My School - Avalon Langcon

Be amazed people.

That's right - I'm doing my second blog post in as many days. I'm really letting my hair down. Well, I guess I can only figuratively do that now, since I recently buzzed all of my hair off..all by myself. I don't really know why. It was kind of spur of the moment. But now that it's short, I'm enjoying it - less maintenance, less annoying, easier. Although, it is quite cooler on my dome nowadays. And definitely not as stunning. But there are always trade-offs. The other good news about it is that it showed me that I'm not balding - here's to hoping that never starts!


I've really enjoyed my job as a teacher so far. Colleagues are great, the two front desk folks, Kevin and Claire (Jasper thought Matilda was too "old" of a name, she it's since been changed to Claire) are very nice and helpful, and the kids, on the whole, are adorable and hard working.

When I started out, my teaching schedule was a little confusing. I had missed the week of training that Jaime and Miranda did, so I wasn't clued into just how our school worked. I kind of had to learn on the fly.

We teach kids that range in age from the 1st to 4th grade - so they're either just starting English or have had a year or two already. The class levels are broken up into two sections: the Base Camp Group (for beginners) and the Columbus Group (for the slightly more advanced kids). The Base Camp Group has three levels, which are, in ascending order, Atlas, Compass, and Telescope. I have three different Telescope classes. The Columbus Group is broken up into (again, in ascending order) the Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, Navigation, and Discovery Groups (I think think the "sail boat/discovering America" theme is clever). I have three Nina classes, one Pinta, one Navigation, and one Discovery. I can basically converse normally with my Navigation and Discovery classes - the students are very intelligent and quite advanced.

How many times certain classes come to our school also varies. We have 5 day classes, 3 day classes (MWF), and 2 day classes (TT). All in all, I end of having five classes a day - starting at 2:30 and ending at 8:40. I have to be at school at 1 for preparation, lesson planning, meetings, and any grading that needs to be done. We are required to stay until 9 PM, but those last 20 minutes only really allow me to clean up and get organized for the next day.

So you can see how, at first, I was a little discombobulated. It took about a week to get into the flow of things, and now it's a piece of cake. What's great is that the weeks absolutely fly by because it's quite the fast paced working environment and the kids make it very fun.

Let me tell you - the way to win a Korean student's heart is to play rock, paper, scissors with them. I think I'm simply known as "Look! There's the teacher that always plays rock, paper, scissors! Let's go see if we can beat him."

That reminds me of another perk of the job: In Korea, students don't call their teacher "Ms. So and So" or "Mr. So and So." Rather, they call all the teachers "Teacher." If they like you or can remember your name, you'll get the "Teacher (insert your name here)." I get a lot of the "Teacher Russell!" Very cute. When walking through the halls, you basically hear one of three things (or a big jumble of all three): "Teacher!" or "Kai Bai Bo!" (rock, paper, scissors in Korean) or simply an ear piercing array of incessant screaming as the students run and play.

Remember to check out my Flickr Photostream to see some photos of my school.

I also plan on getting more photos of some of my students (maybe I'll secretly pick my favorite ones or just take class shots) and some shots of my now almost hairless head.

Hope you liked the reading.

Ciao!

-r