A Day in the Life

Today will be my fifth day of teaching at Kim’s Academy in Mokpo, South Korea. The week has gone by fast and my brain has been in absolute overload. Something that every prospective ESL teacher should know is that this is a serious business and that you have to be responsible and treat it like a job. Every week of school at Kim’s basically follows the same format. On Monday you administer the Word Tests to most or all of your classes. Tuesday through Friday it is a whole different format. At Kim’s each class is broken up into three primary types of classes: The Phonics, The Basics and the Levels.

For Phonics classes I deal with the youngest or most novice of the children. I teach them primarily how to say different types of words, constantly having them repeat until they can pronounce, read and write the words correctly. I teach primarily out of the Phonics lesson book and usually occupy the entire fifty-minute class period.

The Basics are broken up into six different levels and six more different sublevels. With these classes I teach out of one of two different types of lesson plans. I follow along in the book and have each student read. Afterwards we do activities and hopefully take up the entire class period, simple.

The Levels classes are the challenge of the teaching day. I use a textbook and workbook but usually the curriculum is very short and will only occupy the students for a short amount of time leaving me with twenty minutes to kill more often than not. The solution is me supplementing material from the vast array of teaching supplies and worksheets within the academy. So preparation is a huge key!

The other class I have is an Essay class, I have this twice a week and we read out of some selected readings. It’s pretty straightforward; the key is to take your time so you don’t have too much time left over. Everyday our classes rotate amongst the four teachers so we have different classes each day. It’s down to clockwork and precision, six classes in a day with five or ten minute breaks. Just like that the day is over and it goes by in a hurry!

I can’t wait to see what my next blog is about!