To begin, I was told that today I’d only have to teach two out of four classes because the kids were having class elections (a couple of days ago they all marched around the school with signs and posters and chants…). So last night I decided to celebrate with a couple of G&Ts and some beer with dinner—Lisbeth left my apartment saying “when I turn my head like this you have four eyes”.
(Neel and I eating Galbi (Korean BBQ), one of our favorite meals in Seoul)
When I get to school, I find out we have to teach all the classes. The reason for this is that the homeroom teachers can choose to hold class elections during different time periods than the officially scheduled ones. Their incentive to do this is that they want the kids to have English class because when they have English class the homeroom teacher gets to leave the classroom and take a break. So they call up the English teachers and “ask” them to come in and teach English that day. I put on all my best powers of persuasion and told my co-teacher, Yong-eun, that I thought that was kind of mean. She managed to get us out of one class but the other one was taught by a male teacher who was in charge of overseeing her duties as coordinator of after school classes.
This is third period. So right before we’re supposed to go to class, Yong-eun tells me she has a meeting to go to, and she’ll meet me up there. When I get up there, the kids are in full swing craziness, screaming “hello teacher” as soon as I get in the room, up out of the seats, drawing on the board, etc. Yong-eun tells me she has to go back to the meeting because it started late and was taking longer than expected and could I please entertain the students until she got back? Here are some things you should know before I continue the story:
1.This class is a third grade class. Third grade is the first year students are officially introduced to English.
2.This is the first English lesson this class has ever had.
3.I’ve never taught a third grade class by myself.
4.The homeroom teacher of this class is male. As a general rule, classes taught by male teachers are usually not as well behaved.
Needless to say, I had a very hard time entertaining them for the thirty minutes she was gone. I searched for “funny animal videos” on youtube and put them up on the screen. Kids asked to go to the bathroom and I had to tell them know by forming an “x” with my hands and leading them back to their seats. It was a night mare.
This whole situation makes me upset not because I feel as if my co-teacher left me in the lurch, but because of the reasons behind why she had to go to the meeting.
She was meeting with her after school committee of teachers because, on top of her responsibilities as an English teacher, she’s also in charge of after school classes (which she doesn’t teach). Her committee consists of her, a head teacher (the homeroom teacher of the class I was currently suffering in) the vice principal and another sixth grade homeroom teacher that was assigned to help Yong-eun. There are several reasons why this meeting was ridiculous:
1.The meeting had to be held in the third period, a time when Yongeun had class. We had just had an hour break before that in which she could have had the meeting; however, the meeting was probably arbitrarily set up by the vice principal and to have it changed at the last minute would have been seen as disrespectful to the VP. Lame.
2.The meeting took longer than expected because the sixth grade homeroom teacher that was supposed to help Yongeun dared to complain about her added workload. This was unforeseen because no one is ever supposed to complain or have negative feedback about anything except the administration. The Vice Principal was angry about her disrespectfulness. Yongeun was mad about the sixth grade teacher not taking her share of the work. The head teacher was mad because the VP’s solution was to assign the head teacher more of the work.
Now, the sixth grade teacher is new to the school, which puts her at the bottom of the totem pole which is why she was assigned to sixth grade (the worst grade) and to extra after school program work. BUT, she is also an older lady, which earns her some respect and is probably why she felt she could talk back to the VP.
The head teacher is male which automatically puts him at the top of the totem pole. Also, head teachers and positions of higher authority generally have less responsibility than their underlings.
This leaves poor Yong-eun at the bottom of the totem pole, overseeing a program that she has no concern for and no experience with just because she’s young and female and, therefore, least likely to argue.
Also, this leaves poor me, overseeing a third grade class that does not have the slightest idea what I’m trying to tell them and whose first experience of English class is funny animal videos and poor classroom management.
There is one more thing I want to cover. In general, the number of male teachers in elementary schools is much lower than female teachers; however, they almost always occupy a position of authority. Principals are almost always male and VPs are like seventy percent male. Male teachers are usually head teachers of their grades or programs (like the after school one). Our current English head teacher is a male home room teacher who doesn’t speak a word of English. Further, most of the time classes that have male homeroom teachers generally tend to be less well behaved. The men don’t concentrate on their classes or teaching, rather they try to scale the administrative ladder. There are exceptions, of course. One male teacher in particular I like really well. He’s a good teacher and his classes both respect him and like him.
To conclude, here is a list of random happenings I thought you might find amusing:
1.Instead of trying to separate the fish meat from the bone, I have resigned myself to eating fish bones during school lunches.
2.When my third graders got their English names, most of them liked the names “Jennie, Abby, Hannah and Lisa” They didn’t like “Jade or Patrick”
3.I wanted someone to be named Bob, but in Korean it translates to “bap” which is the Korean word for “rice.” Yongeun said no one would go for that.
4.Today the kids followed me all the way down the hall saying “goodbye” and waving.
5.I had to sprint yesterday to make my bus home. When I finally got on the bus, the bus driver made some exclamatory comments which I didn’t understand, and when I didn’t respond, kept saying them louder and louder until I just ducked my head and pretended to text someone on the phone.
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