Seon Saeng Nim (Teacher) Jennika

My first full week of teaching is over. I started on August 16th (Thursday), so that week was a short one. I have now met all of my classes and things are going well!

My official title is conversational English teacher. I teach 10 different classes twice a week for 20 teaching hours. They are all grade 11s. For English conversation, they split the classes in two to give everyone a chance to participate. This means I have on average 15 students per class (my smallest class is 11, my largest is 17), so I have about 150 students. At the same time as me, the other grade 11 native English teacher is doing conversation class with the other half of the students.

One of my classes. It's an all boys high school.

Where I stand!

I start every day at 8am and work until 4pm, although I have been staying until 5 or 6pm to wait for JM. We work on the same campus, but different schools. It is called Bugil Academy, but JM works at the Global Leader Program (GLP) and I work at the Bugil Boys School. The language of instruction at his school is English and there are only about 90 students in the whole program. My school, however, is Korean instruction where English is a foreign language and there are 300 students per grade. In Korea, high school is grades 10-12.

An aerial view of Bugil Academy taken from their website. The large building on the left is the boys school,
the gymnasium is in the middle, and the girls school is on the right. JM's school, the GLP is behind the boys school.
In the far back is the boys' residence.

I love my campus. The school is beautiful and there are picturesque views from all of my classrooms. Sometimes, when the kids are working, I just stare out the window and admire the scenery. I have a desk in a common office. There are 8 teachers, including me, in this office. It is air conditioned (thank goodness!) and very quiet. A Korean teacher, Grace, has taken me under her wing and helped me get a computer, the school messager system installed, printing capability, and even business cards!!! She is a godsend. Her English is quite good and she helps translate things for me.


The view from my classrooms. I made a panoramic.

My office, also called Department of Planning.

My desk .. I haven't added any personal touches yet.

My business card - I'm important!
Too bad they got my email address wrong. I'm @live.ca, not .com.

My contract says that I have 23 teaching hours per week, so there are 3 extra hours that I have to fill. Usually we do workshops for the Korean teachers to improve their English, but my first week the Principal called me into his office. He asked me to give him private lessons for 2 of those 3 extra hours. Of course I said yes; I can't say no to the principal!! But I was freaking out a little. I mean, how do you teach the principal?! All my worrying was short lived though because I started my lessons on Monday. After asking him a few questions about himself, we started working through an English article. He wants to improve his English for work purposes, so that he can speak to administrators of other schools when they organized exchange programs. So I found an article that a former exchange student wrote for her school newspaper in the US. I figured this would give him another perspective on the Bugil Academy exchange program. We have had two lessons, from 4-5pm Monday and Thursday, and both have gone well. We spent most of the time talking about the principals conference he went to and the educational system in Korea. It's a great opportunity for me to learn more about the school I'm teaching at.

Well, time for me to get lesson planning. It's strange. I am no longer a grad student - I have regular work hours to hold and planning to do! I like this new life.

Jennika