It hasn't taken long for us to start to get a feel for how the Korean education system works within a private language school and how much it differs from education in the United States. A few things we have noticed strictly from our perspective thus far:
1) Teacher Appearance: The way a foreign teacher looks and dresses is HUGE in Korea. A teacher at our school that started the same day as we did has already been fired because of appearance. The Korean parents care very deeply about the way their child's teacher looks and if they do not like it they will complain or even pull their child out of the school. Clothes, hair, makeup, everything must look very neat and put together in order to be considered a "good teacher."
2) Parental Influence: Korean parents are all about their child's education. English education for their children, especially their sons, is the most important thing in the world to many Korean parents. The first few days of class the parents would sneak into the hallways where the classrooms were and try to discreetly peer in through the glass doors to see what was going on, to see what the teacher looked like and to see what the teacher was doing with their child. Other parents would sneak their children into class without paying and then try to look into the class to see if it was worth paying for before they did. While our school does not do this, some schools in Korea will broadcast the closed circuit video cameras on the internet so parents can go online and watch every minute of their child's class to see what is going on. I wonder what the teacher union in the U.S. would do if that started there... Many of the students want to work ahead in their workbooks because it is a competition not only between the students, but between the parents to see who's child can finish the workbook first. In some ways it seems the parents almost care too much. In other ways, I wonder how many more students would get help at home and do better with their schoolwork if more parents did care in the U.S...
3) Curriculum: The majority of the curriculum we are using is put out by Sogang University in Seoul (since our school is part of the Sogang Language Program). It is all completely workbook and worksheet based. Games, manipulatives, art, etc. is all considered fluff and should not be used in the classroom because it takes away from the learning time. The more worksheets a student completes the more they know. I find this quite interesting since worksheets are currently frowned upon in the U.S. since they require students to be sitting down at a desk instead of moving like we assume children "need" to. Although Korean students are still kids and like to talk and goof off in class at times, when it is time to do a worksheet, the room is silent. It's time for the students to see who can finish first.
4) School Structure: Since it is only our first week at the school, the first week back for students and the first week the school has been in this new building things have been a bit chaotic and disorganized. However, we still have a pretty good idea of the structure of a day at the school. For the elementary students that we teach in the afternoons it is strictly teacher directed instruction and workbooks. But for the kindergartners there is a bit more freedom, especially with my young kindergarteners. Kindergarteners often start at a private language school when they are five years old. However, Korea has their own way of how people age from one year to the next. When a baby is born in Korea they are one year old. Every lunar year (usually in January, sometimes February) they turn another year older. So if a baby is born in December they are one and turn two within another month or so. By American standards a baby might be only three months old while according to Korean standards they are already two years old. This is why I have kindergarteners who are really only 3. There is not much you can do on a worksheet with a three year old (I'm still trying to get them to hold a pencil the right way). While all of the kindergartners have their workbooks (including my little three year olds), there is also time in the day where students get to go to the gym and each week do science, music, and PE- all similar to a regular school. Although we are expected to eat lunch with the students instead of have our own lunch break, we finish teaching earlier than our scheduled time at the end of each day which is when we are able to do our planning and have a break. There is no doubt they are long days without much break until the end but that's how the Korean culture is. Many Koreans work fifty or sixty hour weeks with little or no break each day. One thing we have learned quick is that Korea does not adapt for foreigners. If foreigners want to be successful, at least as teachers, you adapt to them.
I'm sure we will learn much more and our observations may even change as we still have so much time left here but thought we would share what we have observed this far :)
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