My first week at work

The annual humiliation of the school photograph is over by eleven. I appear to have passed the test on the clothes and make-up front, having had very obvious compliments on the shade of my eye-shadow and the colour of my shirt.

Without classes until Thursday I arrive at work at 8:30am and leave at 4:30pm giving me lots of time to begin planning lessons. Not an easy task considering I have yet to meet my classes and get an idea of their level of ability and their interests. It’s not until Wednesday that the very evident and obvious fact sinks into my brain – this is a BOYS school. Just boys – all of them between years 7 and 9, i.e. 12-15 year olds, otherwise known as hell on a stick. I rifle through the lesson plans I’ve brought on my laptop to find things suitable for pre-intermediate boys, as pre-intermediate is the level I’m assuming from the ‘hi’s and ‘hello’s followed by big blank smiles I’ve experienced from students in the corridors so far. I find I’m as short on appropriate lesson ideas as I am on appropriate clothing.

Lunch time is great though. All four hundred boys and all 30 or 40 teachers line up with their metal trays to be filled with the one-option menu then sit at the long tables in the school canteen. Always rice, always a bowl of soup but everything else is a surprise. In which school in Britain would you get away with octopus stew as a school dinner? Try your best Jamie Oliver, but I doubt even you would get that one to work. Though I now have the ‘don’t eat meat’ excuse to decline the more obvious chunks, the advice is as useful as ‘don’t drink water’ as almost everything has some piece of animal flesh floating in it somewhere. More often than not the meal is fish and sometimes tofu - meat seems to be a once or twice a week event, though the stock is undoubtedly meat based.

The other teachers do their best to make conversation with me at lunch, but it’s not easy over the noise of a crowded dining hall. Mostly they ask if I like Korean food, which is self-evident as I wolf down every morsel with enthusiasm or if I find the food hot (apparently Peter didn’t like spicy food though Korean ‘hot’ is on a par with a medium curry) or compliment me on my ability with chopsticks. Even the slipperiest noodle is not beyond my grasp now.

Before I’m burdened with lessons to teach, I find time to go with Sun-mi for my medical which is the last condition of my contract. Back in Samchoenpo we walk into the hospital with no appointment and I’m seen immediately with minimum form-filling. I’m weighed and measured, my eye sight is tested (it’s not good, but it’s too hard to explain the glasses v contact lenses astigmatism thing) my blood taken, my chest x-rayed and my urine sampled. It’s all finished within forty minutes and we are free to go.

I plead once again with Sun-mi to help get my laptop connected. I need an adaptor and an internet connection. Mr Lee the Taxi Driver’s words come back about Korean unreliability – this is something that is always going to be done tomorrow. Eventually I persuade Sun-mi that this is first-order priority and she stops off at her husband’s work (they live in Samchoenpo) and asks him to order an adaptor for me off the internet. Next we go shopping and head for the big department store, which turns out to be Tesco. Several thousand Won later I have an iron, some crockery, a few sets of chopsticks and spoons, a drying rack and a few other of life’s essentials.

Still with time to kill before my classes start, I’m invited at the last minute (all information seems to reach me at the last minute) that I’m going with the Year 7 English teacher to a High School in the south of the island to attend a conference. As usual I have no idea what’s going on, but go anyway. After sitting through many power-point presentations in Korean, I gather that this is a government initiative to increase success in English lessons throughout Korea. I’m listening to the success stories of half a dozen pilot schools’ newly tested ‘Global Zones’, and our school is to have one of its own early next year.

Two and a half hours into unintelligible speeches, graphs and statistics, my co-teacher and a teacher from another school (whose daughter is an Anglophile and would love to correspond with me; I give her my email address) slope out to see the real Global Zone in this High School.. It’s an impressive three-room affair, with the evidence of large amounts of cash thrown at it. Huge flat screen TVs for films, karaoke and games in English, video-conferencing equipment, books, posters, even a stage for drama. It seems I’m going to help set up something similar in Namhae Middle School. Sounds like fun.

Thursday I finally get to teach my first lesson. As anyone who knows me as a teacher will know, I hate being observed. I can be as silly and as dramatic as I need to be with a bunch of kids, but put one adult in the room with me and I’m a tongue-tied lump of shyness. Every lesson I will teach in Namhae Middle School I will teach with a co-teacher. Not so fun.

My first lesson is with Year 7 and needless to say, a disaster. After spending the day with my Year 7 co-teacher at the Global Zone conference I’m concerned by his level of English, never mind that of the students. The purpose of the co-teacher is to translate when necessary and keep discipline. He seems capable of neither. Five minutes into the lesson and with the students hopping around like a box of frogs, I realise the only person present who can understand me is me. I slow down my speech and limit my grammar to the simplest baby utterances and wait for it to be over. .

I do detect though, that with a computer and a screen in every class room, power-point is my best friend in getting the attention of unruly and mono-linguistic teenagers. At least I can get a ‘wow’ out of them with a few fancy animations.

Quickly modifying my lesson with help from some of the stuff Peter left on the PC (though mainly it’s of a god-bothering nature) I dumb it down to a ‘who am I?’ question and answer picture presentation and the second group Year 7 lesson is better. A look of comprehension passes over my co-teacher’s face and I know I’m on the right track. My instincts guide me to exaggerate circumstances in order to relate to the kids. I was born near Manchester (big whoops and calls of ‘Manchester United!”). Photographs fascinate and dare students to ask questions (how old is your son, how old is your daughter – and the favourite, how old are you?). The answer to this last question gets a ‘wow’ and even a ‘your face is too young for 47’ which I take as a compliment but is probably one of the standard and limited text book responses.

My lesson with Year 9 is much better. Not only is it the same lesson, now refined and rehearsed, but the Year 9 co-teacher is a much better ally. He carries the fabled big stick though he doesn’t need to do more than rap on the desk occasionally; these students are disciplined and interested. Having time left over for free-style conversation, my co-teacher asks a question; “Where is your husband?” Whoops. Divorce is a pretty shameful topic in Korea, so I’m about to add to my list of social crimes by admitting I’m divorced. For a brief moment I consider saying that my husband is dead, but that seems an exaggeration too far. My response is more truthful (if they find out I’ve been married three times I may be tarred and feathered) and is met with looks of pity and embarrassment. My co-teacher apologies after the lesson for asking the dreaded question, but what can I say? I’ve never been happier.

Finally I meet Year 8 and I’m well in the swing of things now. Sun-mi is the Year 8 teacher and is a joy to work with. We laugh a lot during the lesson. The students are also a well-disciplined lot, with only the occasional hair and ear pulling needed from Sun-mi to keep them in check. We all laugh good-humouredly at student’s statements of ‘my hobby is kimchi’ (the Korean national dish) and ‘I was born on Earth’ and ‘I like you’ (most students answered I like football or I like sleeping.)

Once I’ve met each of my classes I have to test each of them on reading, writing, speaking and understanding a Cumbrian accent, which may be bad for them but gives me a grace period to prepare some lessons of more substance. If I’m going to appeal to this bunch of teenage boys I need to find out all I can about Ji-sung Park, Manchester United, baseball and the Korean pop groups ‘Wonder Girls’ and ‘Rain’. It’s a learning curve.