Brighton Episode 3 Season 3

Wow!!! I a) write a lot on this blog, and b) you wouldn’t think I even work. I have now been in Korea for 8 months!!! Crazy, only 4 more months to go… and with the weather change/ the itch to want to be outside I forsee this last chunk will zoom by.

This last Season Brighton has had some ups and downs. Around the time Camille left, end of February we were wrapping up the previous Year at Brighton and preparing for the start of the New School Year… beginning in March. Roberta and I were given the oldest classes at Brighton. This was a positive as they have the best levels of English. The idea was that because we are qualified teachers we would be able to make additional work for them etc. They also were starting something new with this class and neither of us were going to have a Korean Teaching Partner. (I used to teach the same kindy subjects to two different classrooms alternating with a Korean Teaching partner --- she served as someone who a) could talk to them in Korean but more so b) talk to the parents who received daily phone conferencing calls on the improvement of their baby. (imagine that… DAILY!) Anyhoo do you for see a problem here as Roberta’s and my Korean is not quite up to the Conferencing level? Well to sort this out we were supposed to work closely with the kindy director and do pages of paperwork… comment sheets, homework sheets, daily plans etc… so that she was in the know and could be that person to conference with. Fine/Dandy… I began preparations and made “my” classroom look beautiful…. The start was actually fun because it was like having my own real classroom… I am now with the same group of kids in the same classroom and can adapt the day to how I see fit… v.s. worrying about what the time was and when I had to switch with my partner.

The start of the semester I had 9 students and Roberta was supposed to have 9… but one didn’t show up so she had 8. A nice easy number… hey? Well then shit hit the fan (so to speak) and the kindy director was choosing to leave. My student’s parents were extremely upset because there was no longer a ‘go to’ person for communication. That and the fact that Brighton is so disorganized…. We were lacking a secretary for a while… all the bus helpers that take the students to school quit, some new lady was hired to watch over the staff but her English is terrible and no one is quite sure what she is supposed to do, two Korean teachers quit… a third has since left because she is due to have a baby… essentially it has been complete chaos. As a result, I lost 4 students from my class!!!!!!! 4!!!!! So I am now down to 5 kindy students in my class. Essentially it is like babysitting with lesson plans… but it is nice… they are literally ‘my babies’… I have a feeling it will be hard to say goodbye.

Finally, the new semester really hit us all like a shovel to the head… because of the new day schedule. We used to teach kindy 9-2 and then from 2-3 have a break and start teaching elementary students 3-6. That break was really needed to switch gears maybe get some fresh air… and prepare for Elementary… tests, marking etc. Well they did away with that and now we don’t start till 9:30 and we say goodbye to our kindy kids at 2:45 and as we are saying goodbye literally Elementary students are already zooming in yelling hello Teacher. So it ends up being basically 8 hours of teaching straight. (Remember we even eat/serve lunch with these kids) This has left a group of very unhappy exhausted teachers!!! I feel bad too because my kindy kids at least can understand me (for the most part)… Will and Blair have had Western age 3 year old kids who obviously are not accustomed to school and don’t know a word of English…. Now they are spent at the end of the day!

So this has been Brighton as of late. Luckily, we have hired some new great people, Jesse, a linguistics expert (speaks French, English, Spanish fluently and is quite good at Korean already). Then our two new Korean teachers already have part of my heart, Julia and Lucia… they are amazing… and finally our new desk teachers is equally amazing, Jenny, but she doesn’t speak any English so we have to have a translator when she comes out with us. ☺

I think this is all to report… I will try to get some photos up soon of these new kids.
Lots of Love
Me