I’ve been in South Korea for a little over a month now.

Here are my thoughts.

Teaching at Company X in Cheonan is just okay.

Positives: I love the autonomy I have in front of the classroom. No supervisors are there to look over my shoulder. No one’s yelling at me and telling me what to do. Inside the classroom, I’m da boss, and it’s pretty great. I take pride in the work, and feel really good when things go smoothly in the classroom. It’s actually really fun experimenting with what works and what does not work with each group of students. There’s a lot to learn and it’s pretty much all on me to figure it out. In that sense, I like teaching.

More positives: my manager and coworkers are not bad. I still don’t know my coworkers that well, but they all seem nice. As for my manager, at first I had my doubts. But now I know that he is a good boss. Last week, I was supposed to film for probation on Thursday. (Long story short, I failed a module of training and need to send a film of me teaching to Company X Headquarters to see if I’m suited to be a teacher.) I selected Thursday because my classes that day are stellar. But Week 4 classes for Thursday turned out to be all simulation testing materials (aka not teaching intensive and therefore useful for my probation video). So SUPRISE! I had to film on Wednesday, which is my HELL CLASS of FIFTEEN MONSTERBEAST elementary schoolers! But my boss really had my back the whole time. He lied to the kids for me and told them that they had been selected to be filmed for a special video for such-in-such, and the whole time they were really well-behaved, model students. So thank you, boss!  If you know anything about places I’ve worked before then you know it’s a pretty big deal to me to have a boss that will actually help me rather than torture me.

Let’s hope my probation ends and HQ decides to keep me as a teacher.

Negatives: I teach at a hagwon, which is an after school program. So basically, I’m not a real teacher. I’m an after school instructor. The students know this and a lot of them do not respect me. I don’t like having to discipline students but when they act like little minions from the fiery depths of hell I have no choice. I understand their plight: They have to go to school like all day. And that sucks for them, but here they are in my class so I have to teach them. So far, there are two classes that really get to me. One is made up of fifteen crayyyy elementary schoolers. I have to be really bitchy to control them. The other class is evil middle school kids that I’ve mentioned before. These kids, the mean girls, talked shit about me that wasn’t true to the management at Company X last week because I punished them for misbehaving the week before. They made up stories about me never letting them use the internet (for research) or me never letting them work in groups (for collaborative projects). And me just randomly talking about strange things instead of answering their questions. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED THOUGH was during one hour of class I shut down their internet because they were going online to look at KPOP stars and hamsters. And I made them work alone because they refused to talk to the people I put them in groups with. Gah. It just sucks.

More negatives: Cheonan is kind of ugly. I miss nature. I wish I had my first month’s paycheck, already. And I miss my boyfriend. I miss craft beer, too. And avocados.

 

Yep. Life is just okay. But just okay is totally fine with me.