Before you start reading this post, thinking, “wow, this is Dylan’s first post in over a month”, let me just say that I am right there with you and realize that I have neglected Millennial Abroad, like a career-obsessed parent and their latch-key child. Blogging was just so much easier to accomplish in Brockville during those pre-departure days. Chalk this one up to Busan being infinitely more interesting than Eastern Onterrible.
While these next few weeks show no signs of slowing down, I’ve challenged myself to expend more energy maintaining Millennial Abroad (read: at least one post a week). A boy can only eat so much delicious Korean BBQ, sunbathe on so many beaches, and obsess over so many episodes of Orange is the New Black.
I thought an appropriate (first/substantive) topic to blog about would be my occupation as an English teacher, given that’s my primary purpose for relocating to South Korea and where I spend the majority of my time, week-to-week. Without further ado, I will now attempt to describe the first four weeks in the life of my alter ego, “Dylan Teacher” as thoroughly as my limited simian brain can muster. Off we go.
Neighbourhood
The LCI Kids Club logo – “Learn English, Learn the World”
I am working full-time as an ESL teacher at a hawgon (private academy) called LCI Kids Club in Centum City, a fantastic urban development in the heart of Haeundae-gu (‘gu’ means ‘district’ in Korean). Centum City is an absolute dream location. It’s fabulous, chic, and it bustles and rustles with yuppies, fashionistas, and families alike.
Perhaps most notably, Centum City is home to the Shinsegae Centum City Department Store, otherwise known as the largest shopping complex in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. In other words, I scored a teaching contract in one of the foremost areas of Busan and I am super blessed because I am able to frequently stroll through Shinsegae drooling over Armani watches and Prada suits, while wearing $12 loafers from H&M.
The LCI Kids Club elevator, otherwise known as the slowest moving elevator in all of Busan
Shinsegae has over 700 stores, a full-sized ice rink, a CGV Theatre, a four-story golf driving range, a park on the roof, and most importantly, Spaland. If I haven’t already filled you in on Spaland over iMessage, Facebook messages, or Whatsapp, it is a fantastic oasis where this millennial enters most Sundays, a groggy, incoherent, hungover mess, and emerges a refreshed, invigorated, functional member of society, ready to face another week of school. [I will discuss Spaland at length in a future blog post.]
In addition to Shinsegae, Centum City is also home to BEXCO (The Busan Exhibition and Convention Centre, an international convention centre with 8 floors), Dureraum (the Busan film center for Pusan International Film Festival or PIFF), the Busan Design Center, the Lotte Department Store – the list just goes on and on.
The view of Centum City from the Centum Makus building that houses LCI is fantastic: towering skyscrapers and (mostly) clear skies for as far as the eye can see. If you’re in the right classroom at the right moment, you can even see Gwangalli beach. What a sweet life it is.
Classes
No rest for the wicked
My day is broken up into two halves. In the mornings, I teach kindergarten students who are 5-7 years old in Korean years, meaning they are 3-5 years old in Western years. [To be quite honest, I set a reminder in my iPhone to research the Korean age reckoning system weeks ago but have yet to venture down Wikipedia Road. Soon.] In the afternoons, I teach elementary and middle school aged children, between the ages of 6 and 14.
Every school day begins at 10AM. Typically, I have five 35-minute classes in the morning with my kindergarten (or kindy) students, except for Mondays and Wednesdays when I have a crucial break during fourth period. I often take this opportunity to refuel with a soy caramel macchiato, because, if you weren’t aware, working with young children can be absolutely-frickin’-exhausting. In the afternoons, I have two to four 50-minute classes with my elementary and middle school students.
LCI Kids CLub classroom
I teach a variety of classes to my kindy students, including Verbal Academics, Writing, Arts, Story Telling, Picture Story, Musical, and Science.
Verbal Academics focuses on learning vocabulary for a specific unit and asking and answering questions in full sentences. For example, this session we are learning about “Places We Can Live”. My kindy kids (usually) pick up vocabulary words very quickly, but need encouragement to speak in full sentences (i.e. “Do you live in an apartment?” and having them answering “Yes, I live in an apartment” instead of simply “yes”.) This is one of my favourite classes because I teach it to the lowest level English speakers who are coincidentally the most adorable as well. They hang off my arms and legs when I walk into class and yell “teacher, teacher!” and are so eager to show me what little English they know that I often have to mop my melted heart off of the floor. The cutest thing is when they have something really important to tell me but can’t form the proper sentence and what follows is a sequence of jumbled half-English, half-Korean usually followed by a giggle or high-pitched “teacher!”
Slaving away in Writing Class
Writing varies from class to class, depending on their age and English level (1, 2 or 3). I teach from a textbook that focuses on listening exercises, word scrambles, fill-in-the-blanks, and basic letter writing. The majority of the students in my classes are super competitive and always scream out the answer, even when I’ve asked another student who has patiently raised their hand. I usually put on my stern teacher face, but in reality I’m happy to play some part in crafting another generation of SUPER KEENERS. The one thing I do often forget with my kindy kids is how low level they are, so on days when I have not caffeinated myself enough/am in a bad mood, I will poke a little fun at my kids. For example, one of my students the other day wrote “Me sleep on the house”. Beyond the obvious correction of the misused personal pronoun “me”, I proceeded to draw the little tyke sleeping on top of a house to really drive the point home. Silly Dylan Teacher elicited some laughs and, in my opinion, taught a very valuable lesson in the process. I make sure that snark is a key element of my teaching personal brand in every class.
Ajima the Spider
Arts is probably my least favourite class for the simple fact that quickly after explaining the art project, the class switches gears to “watch Dylan Teacher frantically scramble to assemble said art project for 9 different children in 35 minutes to the sounds of said children exclaiming ‘Teacher! Help!’ in the whiniest (but cutest) voices ever”. In addition, there have been too many art projects where my ego has been bruised after incorrectly assembling an art project designed for a 6 year old. Alas, I did make a pretty ballin’ spider for myself (see below) in one art class that I have named Ajima (which also means “mature, older woman” in Korean – don’t read too much into that).
Letting Youtube tell the stories
Storytelling can be fun, but it totally depends on the class (read: any class larger than six is usually a struggle in keeping the attention of all the children). The key to storytelling is picking books with interesting enough pictures to then ask the children questions about because to be frankly honest, they are not listening to the actual content – they are looking for Dylan Teacher to speak in weird voices for the gremlin and the scary lion and for some crazy watercolour paintings. A quick anecdote: The most ridiculous I have felt since arriving in Korea was in storytelling class with my second year kindy students. I noticed the school library had a book by Will Smith titled “Just The Two Of Us”. Little did I know that this was not a story adaptation of the beloved 90s song but rather the lyrics simply implanted in a 13 page storybook. The only thing funnier than reading “Ha ha, I wanna kiss you all the time / But I will test that butt when you cut out of line, tru dat” is reading said prose to a group of seven year old Koreans who literally have no idea why you are doubling over in laughter at the front of the class.
Somehow, I will never forget the “Phone Box” picture story…
Picture Story focuses on one of the primary things I disagree with when it comes to the Korean school system: passive memorization. The premise of this class is that there are two sets of cards; one set that tells the story, one set that has corresponding pictures. The kids basically memorize the story and then match the pictures to the sentences. I don’t really think it adds much to the otherwise strong curriculum and we focus on the same picture story for an entire month, so it can be difficult to find creative ways to teach it every class. This class, truthfully, often devolves into games of hangman where I encourage the proper spelling of vocabulary learned from the picture story.
Musical is one of my favourite classes (and not just because it’s a lot of self-learning)! The kindy kids get so into the musicals, and it’s so adorable seeing them act out the scenes. Each student portrays a different character and reads/sings along with a CD for the first two weeks. After those two weeks, we switch the CD off and it’s time for my little baby birdies to fly free. We are currently working on a Hallowe’en themed musical that the kindys will act out in October and I have already told my Wisdom Class that we will have the best musical of all the classes (I also may have muttered “or else” at the end of that sentence, but as if my kids understood *that* part, right?!)
My boys killin’ it in Science Class
Science is usually a simple experiment that only serves to remind Dylan Teacher that he was a social sciences/humanities student. We usually discuss the experiment and run through the 5 W’s before I begin assembling the students’ work. A quick anecdote: in my Star Class, which are my two youngest students, we learned how light worked. After assembling the tiny lights, my two little boys ran around the classroom with their lights shrieking “angel, angel!” They also made their two lights “kiss”, complete with puckering noises.
My afternoon classes are more advanced and focus heavily on writing and speaking. Given that my afternoon students are between the ages of 7 and 14, I expect more from them, which is often a lot of pressure to place on young kids trying to learn a new language. I really try to remember myself struggling in French classes this time last year when my students have difficulty understanding concepts or write an incoherent sentence. My afternoon classes include Verbal Academics, Writing, and Science, just like the morning, but also included Picture Description, Report Writing, and Debates.
Happiness Class making my heart swell
Picture Description is pretty straightforward: we supply a workbook with a series of different pictures, and talk about what we see. After compiling a list of 15-20 new vocabulary words, my students have to write a series of sentences describing what they see, in as much detail as possible. I have made a really marked effort these past three weeks to correct the students work *with* the student, as opposed to simply marking independently and giving the book back to the student to rewrite because I noticed a lot of the same mistakes week-to-week. It’s too early to say, but I really feel as though the students are benefiting from this new system. I’ve already seen vast improvements and more creative sentences as a result!
These kids go *apeshit* over their stickers
Report Writing and Debates are very similar. Depending on the level of the students, we supply newspapers (Kinder Times, Kids Times, and Teen Times) to the students. Each class, we select a new article to read and discuss. We focus on the 5 W’s and new vocabulary words in Report Writing, while we focus on intellectually stimulating conversation in Debate class. The students are then responsible for crafting a proper essay, with three arguments to support their thesis. It is seriously so refreshing after a morning of speaking in broken English to very young kids, to be able to hold a conversation with students who prove that the system works. One of my students used the word “contentious” last week and it seriously brightened my day.
Pay close attention the the track listing…
Another interesting way we try to teach English to the older students is with pop songs. At the beginning of every class, the students select two songs from a CD to listen and sing along to. Listening to a group of ten year old Koreans sing “Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”, or “You’re from the 70s, but I’m a 90s bitch” literally never gets old.
Discipline
Discipline within my classes is an everyday struggle. I have mentioned this point to many friends who have inquired what teaching in a foreign country is like: when you’re trying to explain something to a young child in their native language, they can at least comprehend what you are saying, even if they don’t understand your rationality. Trying to discipline kids and explain to them what they did wrong when they don’t speak your language is nearly impossible, because they don’t even comprehend what you’re saying, let alone your rationality.
Students who misbehave lose stars or go “star down” (according to my students)
I think before coming to Busan I had this romantic vision of a sea of obedient young Korean students, expectantly waiting for me to enter the classroom with toothy grins and a big “hello teacher!” in unison. Don’t get me wrong, this is quite often the case – my kindy kids will run up to me and kiss my hands, pat my arm and leg hair (which they are OBSESSED with), and hug me. However, there will be days where I leave my classes hoarse from shouting, quivering with rage. Students who speak Korean after I’ve told them a dozen times that we only speak English in class. Students who say “no” when you ask them to take out their books. Students who showboat and misbehave simply for the attention. Students who fight over the most petty things with other students, be it an eraser, how to pronounce something, or the colour of something in a book. There have been days where I have sat down in the bathroom stall alone between classes just to absorb the quiet.
Beware Dylan Teacher if you break the rules
That all being said, most days I realize that my experiences are not unique. Every single teacher, parent, grandparent, babysitter, older sibling, librarian, or daycare owner has dealt with this, and if anything, I have more respect for that list of people as a result. Weirdly enough, I also have more respect for children. There’s nothing more rewarding than entering a classroom where you know a troublemaker is waiting for you and expecting the absolute worst, only for the bell to ring 35 minutes later, and the student worked quietly, or actively participated in classroom discussions, or provided the right answers to your questions. At the end of the day, the pros far outweigh the cons of the job.
Co-Workers
I have really fantastic co-workers. Everyone was super helpful during my first week when I was completely overwhelmed by the rows and rows of textbooks, teaching schedules, and the often finicky copy machine. I work with three foreign teachers (from the USA, Chile, and Ireland – we’re a diverse bunch) and nine Korean teachers. My head teachers – Lauren and Esther – are incredibly sweet, and encouraging, always willing to patiently listen to any questions or concerns. It’s such a happy and welcoming environment to walk into every day, I feel very lucky to work with the team that I do!
Special Events
Friday August 16th, 2013 – Kindergarten-wide Water Fight
Friday August 23rd, 2013 – August Birthday Party
Overall Impressions
Starting a new job anywhere is an adjustment, whether in your home country or abroad. I have been incredibly fortunate to find year-long employment in a place where the elevator doors open and I find myself greeted by a sea of smiling children.
It’s still crazy to think that I have already taught for 5 weeks. I am so excited to see what the next 47 weeks have in store for me!
Millennial Abroad 
