A Typical Tuesday

Some of you have asked, "What do you do every day?" So, I thought I'd walk you through what a basic day looks like in the life of an English teacher in Korea.

I wake up between 6-6:30 most days. Long gone are the days when I could wake up at 7:45 to make it to an 8:00 class. I've discovered that I have to be much more awake to teach an 8:00 class than I did to sit in an 8:00 class. So I usually get ready, drink some tea and listen to some music before I head to school.

Once I'm ready to go, I head out the door to the subway. I usually leave sometime around 7:20 for the subway station, although I can leave as late as 7:37 and still catch a train to be on time for my class. Not that I've ever done that.... I live about a 5 minute walk from the subway station, then three stops on the train, plus a ten minute walk on the other end to get to my campus. The whole commute takes about 25-30 minutes. The train is always quite full, and I usually have to fight my way through crowds of people going up and down stairs in the stations.

I get to my classroom and turn on my computer and get all of my papers laid out for the day. My students usually start to trickle in around 7:50, so we make small talk until it's time to start class. My 8:00 class this semester is pretty advanced for my university. They are doing a significant amount of writing as well as normal conversation and grammar work. Today, the 8:00 class learned about idiomatic uses for the word "sick". We talked about being sick and tired of something, sick days, airsick, lovesick, etc. It can get quite confusing to explain how one word can be involved in so many different meanings.

Next up is my IT English class at 9:00. I have to move to a different building for this class. This is probably the most difficult class I teach. It is significantly larger than my normal classes. The students have widely varied levels of English. The biggest problem is that I can't find a way to get these kids to stop speaking Korean to each other. They all talk, all the time. I've had to turn into Scary Teacher Sarah several times with this group, and it just doesn't always work. Today they were supposed to be doing presentations, but shockingly, they weren't all as prepared as they should have been so it was pretty rough.

After I'm done teaching the normal morning classes, I have a few minutes to catch my breath and figure out the rest of my day. I typically use the rest of the morning hours for lesson planning, grading, advising meetings, staff/faculty meetings, or my Korean lesson, which is every Thursday morning. All of that is TERRIBLY exciting stuff, I assure you ;)

My co-worker Renae and I always go to lunch together. We often go to the school cafeteria to try to test our luck and see if there is anything edible there. The food is fairly typical cafeteria food, with a decidedly Asian twist. I'm working on collecting pictures of the various meals, so there will be a future post dedicated to cafeteria food. Sometimes, the food just doesn't look edible, so we will go out to lunch. Within walking distance of the school, there is a McDonald's, Pizza Hut, several random Korean restaurants, and lots of street food. There will probably be a future street food post too, now that I know what most of it is.

After lunch, I have two more classes to teach. One is at 1:20, and the other is at 2:45. Both of these classes are at the same level, and they are going through the same book, so I basically teach the same class back to back. In between these classes, I tend to have a lot of students in and out of my office with questions, or just wanting to practice their conversation skills.

After the last class is over, I have about an hour before I head home. I typically get all of my copies made for the next day's classes and finalize the details for my 8:00 and 9:00 classes, and make sure that my grade book and attendance books are all caught up from that day's work. I also tend to write many of my work-related emails during this time.

When 5:00 rolls around, I'm free to go, but I have had to stay late quite a few days this semester because the grading load is so heavy. By the time I do go home, the train going towards home is usually quite crowded again. I make it home, and I'm dead tired. I scrounge up some food for dinner, and spend the rest of the evening enjoying quiet pursuits. Sometimes I'll go out for dinner or coffee or whatever with friends. I go to Bible study once a week. But my life is pretty quiet.

That's the typical schedule. There really isn't much change from that. On Friday morning, I spend several hours reading English books and trying to make up lesson plans on the spot for 2-6 year old students. On Wednesday, I don't have my afternoon classes, so it is usually a day for meetings and catching up on grading/lesson planning. Saturday, I'm free to do what I want, but on Sunday morning I have to go back to my school and teach a class for elementary school students at the university church.

All in all, it's a glamorous life here in Seoul ;)