I just completed my second day of teaching and I thought I'd share some more experiences now that I've had another day under my belt. A lot happened in my second day, even though I was teaching less classes that day. Getting used to all the different student's personalities is very challenging, but I think after a month I'll know them all well enough to be able to control them well.
I'll start with the good news. I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but Koreans are very kind and nice and are very open with giving compliments to people. On almost a daily basis now, my students have come up to me and say "Oh, Teacher, you're very handsome," which surprises me every time I hear it. It's just so interesting to hear it, as most people you just meet won't compliment you too frequently in Canada.
And now the bad news. Well, it's not all bad, it's kinda of cute in a way actually. Yesterday, I made a student cry. It felt really, really bad, but I had no idea why he was crying. One of the Korean teachers came in to talk to him, because he wasn't able to explain himself to me. During the class, I had been walking around making sure all the students were understanding the lesson we were doing that day. Apparently, this student was embarrassed because he thought that he was slowing everyone else down. So near the end he was trying his hardest to get through everything very quickly to show that he wasn't slow. And from what I gathered, he ended up crying cause he was embarrassed. The thing was, he wasn't slowing anyone down, as many of the other students were slow picking up some of the material too.
And finally, the naughty. In my last class of the day, I teach a number of pretty smart students around fifteen years old. There were two girls that talked through almost the entire class. It was very hard to get them to pay attention or to stop talking. Eventually, I had to threaten to split them up to get them to stop talking. And for the most part that worked, as they definitely stopped talking all the time. But in Korea, that kind of behavior is very disrespectful towards elders, especially teachers, as I've been told. So in the next class, I'm really going to have to make sure they know how rude they are being towards me.
Teaching for the first time has definitely been an eye-opening experience, but I think that once I get to know the students well, it will become much easier. It's possible that some students may act differently once they get to know me, but I'm hoping that they'll act better once they know that I'm going to be strict. I want to make all the classes fun and encourage participation, but my director wants me to be strict with some things, the most important one being making sure they speak little to no Korean during class. Overall though, I think most students will quickly understand what I expect out of them, and what they can expect out of me.
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