My School

Hey everyone! I am so glad that many of you are still checking my blog. It is getting harder to actually find time to sit down and write though! Things are going really well here. It is supposed to be a cold weekend though! They say it's going to be -7 degrees Celsius tomorrow. Brrrr.

I posted some pictures on my Flickr account. The link is to the left. I wanted to show everyone my students.
This is some of my Rainbow class. There are six kids all together. Their names are Oscar, James Kim, James Lee, Sophia, June and Boo Young. They are the youngest kids at ECC, korean age 5, which is Western age 3 and 4.

This is Oscar and June. Oscar is a riot. He is so goofy.

This is Boo Young. She is adorable.


These are the girls from my Yellow class. They are age 6. They are all really sweet and very smart.

These are the boys from my yellow class. They are really crazy and goofy.

So, my school is called a Hagwon called YBM/ECC or we just call it ECC. Schools here are a little different than in the U.S. Pre-school age kids go to "kindergarten" at Hagwons. There are English Hagwons and Korean Hagwons. A lot of Hagwons are chains, YBM is a chain with different purposes for each school, ECC is for children while YBM/SISA is for adults. Kids go to kindergarten Hagwons from 9:30am to 2:30pm from age 5-7 Korean age. (Click on the underlined words for wikipedia pages). So, then at age 7, kids start first grade at a public or private school. They usually go to school until about 3pm. There are also Hagwons for after school study. These can be for many subjects such as math, science, or English study. My Hagwon also does after school English study for Elementary school kids. They come from anywhere between 3pm and 8pm.

I teach two different kindergarten classes, Rainbow and Yellow classes. I teach each class for two periods. One period is always a language class and the second period is either story reading, science or art. Then I have four elementary classes that I teach language. Some of the elementary school kids go to ANOTHER Hagwon after mine. Some kids go to school from 9am to midnight and if they aren't in school, they are studying. Koreans put so much into their education, it is pretty intense. Here is a very interesting article from USA Today about the US education system vs. the South Korean system.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2008-11-18-korea-education-usa_N.htm

The kids here are super smart. Can you imagine sending your four or five year old to a school where they weren't allowed to speak their own language, only a foreign one? At my school, they have an English only policy. Kids are not allowed to speak Korean during my classes, only during Korean class, where they learn normal pre-school stuff. It gets a little tough with my Rainbow class since they are so young. All in all though, the kids here are like any other kid in the world, very sweet, very goofy, and they cry a lot. I am learning so much here. It's great. Re-Re- now I know why you teach this age!

OK, this is getting long enough. Now that I showed you all my kids and explained my school and job, I can blog about the fun stuff I have been doing. So next blog I will tell you all about my trip up the death trap, known as the cable car up to Seoul Tower. Also, Ben and I were looking for Coex mall today and stumbled across a temple built in 794. No joke. I took some really cool pictures i will post soon. So, until next time- love and miss everyone!