Day 82: The Job

Today was actually a fairly atypical day at work, since we only had about half of our students present in the morning. We (the teachers) decided to take them out to Suji's largest park since tomorrow is Children's Day and there were so few students present, and of course the weather was gorgeous. So we threw all 15 of them in a van and drove over to the park.

Then, later, in the afternoon, we spent most of our classes administering standardized tests to track English improvement (maybe I'll rant about testing here later). In any case, the unusual nature of the work day prompted me to perhaps give a little more info about my job, for those that may be interested. Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday I will write a "Day in the Life" type entry, but for today I'll just introduce the skillz that pay my billz.

I work at a Private English Academy called "MYU 어학원" or "MYU English Academy." The name was previously "Wonderland," part of a franchise of English kindergartens across Korea, but when our old head teacher bought the school from the old director, thus becoming the new director in a much more civilized manner than assassinating him, she broke off from the franchise and we changed our name, losing a few students in the process. "MYU" stands for "Make Your dreams Unique," a slogan I had a small part in approving. I realized too late that "Make Your New Dream" would have been way cooler since we could have been "MYND HAGWON" which is awesome. But we are MYU, pronounced either M.Y.U. or "mew." Yes, like the pokemon, which none of my students seem to realize since even though they are all obsessed with pokemon they don't know who mew is and instead worship some creature called "Diaruga" or "Diagonal" or "Dialysis" or something.

I am the Head Teacher at MYU, which basically means in addition to all regular teaching responsibilities (and, up until recently, the school's heaviest teaching schedule), I am the go-to guy for any questions between the administration and the other teachers. I also handle scheduling, organizing activity days and student parties, coordinating field trips and all that other jazz. I am even the recorded voice of MYU, on the answering machine in both Korean and English because I am that cool.

In any case, a typical day sees me working from 9:30 to 7:15, teaching Kindergarten in the morning and Elementary students in the afternoon/evening. I'd typically see about nine or ten students in the kindergarten, and then anywhere from 15-30 depending on the day in the afternoon. It's generally a pretty laid-back gig, although the length of hours and the general demandingness of being a teacher do take their toll. As I said before, I'll probably update day-in-the-life style later this week.