Annyeong Y'all: August 2017

You've been wondering. You've been asking. You've been begging for it. Well it's your lucky day, because I'm about to give you what you have all been waiting for:

~~****** a written blog post ******~~

Ok I'm joking. But it's been a hot minute since I have updated, and I'm starting a new stage of my *journey* so I probably should.

Where are you?

"But Zack, what are you doing? Where are you? Why aren't you in America?"

I'm glad you asked. If you did not already know, Fulbright Korea allows you to teach for 1-3 years in Korea depending on availability of schools. And if you didn't watch my last vlog, I have renewed my Fulbright contract to teach one more year! This time around, I'm teaching in Seoul! I have now finished my first week of teaching, so I will give you the run down.

School

I am placed at 대동세무고등학교 Daedong Taxation High School, a vocational high school that specializes in business and accounting. This is the only high school in Seoul with a Fulbright teacher. One major difference from my old school is that this one is co-ed!! It's my first time teaching boys besides a special Saturday class last year in which I taught 5 boys (egads).

Workload

Another difference is my workload. Last year my schedule consisted of only 11 normal classes, whereas this year it is 20! That number is actually more normal for Fulbright teachers, but I didn't realize just how blessed I was last year until this first week at my new school. I teach the ten homeroom classes twice a week, and each class is exactly 26 students. If you're doing the math, that's 260 names to memorize (not as much as many of my other friends)!

Students

I must admit that this week has been extremely tiring, and it's not just the extra hours I'm putting in at work. The students themselves seem much more energetic and unruly than my sweet, sweet Gyeongju girls. Don't get me wrong, these students are sweet too, and most of them are just excited to see a foreign boy teacher (after 3 years of female Fulbright teachers). This year I will have no co-teacher in the classroom with me, so I will have to handle discipline matters on my own. So far the students inability to listen or be quiet has me a bit concerned, but I'm hoping it's just the fact that it's my first week and they are very excited.

As far as students go, I'm also concerned about connecting to my boy students. In each class, I have between 7 and 9 boys and the rest are girls. I think these boys were particularly looking forward to having a male teacher because they expected a sports-crazed, American, bro. From my observations so far, there are two broad categories of boy students: sports boys and game boys (obviously a generalization, but it's just an observation from my first week). While drastically different, I can't necessarily relate to either of those categories. It doesn't help that many of the soccer players (about 2 boys per class) are attending the school on soccer scholarship and are extremely low English level.

Speaking of English levels, the classes I teach this year are not separated by level! Last year I taught levels A-D and could cater my lessons to the levels of my students. This year, I teach the homerooms, so students of all levels are mixed together. I'm still unsure how to tackle this obstacle in terms of reaching all my students effectively.

People my students have said I look like: a character from "Rick and Morty," Ron Weasley's brother (don't know which one), "Ratatouille!" and Mark Zuckerberg.

Co-Teachers

One bright side to teaching at Daedong so far has been my co-teachers! I have some amazing coworkers who are really helping me settle in both at school and in Seoul in general.

박정은 (Park Jeong Eun or Sarah Park) - Jeong Eun is not technically my co-teacher, yet has become the teacher I'm closest to so far. She is very young and sits in the desk right next to mine. She speaks perfect English and has helped teach me everything I need to know about Daedong H.S.

김혜경 (Kim Hye Gyeong) - Hye Gyeong is my Fulbright Co-Teacher, so I thought I would be spending most of my time with her. Unfortunately she sits in a different office than Jeong Eun and I, so I actually haven't seen her much this week. Aditionally, it is her first year at the school, which means she is extremely busy. That being said, she is really sweet and willing to help with things as well! She is the teacher who met me at the end of orientation (last weekend) and drove home with the Vice Principle and me. She also studied abroad at U.T. Austin!

은솔쌤 (Eun Sol Teacher A.K.A. Gisele) - Gisele or 지젤 is just an English teacher who sits in my office and is extremely sweet and funny. She is always making me laugh and I have only known her for one week! Her desk looks like a unicorn threw up on it.

So far it seems that I will be able to bond with more teachers at my new school a little better because of our proximity in age. I loved my co-teachers at Seondeok (my old high school), but I could not really picture myself seeing them outside of school or talking much in school. We will just have to see!

In our office, I am technically part of the 연구부, or Research Department. I'm not really sure why this department is named that, as none of the teachers in it do research (perhaps the business high school is just trying to sound professional). This past week, the department went on our first 회식 Hwe-Sik, or after-work meal/social gathering! I don't need to go into too much detail, but wanted to share one nugget from the night. For our hwe-sik, we ate dinner at a seafood restaurant and introduced ourselves to each other. Some of the older male teachers asked me my hobbies and I told them I like to dance, play violin, and that I started to learn the Daegeum while living in Gyeongju. Later during the night I expressed my concern about connecting to the boy students due to my disinterest in sports. One of the female teachers said something like "Oh, you don't like sports?" to which an older, male teacher replied, "Of course he doesn't like sports! His hobbies are violin and dancing!" This was funny at the time, but also slightly insulting (dontcha' think?). I'll let you think what you want about his comment, I just thought it was entertaining enough to share!

Mail

If you want to mail me anything:

Bulgwang-ro 1-gil 2-4

Daejo-dong, Eunpyeong-gu

Jujube B 504-ho

Seoul, 03396

서울특별시

은평구 대조동

불광로 1길 2-4

주주베 B 504호

03996

As per usual, this blog turned into a stream-of-consciousness mess. But hey, do you expect anything different at this point? Maybe I should have made this one a vlog, as I somehow managed to both ramble AND not cover everything. Just let me know if you have questions.

Annyeong Y'all!