First Impressions of my New Job

Ok...so I have completed my first week at my new job...and I definitely have some thoughts on it. First thing, it is infinitely easier than my previous job. I am teaching elementary school kids who speak almost no english. Mostly you just talk at them and hope the grasp some of the things you are saying. They work mostly out of a book. It's quite easy...but unfortunately that makes it VERY boring. This job sucks. I seem to be the school bitch at this point because I don't really teach classes as much as read the same 3 stories over and over to the kids and have them mimic sentences. I have literally fallen asleep in the middle of a sentence before. It's a living hell.

Also, the teaching day in brutal. To those of you working a 9-5 it may not seem bad, but trust me on this...any teacher will back me up on this, as well as any foreigner teacher in Korea. I work a solid 6 hour block of classes. Most schools have 50 minute classes with a 10 minute break between classes. Not my school. Oooooh no. I teach 7 classes a day with literally NO break between them. They removed the 10 minute breaks from class to squeeze an extra class in the day and get the most out of my time at that school. The bell will ring and the kids literally shuffle out and the new class shuffles in and I keep teaching. It SUCKS and by the end of the day I am EXHAUSTED.

So other than that, the school director is wierd. He is the same guy who made the losing weight and attending church demands. Have you ever heard of the concept of a "hands-on boss"? This guy takes that to the extreme. He will literally pop in and out of the classroom and take over for a few minutes...or he will sit in the back of the class and participate like he is a student. He doesn't just do this to me either, he does it to my Canadian co-worker as well who has been teaching in Korea for 12 years. He hates it more than I do...but there isn't much we can do about it. You just have to kind of pull back, ignore what it going on, and deal with the fact that your boss is literally undermining you in the classroom. Hopefully I can find a way to subtly tell him to GTFO because 8 months of him doing that is going to kill me.

Another thing, today in one of my classes a student didn't do the homework. My boss literally HIT HIM WITH A STICK 3 TIMES. I'm talking like broom handle thickness, and hard enough that the kids cried. I sat there in horror as it happened. The noise was loud enough my co-worker peeked in my window and gave me the "WTF" hand signal we use to communicate when we can't speak.

This is going to be an interesting 8 months....ugh.