Learning how to become a teacher

Today was a very trying day. The school had their graduation yesterday so today was an in-service day for the teachers. The students come back on Tuesday for the start of their new school year. I will be teaching 3rd year 7-year-olds. That means they have been at Helen Doron for three years and they are now 7 (well their Korean age is really 6). At any rate, they are smart kids. In a way I feel lucky to be teaching the older kids. I will be able to have actual conversations with them and not teaching them what a chair is but in another way, I wish I could just sing songs all day long. Either way it will be very challenging.

Today was used as a day to get the classrooms cleaned and ready for the new school year and to make lesson plans for the month. Typically at home, teachers get a few weeks in the summer to prepare their classrooms and lesson plans before school starts, not here! We are just diving right in! Unlike some of the other teachers, I didn't get a lot of help or guidance from my partner teacher. I felt very lost, frustrated, overwhelmed, and completely out of my element. Thankfully I was getting help from a couple of the other foreign teachers, which was nice. They reassured me that they also felt overwhelmed and completely unprepared when they started teaching but it will get easier as the weeks go on. By the end of the day though, I still felt like I hadn't accomplished anything. I ended up bring some work back to the hotel and was able to get a few lesson plans done for the first few days so I don't feel completely unprepared come Tuesday. I'm sure it will all be fine but I'm still freaking out a bit. On top of feeling overwhelmed and unprepared as a teacher, my partner teacher keeps reminding me that the moms of my kids are very demanding and a bit scary! Great! Just what I need, Korean mom after me because I'm not teaching her child well enough! That scares me more than the lesson planning! Hopefully it's not as bad as she describes.

Even with the complete overwhelmed and unprepared feelings I have right now, I'm very excited for the school year. And I think I'm really going to enjoy teaching. If you want to check out the website for my school you can go to www.hdee.co.kr. It is in Korean but have your speakers turned on and the sound up and you can hear our great theme song!! It's pretty amazing!