Scheduling

February and March are a time for schedule changing in private language academies (hagwons) in Korea, because children change grade levels in school at the beginning of March. I've been trying to wrap my head around this crazy Korean public school yearly schedule. They begin their new grade in March, then they go to school straight through spring and most of summer. They may have a few national holidays off, if they land on weekdays (Korea doesn't have any holidays that adjust to Monday, like we have), and I'm not sure if they have any week-long holidays. Maybe. Then they get August off, and I think part of July, for summer break. Then they go back until January, when they get that whole month off. Then they go for four more weeks in February, and over the course of a weekend, change grades again.

This boggles my mind. Having been so used to having fully two and a half months of buffer between grades, when I could rest, read, and grow, I couldn't imagine having to move to a harder grade over the course of a weekend. And it confuses me that they give kids a month off in January. Why not February, to give them a break between grades? Or why not even December, because Christianity is, surprisingly, the prevalent religion in this country. It seems to me, knowing how kids "check out" for a while after long vacations and before they leave a grade, that February is probably a wasted month in terms of kids' attention spans and lesson retention. Then again, this is Korea. School is the only life a child will ever know in this country.

Speaking of that, I may have mentioned before that during these summer and winter "vacations," children don't actually get any time off. Just because public school (or private) goes on vacation, doesn't mean the hagwons do. Many children to go three, four, five, maybe more hagwons a day, and at least at English hagwons, will have two or three classes each day. When vacation rolls around, hagwons seize the opportunity to drum up business and make more money by having "English camp." Actually, the two public school teachers I've talked to in Korea had to do English camp, too, so I guess even the public schools don't really close down during breaks (and many of them make the teachers sit there all day and do nothing, because the contract requires them to be there).

English camp is easy, but kind of annoying for hagwon teachers. For public school teachers, they are just continuing to work a few hours a day while most of the kids are at hagwons, or maybe even on vacation with their families (it does happen, and they have wicked nice vacations from what I hear). They do things like read books, have cooking classes, play games, or do other activities while speaking English. At a hagwon, though, we have our full day plus English camp. We just read extremely simplified versions of classic stories and do questions and vocabulary worksheets together. I didn't have to do this last August for some reason. Mingyu (vice principal) said that it was because Heather thought I didn't want to do it, but I don't know where she would get that impression, when we never talked about it. Also, why would she cancel the whole program just because of me? Mingyu is Not of This Earth.

But this January, most of the teachers had a class in the morning. The Korean teachers had two. Poor them. Before I left for my winter vacation to Vietnam, Heather told me that my class may have to be canceled, since only three children had registered so far. While I was in Vietnam, she left for Los Angeles with a group of 10-15 (I think) students to do another kind of English camp, where the students do homestays and attend American elementary school. With Heather gone, there was no one with it enough to call me ahead and tell me my class was in fact canceled. So I got there three hours early for nothing. What a drag.

I thought I was going to lose all that overtime pay I was looking forward to, but luckily we had just gotten a new teacher. She had the worst starting schedule ever. She got to Korea two days before Christmas, observed classes for one day, got Christmas off with the rest of us, taught one day, then got a week's vacation and had nothing to do and no one to show her around, since I was in Vietnam and Leon was in Seoul. Then she started her second day with nine classes. After the first week, she was so wiped out that we agreed that I would take her morning class. I don't know why Heather or Mingyu just didn't give me her class when they canceled mine. It doesn't make sense to bombard a new teacher with all that information, plus an overfull schedule.

Our work day starts around 1:00, when we prepare for our classes, and the first classes start at 1:40. English camp had classes at 10:00 and 11:00. I don't know why this is. Knowing that the kids have the whole morning and early afternoon off by default, and knowing that it would be impossible to try to coordinate classes so kids can go to all their hagwons that have extra classes during vacation, I don't see how it's possible that they chose such an inconvenient time for the teachers. Why not have the classes at 11 and 12, so we don't have to sit around and wait two and a half hours for our first class to start? I asked Mingyu this recently, when we were having a meeting about how ridiculously heavy our schedules are, but he didn't have an answer for me, as usual. Mingyu's a good guy, and tries hard... just inept. I'm looking forward to when Heather comes back from the US, so she can get this place back in order. Just one more month.