Mark's Job: Go Poly School!

Basically, I teach English to Korean kids (or “teacha the Engarishy” as most of them would say).

(Note: for the "I'll just watch the movie version" types: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKW-YAX_vWw)


I get to work by 9:15, and from 9:50 to 2:10 I teach 4 year old kids. I have 45 minutes for lunch, but other than that it’s reading, writing, phonics, etc. one hour after the other. It’s a pretty rough schedule for a 4 year old, but it’s my job. The fact that a lot of them can not just read, but write coherent sentences with only minor spelling mistakes is pretty crazy. Sometimes we watch short videos (Jack Johnson’s “Upside Down” music video and Gene Kelley tap dancing in “Singing in the Rain” are surprisingly big hits). Sometimes we play music and dance. Mostly, however, we study. It can be really frustrating to work with the kids, and sometimes I feel like they don’t get anything at all. But other times, like the time one of my 4 year olds read a full sentence on her own for the first time, I want to cry I’m so happy. At 2:10 we walk them to the bus, and I take my well deserved break (during which I sometimes write blog posts like this).

At 3:15 it’s back in the trenches with 2 hours of vocab, grammar, and writing to 1st graders followed by the same to 2nd graders. From 6:30 to 8:00, I teach reading to 5th graders. All the students in one of my classes have lived in the U.S. or another English speaking country for at least a couple years. That class is about like your average American 5th grade class in every positive and negative way: they understand everything I say, they read and write fairly well, and they won’t stop talking for more than 10 seconds at a time. The other class has little or no international experience, so like most Korean students they’re well behaved, hardly ever volunteer answers, and understand maybe 2/3 of the words I say (meaning they miss at least one or two a sentence). I haven’t decided which class I like working with better, but after working with 4 year olds all morning the 5th graders might as well be 25 for how mature they seem to me. When the clock hits 8:00, class is dismissed, I drop everything in the teacher’s room and I don’t think about my job again until 9:15 the next morning.

Now given the time of day my 5th graders are coming, I’m sure you’ve realized that I don’t teach at a school. I teach at a “Hagwon”, which literally means a place for learning. Of course really it means “a place parents send their kids because keeping up with the Joneses in Korea means your kid outscoring theirs on the SAT and has nothing to do with house size or Christmas lights." Most kids go to at least 2 or 3 every day when school gets done. Whether I agree with the fact that Korean elementary school students spend 12+ hours studying, I figure since they’re here I might as well make sure they get something for all their work. I usually wear a shirt and tie, but I try to be a little more audacious than the usual Sunday attire. I try to look formal, but not so much that I’d be totally out of place in a Dr. Seuss book. As I’m writing this, I’m wearing a light green tie and a purple/white striped shirt with black slacks. Nobody’s complained yet, so I must not look too terrible.Well, that’s what I do in a nutshell. I love my job, and it pays just fine. The hours are long but the kids are great!
-Mark