Five months in and a change of pace

This is a bit of a delayed entry I had planned for the beginning of June, but things that had happened caused me to put it on hold for a whole month. I will explain why near the end, but for now, lets keep going with this story.

Its been four months now since my first lessons in English abroad in Korea and I must say there has been quite a lot of personal and educational development on my end. Let me start by saying that I fully respect teachers far and wide, the sort of things they have to deal with are quite overwhelming, but now do I realize just how much work teachers have to put up with so their students can learn and be the best they can be.

To be honest, I had not originally been looking forward to Kindy, I thought it wouldn't be a pleasant experience to teach little kids, but since the first few days, and perhaps weeks, of teaching, I've slowly begun to develop a new sense of care and interest into the little rascals. While some kids make me want to yank my hair out, a good majority of the Kindy I have to deal with have proven to be quite capable of learning and understanding (base-line to be blunt) English as a language.

One of my Kindy kids, Michael, on his 7th B-day

FOOOD!

One of the most interesting aspects about teaching Kindy is how creative and activity-oriented it can be. Something even as simple as birthdays can bring about a whole morning of activities for the kids who are lucky enough to have their birthday that month; less we forget all the snack food and games we play, but that's a given with Kindy classes, you want to have fun. This is the second time I saw a Birthday with my kids and it's always great fun to watch them; though when I need to talk to them about their birthday, they often get all shy and button up, so its up to my co-teacher to speak to them in Korean and read the letters their mother's send them.


One of the largest events I've been through in my school was International Day. I found this to be one of the best activities I had to do with my Kindy class. Not only were we suppose to pick a country to talk about, but also prepare a national food that the country was famous for. I was quite delighted at the prospect, and after much contemplating, I decided to go with Israel.
Weird choice huh?

It actually worked out quite well, we decked out the class in the flag of Israel, White and Blue star of David. We also made Kippa for the students. International day would take two days; the first would be the 'information' day where teachers would talk about their country to other classes but would have to be fun with an activity. After a lot (and I mean a lot) of thought and planning, I finally settled on talking about the temple. Students would come in and get a brief history of Israel and how the Israeli's made two temples. The first one the students make has to be small, but then they destroy is as per history. Then, they make a second temple and it too gets destroyed, keeping only the west-facing wall. Once that wall is fortified, the students line up along it and make wishes. Simple and effective.

The cooking day, which was the second day, was a bit more interesting. I originally wanted to make Falafal, but the fact it might be extremely messy and time consuming cut the idea. My co-teacher suggested Shish-kebab's, which weren't too bad of a choice for us and quite easy to make. There was a ton of food stuffs made that day, from crepes and egg-rolls, to Japanese Noodles and chicken nuggets. It was a very unusual concoction, but a quite delight to eat.

Overall, my experience thus far has been fairly positive. From taking the kids on field trips to playing games with them in class and learning not only about teaching kids, but developing connections and finding many of them to be real sweet children, however, not everything is easy-peasy as time has shown, and sadly, clouds of despair loomed on the horizon.

Near the end of May, the school was going through an Open House session. This sort of thing is a VERY important point in the school's yearly plan; parents for Kindy come in to see their children and get a feel of what sort of things their students do. I had discussed with my co-teacher about this and wanted to plan something simple we could show the parents of our kindy. I had asked her that we should do a Phonics lesson. I've been working with the kids almost three times a week on Phonics and it was getting fairly easy to teach them a fun lesson the kids could enjoy and show their skills. However, my co-teacher said it would be 'too boring' and said I should do something else. I wasn't too keen on that idea as all she left for me to do was Science or Storybook. Neither of those choices I would like to have done, Science has little to no English experience with it as the kids spend most of their time building a toy, while Storybook is almost often just a big game for the kids we play and read here and there, not very good to show the parents either of those, but I wasn't given much else to work with. Even though I expressed my uncertainty, I was told to take one of those two, so I decided to go with Science. I feel this was partly my fault for what will happen; looking back I should have done Storybook, but I felt Science might have been easier for the kids since they wouldn't be so bothered with their parents watching them if they had something to do.

When Open House came however, everything went down the tubes; it was awful. All the kids, even the active one's, buttoned up. None of them engaged when questions were asked, none of them even spoken when I talked to them, and to add insult, one of them even cried for no real reason (perhaps the stress). All in all, it went terribly, and that was just the tip of it. Post that insanity of Open House, my co-teacher, who I had said the idea she suggested wasn't very good, more or less dropped the bomb saying it was the worst open house she had ever done. That's low. I felt utterly beaten that whole week, and it wasn't the end of my troubles either.

The following week I had decided to talk to my director to see how I was doing. Having the open house fiasco still fresh in my mind, I had felt the need to see where I stood with the school. Sadly, this also didn't turn out well; the Director had told me, straight up, I was going to be let go.
The reasons why were odd, all I can say was there had been two major reasons why; I hadn't developed quickly enough for my Kindy classes (apparently there had been complaints about it that weren't passed on to me) and that the Open House had been so bad that the director wanted to find someone else (as I seemed to be lacking the kind of skill she wanted). There was a third reason which goes into my older kids, the fact I didn't often get to things during the lessons, but this was because those classes had a lot to do and not enough time to do them all, but that was the lesser of the two reasons. This blew my head clear from my shoulders. I was flabbergasted, me, for the first time in my life, being let go from a job.

My director wasn't too happy with the prospect of letting me go, she stressed it wasn't something she liked to do, but she had no choice. I'd be given the month of June to finish and if I worked hard, she'd give me a positive review. This is actually a very nice turn of things; despite being soon-to-be let go, my Director had been very helpful in finding me a job and even a place to stay there after. I instantly spent that month job hunting and going out to seek recruiters. My situation, despite being one of dread for being let go, wasn't actually all too bad. I had spoken on a facebook group that deals with Expats in Korea, and my problem
seem to actually be a common thing; Hogwans, private academy's and such, are VERY cut throat. Sometimes teachers will be let go because they aren't suited, other times teachers leave because they don't like the environment. Whatever the case, it happens, and when it does, people can actually find other jobs fairly easily once they are let go.
There are some MAJOR things you need to do before hand, so I'm going to list them right here to help anyone else who might go through (or is going through) the same situation.

1. Keep calm and carry on.
Despite being let go, never lose your cool. You can and WILL find another job, there are plenty here and according to my good friends, many places want to hire people still in Korea because they can see them face to face.

2. Search and never let up.
Always keep looking, its best to try the big name organizations like Avalon, CDI, and so forth that could provide you with recruitment. It also helps to search places like Dave's ESL Cafe and Waygook for job postings. Get recruiters to help you.

3. Be sure to get a reference from your old job (optional)
I say optional because sometimes people don't want to be told by their old director had they were. I was fortunate mine would provide a positive review for me, but others don't often get that chance.

4. Communicate.
Always ask for help, never think you can do this alone; people love to help other people, you'll be surprised.

5. Get your LOR
LOR or Letter of Release is the MOST IMPORTANT document you will need. Let me say it again, it's the MOST important document you need. Your LOR allows you to be let-go from your job and be open to find work elsewhere until your VISA expires. This does however cut down your 1-year Visa as the company that is 'sponsoring' you is releasing you, and you often only get 1 month before the VISA is fully expired. However, if you can talk to your director (and this happened with me) they can sometimes hold off putting in your termination papers (which gives you 30 days to either find a new job or leave), so you get your LOR to look for work, and your old job keeps you 'sponsored' so that you can search for a good while without concern.

6. Get your documents.
Not always a big issue, but it helps to get the documents you sent to Korea. If, by this time, you don't have your ARC, you're in a bit of a pickle, but if you do find other work, usually your Alien Registration Card is all you need as it connects you to the Immigration Database so you can switch over to the new job fairly easily.

Just two of my Kindy I'm going to miss

I've already been pounding the pavements since June for a job, and many interviews and recruiters have helped me find work. To this day, in early July, I still have interviews, many of them close to giving me jobs, but it still a long process and one that anyone should do their best even if they feel lost when let go. It does feel bad for me; my kids will miss me and many of them, mostly my Kindy, showed great amounts of sorrow emotion; some of them even giving me parting gifts because they would miss me. I know I will miss them and I know its not good to have a teacher switch so early in the year, but sadly, things happen; its better to know when you're not in the right place then cause a problem for the company in the long run.

I hold no regrets, I enjoyed it, gained valued experience and know that I can find something soon.