are also so cute in their speaking and writing. I'll likely be periodically posting memorable quotes, but for now I'll offer this quote from a book report done by one of my students. Asked if she would recommend a book about vegetarians to anyone, she wrote: "I'd like to recommend to Mr. Steve teacher. Because it is very interesting, and good for health."

For the older kids, I teach debating with a few writing classes thrown in. It is challenging since I teach about 12 different debate classes with 6 different levels of textbook, so I really have to keep straight which text I'm using, which resolution we're discussing, and especially what level the next batch of students is at. So far, so good. The next challenge is that some classes are once a week and some are twice a week - so they'll be moving at different rates. Different classes will also sometimes respond very differently to the same material. For example, the first three debate classes I had today all used the same textbook; in one class the students were very reluctant to work in groups - with group members often not speaking to one another - while in another, the groups got along just fine!

But the challenge is often rewarded. My oldest class is discussing the resolution "Mentally handicapped couples should have the right to have children." Today I had them build a case in groups - one group for, one against - in preparation for the debate on Monday.

My M-Poly coworkers, Jason and Jay.

It was a pleasure to see them attack the preparation work, discussing in their groups with voices thrown this way and that.

I should also say something about the people I work with. There are currently 12 foreign (English) teachers at the academy, as well as a number of Korean teachers, counselors, and administrators. Most of the English teachers teach kindergarten, which starts in the morning, and move onto Gr. 1-5 for the afternoon, so I overlap with them in the afternoon. Three of us are left to teach the older (Gr 6-8) kids, in the program known as M-Poly (Middle School Poly) or PAS (Poly American School). This means the people I work most closely with are Jay (the M-Poly Science and Socials teacher) and Jason (the M-Poly literature teacher and academic coordinator), as well as my M-Poly supervisor Julie.

The "little Poly" teachers room, probably empty due to the teachers being in class.

In the day I also work with the "little Poly" supervisor Janet (starting to see a name pattern here?), and the host of little Poly teachers: Erin, Angela, Mike, Abe, Suzie, Taylor, Tom, another Jason and Emma. I've been really fortunate to be able to work with so many other foreigners - they've really helped me adjust and formed my first friend group here in Korea. Our escapades will be the subject of future blog posts (or past ones - note the teachers snowball fighting in the last post).

The last thing I'll touch upon is the work culture. I'm certainly still adapting to the many differences between the environments I have worked in and teaching English in Korea. One difference is the hectic schedule. I teach 7 to 9 forty-minute classes per day, which take up most of my 8 hour day - I'm still planning my classes day-to-day and haven't got to any marking yet! I think only Shad Valley has offered me such a packed schedule, but the whole point of Shad was to devour my life for a month. Here I actually leave work totally behind at the end of the day, to pick it up again the next morning.

As you'd expect from the packed schedule, there is a high expectation of employees on work time. It seems to my Western mind that I (and the other teachers) would be able to teach better if there was a bit less time-pressure on us -

My desk, already cluttered. To the left is my work laptop, to the right are my textbooks. My inbox has grown since this picture was taken.

but I'm learning to adjust both my working methods and expectations of myself to accommodate the schedule. As I mentioned, though, we don't take work home with us - which I suppose is necessary since most of the teachers live in the same building - and I've had great fun with some of the counselors and administrators after work. It does help to work with nice people!

I hope this helps explain what exactly it is that I do with most of my time - and I hope that I have managed to put the complex, changing relationship I have with my work into words. One thing I'm sure of is that each day I feel a little differently about teaching here, and so I suppose that a few months down the line my perspective will have changed too. And what about everything else in my life? Though I fortunately have the internet to connect me with the outside world, my life outside work is scarce at this point, and somewhat limited to the weekend. Is this what it's like to be a grownup, I wonder?