My first day at a Hokwon
My first day at school was over whelming to say the least and couldn’t imagine how Jenna must of felt because at least I had her there to show me the ropes. I didn’t have to be there till 2pm as 2pm – 3pm is teaching preparation time and is when all the lesson planning is supposed to take place. Anne one of my Korean co-teachers and the only one that speaks good enough English briefly explained to me how each class was run.After I sat in on part of Jenna’s lesson and I had the tour guide of the six small classrooms in the school and was introduced to every class I was told by Mr Kwack that I could go home because I must be very tired. I was very thankful for this and just went home and slept.Wednesday morning arrived and I was a little nervous that the students wouldn’t understand me, or do anything I told them to do. I had also realised in my visit to the school the day before I was a bit of a novelty and had a constant stream of kids coming up and staring at me. Some managed to ask my name and tell me how beautiful I was just before they ran off giggling. My first lesson was on a book called ‘Bear Hug’ I will never forget it. It went something like , “Mama bear I want a hug, a big hug, a small hug, a growing very tall hug…” and the teacher I share the lesson with Jennifer (who speaks very little English) kept repeating memorise, memorise. I quickly worked out after speaking to Jenna and after a few more lessons that I was literally here to read aloud and get the students to repeat it. At this point I felt a little deceived, that everything I had been tested on through the online TEFL course was nothing like what I was expected to do here. From the impression I got on my first full day, I was there to simple teach pronunciation, by getting the kids to memorise the book. Unfortunately memorizing a book doesn’t mean you can read a book, which I quickly found out over the next few days.
A picture of my school its the floor with all the little blue bears on, Jung- Chul.
I am a little excited to get stuck in though you get to plan your own lesson and play games with the kids and as long as you get results the teachers don’t really care how you do it. So I am going to try different techniques with different classes and see if I can make a difference. Watch this space!
- Posted by k_millington on 04/12/2006.
- k_millington's site
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