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.