Moving Day!

I needed a Korean friend to help me, who is pictured above, because the moving people dont speak English and I'm not sure how to contact them in the first place.
But thankfully I got some help with that and I left my old place. So many memories.... :-)
I miss it because it was a really nice place in a good clean area.
And I had many friends in the area. And I was going to a place nearby to study Korean for free. And I was going to start B-Ball class too which would have been fun.
But now I live in Seoul! The capital! The big pearl of Korea! Huge city. Lots of people. New School. All that good stuff.
Here's my new place.

The biggest drawback of the place is the bathroom.

Yes thats a washing machine. and yes, its awful close to the toilet. you might wonder how one could use that. its not that bad and i'm already used to it.


Its actually a tiny bit smaller than my last place maybe, but it has doors and separate rooms, so I have a bit of a guest bedroom now people can crash in (its really tiny). I also have a gas stove(!) and a tiny oven(!!!) and my new job is AWESOME.
I do actual teaching from 3:05-7:35 with about a 35 min break in there as well, so the hours are freakin GREAT.
The pay is a little better than my last place too, the kids are better behaved, there is more down time to talk and get to know the other teachers so the atmosphere is great and they are all really nice and cool, there is actual scheduling and stuff, and time to plan and an actual structure to this school so it is LEAGUES better than my previous place where you would sometimes find out what your supposed to teach for a given class maybe as your going in to teach. Or sometimes you would have no idea what your supposed to teach, so you just go in and wing it for 50 minutes. Not a good strategy. But to my last job's defense, they did say they wanted someone flexible.

Anyway, heres a FEW pics of my new workplace (I get an actual teachers desk!) and i do mean a few. there are about 10 classrooms, 2 computer labs(!), a teachers office(!), a lecture hall(!), and two conference rooms(!). so yea, its REALLY frickin nice.

The main Computer lab.

A rear view of a computer lab from the teachers office.



Teachers Office

Thats just a hallway.

Anyway, I'm off to play b-ball at a really nice park nearby. I will try to update more as I'm here and let you all know what I'm up to, but as you may be able to tell, I dont like to waste time on the mundane stuff. I'll tell yall more about my classes later!

My Last Job: Why I Left

I dont know if I told everyone, but i was fired from my last job.
For being black.
Really.
The new school year was just getting underway, and these private little academies run off one thing only: parental support. These little English schools are literally everywhere. There are about 2 on any given block. Their called 학원(hagwon's) and they operate very independently.
If a parent has a problem with the school or a teacher or anything, they can pull their kid at anytime and take them to any other hagwon, knowing there is usually another one in the same building.
This of course breeds tremendous competition between the schools and makes each individual student that much more valuable for the schools. And parental input that much more important. Due to the troubles the school was having the previous school year (that was largely due to the director overextending herself by opening a new school and splitting time between two schools in different cities) many parents were already pulling their kids and not many new students were coming in at all. So the director had to put that much more emphasis on pleasing the new parents who are always eager to network some more kids into a school they like.
So I don't blame my last boss for being a tool; I understand her position if a number of new parents didnt want a black teacher.
But I'm not necessarily happy about it.

Happy Birthday to ME!

Graduation Day means Adorable Talent Show

A picture Wrap-up of my last job

That's Kelly in the pink (or Kells as I called her). When I first started teaching at the school, I started with a strict and stern approach. I'm fine playing the role of the mean teacher as long as I have the students respect, and fear is an excellent tool for controlling a classroom.
My method initially rubbed Kelly the wrong way, and we had a lot of boundary crossing early on. After I figured out that it was necessary for me to relax my methods, I acted like a clown a lot and showed the children much more compassion for them, Kelly stuck to me like algae on a pond. She would always smile and laugh with me and was excellent in class and fought to be my favorite kids.

Sweet sweet Lucy. She is an absolute angel. Always smiling and always good, I am sad that I wont have her in class anymore. At their graduation, they were giving out flowers to the teachers, and she got a whole bouquet from our director for her excellence and on her way out, she took one flower out and gave it to me. So precious!


Sara, the goofball. She was one of the funnest students i may ever have. She was always ready to laugh even when she was mad, and as you can see she has a beautiful and warm smile that could cheer me up everyday. She was an absolute joker and the self appointed teachers assistant, and as Meaghan can attest to, she was a joy to have around. She was leaving the school for the new school year, and last I saw her she was crying uncontrollably because she was leaving her friends and teachers behind. (her best friend was Lucy)



These are some pictures from Sara's goodbye party (the second to last time I saw her). She's sprawled out on the floor in the one picture because she was very much against leaving at the end of the day. She started to act like her backpack was too heavy, or her legs didn't work and took way too long to leave. It was absolutely adorable and touching. I really will miss those kids.

Except that last one.
June was a devil-child.