Thursday, November 30, 2006

Winter Term

My school's schedule revolves around four 13 week 'terms' through the year. We just started the new winter term this week and let me tell you, it's quite a relief. For a month now, I've been teaching a full schedule, so including prepping, I'm at school for 40+ hours a week. I'm still teaching a full schedule, but I'm now teaching duplicate classes which means the prepping has decreased by about 3 hours or so a week. This is a welcome break and should turn out to be really nice. It's nice to teach new classes too. The kids are newly motivated. Some kids have leveled-up to the next level and the ones who didn't are ready to work hard. The worthless students have quit too, which to be honest, is a welcome change. Our academy is a little tougher than the many others in Korea, so many kids don't come with the mindset to work hard and even after 3 months, a select few still don't get it. Sometimes I feel like I'm not doing my job as a teacher when I say things like that, but then I think of the gains that the other students are getting and I realize that some kids just don't want to be here. There's nothing I can do about that except my best though.

I've been thinking about talking to my boss to lower my working hours to the schedule I had before. After talking to many other people in Jeju, I feel like I work a fair bit more than everyone else. I don't mind working hard, but 6 days a week every week is tough, even if the Friday and Saturday are only half days. I do also get compensated for the work since my salary is higher than just about everyone I know. I came to Korea expecting a semi-part-time schedule and I didn't come to bust my butt and pay off debt, so I'd like to have just a little bit more freedom. We'll see what comes of it.

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