As mentioned in my other post, I was back to school on August 19th for an office work day before classes started the next day. However, it turned out I didn't actually have to stay all day, so I took advantage and left early, probably a mistake. Returning to school Thursday, I wasn't quite prepared for classes and I was also feeling terrible. I took Friday, the following Tuesday and then Wednesday off to recover, before I got back to school and into a rhythm.
During these days before I settled, I was sorta freaking out. We had altered schedules and now I had sole possession of 2nd grade to go along with the whole 3rd grade which I already had, bringing my total up close to 800 students. This also meant I had less free time during the day to plan, and it being a new semester I wasn't sure where to start. This peaked on the night of Sunday, August 23, and I poured out my woes to Tim, who comforted me by pointing out that being a great teacher really isn't a major requirement of my job, just having something to fill the time is, and maybe teach a couple students something. My struggles were compounded by the fact that one of my coteachers could barely communicate with me in English, so trying to prepare for her classes especially was stressing me out.
My whole school
Tim helped cool me out a little bit, but things didn't really get better until later at school when I had a good talk with my head teacher, and Hye-hyun gave me more advice on what to do. The most notable advice she gave me was to try harder, which I guess is a pretty good starting place. Try harder I did. I talked to her, Su-won (the pregnant one) and the head teacher "Linda," and I began to formulate ideas and lessons, centered on PowerPoint presentations, which my school encouraged me to use since I showed great skill with it, despite the limitation that my version of PowerPoint was in Korean.
I also made a decision that would greatly reduce my stress regarding the teacher who didn't speak great English. I decided my 2nd grade classes would all be planned by me and reviewed by Hye-hyun or Su-won, and then I'd just use them in the rest of my classes without consulting the other teachers. I think this is actually what I'm supposed to do. The funny part is, Hye-hyun and I only teach 1 class together, and Su-won and I have 2. The other 7 are taught by the one with poor English skills, and another who isn't as bad, but not amazing. Regardless, I had a plan and it was going to work.
I also overcame my qualms regarding printing mass amounts of paper, and now I'm churning out handouts for every student in every class, 800 handouts every 2 weeks. I had finally figured out what I was doing, and I only had one more scare, caused by a computer failure and GEPIK training that came about a month too late. Before the training, I was in a rhythm, handouts and PowerPoints working in glorious tandem to use up class time and get me out of there. Hopefully along the way, a few kids learned something. Most of them just folded the handout and put it in their book straightaway, as if there couldn't possibly be a reason I gave it to them a few seconds earlier. One kid actually had lost his about 2 minutes after getting it. This is the kind of thing I have to deal with.
As we approached midterm exams, my school-provided laptop became more and more difficult, and with maybe 2 days until midterms, it decided to stop booting altogether, possibly due to a virus. I was able to finish out classes without it, but I was without my essential planning tool - PowerPoint. The laptop ceased functioning on September 23rd, and luckily the next week was midterms, so I wouldn't be teaching anyway. Unluckily, the next week was also when I was going to spend three days at GEPIK training, away from school, missing necessary planning time I could've spent at school with no class. My computer went away for repairs and didn't come back until Monday after lunch around 12:30. At that point, it had had to be completely wiped, and all my lessons were gone. Unfortunately, that day was only a half day because of testing, so I had about 30 minutes on the computer before we left to go on a teacher's outing - a short walk in the woods.
The next morning I had to find my way to Guri station to catch a bus to the GEPIK training, and I'd be there until Thursday afternoon. Following that, Friday and Monday I had no school because of Chuseok, the full moon harvest holiday, essentially Korean thanksgiving. That meant a long stretch of not working, but it also meant a long stretch not being able to prepare new lessons to replace what I'd lost. The hike, the GEPIK training, and Chuseok weekend will all get their own posts in due time, but suffice it to say, I returned to school after it all extremely unprepared. Luckily my 3rd graders had an upcoming national test so my coteachers relieved me of responsibility for all classes until after the test, which gave me time to prepare plenty for both 2nd and 3rd grade.
My only problem now is trying to get the students to cooperate.
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