Part 1- Kindergarten
Recently I realized that while I often post about cultural differences, fun events and amusing experiences so you all have a good grasp of how I entertain myself, I talk very little about what I actually do the vast majority of my waking hours. Thus, most of you have no real concept of what I do as my actual job. Well, wonder no longer. Allow me to introduce “A day in the life” in 2 parts- kindergarten and elementary. (I don’t think I can actually do both in one blog post- that’s too much free time at once being spent thinking about work.)
Today we’re doing kindergarten. My day starts every morning at 9:40 when I arrive ten minutes late to work. I’m sure this will come as no surprise that I am always late, but since class doesn’t start until 9:45, all I miss out on is “prep time” aka coffee time with Desert Boy and Indifferent (my other male coworker who does not care about anything except occasionally bickering with me purely for the sake of bickering- yesterday he argued with me when I said that the South African flag was colorful and last week he would not believe me that the summer solstice changed days from year to year). The Bodacious Brit does not arrive until later, so she also misses out on coffee hour, though I’m sure the boys enjoy their y-chromosome time and don’t want us there anyway.
So I rush into work, grab my basket and books and scuttle over to class. My first batch of children is the hellions. They arrive in various states: acting like dinosaurs and airplanes, dripping snot, hitting each other… you get the idea. There are actually now four of them, and they are a very different class from the babbling monsters I had back in March.
We start out our morning routine with “How are you feeling?” Answers vary from the expected (angry, sad, happy, sleepy) to the compound (happysad, angrysleepy, happyangrysad) to the absurd (turtle, dinosaur) to Korean gibberish. Once I’ve managed to drag a reasonable answer out of each and drawn a corresponding face on the board next to their name, we say what the weather is. This normally results in warfare, since there is only one weather sheet onto which the Velcro cloud, sun and rain are stuck, so regardless of how much I rotate and make sure that everyone has a turn, the others will always try to steal it from him.
Eventually the sheet gets onto the board, usually upside down. This instantaneously results in all four children swarming me, wrapping themselves around my legs and chanting “upside down, upside down”. This phenomenon is due to a desperate measure I took in one of my first weeks here, where I got fed up with the boys not understanding the concept of upside down and actually picked one up by the ankles so he got the point. Being 3 years old, he loved it and all the others wanted a turn too. So every day, except when my back simply won’t take it anymore, I find myself swinging the boys around by their ankles while they giggle and shout in mingled Korean and English.
Then it’s time for days of the week. I take down the flashcards from the wall (our walls are made of fabric so we can stick velcroed flashcards to them) and before I have even begun to arrange them on the table, all seven have been stolen. This used to annoy me, but really, the longer I drag this whole routine out, the less time I have to spend trying to find things to keep them happy, since they can really only focus on bookwork for about 10 to 15 minutes at best (sometimes, only 5) and I have 40 minutes a class period to keep them entertained. Eventually I manage to get all seven flashcards on the table, we sing the days of the week song and one lucky child is chosen to put the day on the board. It usually ends up upside down again.
Bookwork itself is unexciting, though I’m sure the whole thing would seem ridiculous to anyone else. I chant things for them to repeat, try to get them to answer questions, and struggle to keep them on their page numbers while they chatter away in Korean, pull faces, and constantly attempt to escape their chairs.
Then comes the dreaded snack time. I hate, loathe and detest snack time. I spend all of snack time cleaning up after spills if we have something liquid, scolding the boys for stealing from each other, keeping them from stuffing so much in their mouths that they can’t breathe and attempting to get them to eat, rather than throw, their food. I still expect to have to perform the Heimlich someday soon, particularly with the new boy who cannot chew and swallow food to save his life. I swear, he’s like a damn chipmunk, wandering around with food stashed in his cheek pockets for later consumption.
With snack completed, we move on to gym time, where I rest for a few minutes and watch them play on the little jungle gym in our school. Once I am mostly recovered we play “sleeping” where I pretend to sleep until they say “cockayo!” (Korean for cockadoodledoo) and then I lunge around trying to tickle them while yelling “Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of a Korean…etc”. Desert Boy caught me doing this the other day and laughed himself silly, however, no one else has a class of 3 year olds, so everyone just lets me do whatever it takes to keep the hooligans entertained.
Then it’s another class with the hellions, which we finish up with song time. The boys beg for “check um chilies” (aka “Shake your Sillies”), a song in which they go running around the room screaming while I protect the CD player. If I’m feeling brave, I convince them to join me in “BINGO” or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” as well.
An hour and a half has passed at this point, and I feel ready to die. Fortunately, I have my break and then lunch. Lunch is generally a strange concoction of bland Korean foods (we are at a kindergarten after all) and a soup that normally smells to Desert Boy like a golf course. Indifferent, Bodacious Brit, Desert Boy and I eat at our desks, hiding from the children, while the Korean teachers entertain them. During that time, Indifferent is sure to remind us that he only has one break every day, I will mostly likely punch Desert Boy for something offensive that he has said and Bodacious Brit usually says something completely inappropriate for work.
Then it’s onto kindergarten round two. My second class consists of ten four year olds who are considerably more civilized and thus, much cuter than the hellions. Our routines are much more reasonable and I get to feel like a teacher, rather than a performing monkey. We chant, we sing, they color, I direct and everything moves more or less according to plan. The children tattle on each other for speaking Korean every few seconds, pretend to get hurt to get out of class and generally act like children do. It’s refreshing. Though I do have to avoid the psycho killer child who is too busy plotting all of our murders to listen to anything I tell him, gives everyone the death glare, and draws pictures with teeth and fangs even if I have asked them to draw food or playground equipment. I also frequently find myself acting out strange things at the request of the students “Kirin teacher shark! Kirin teacher monster! Kirin teacher flower!”
Then 2:15 rolls around and kindergarten is done. The kiddies are sent on their way and I retreat to my desk to wait for the next onslaught.
Up next: elementary!
