Sunday, November 01, 2009

English Teacher

Well, here I am, "settled" into working life once again. Actually, not really. I am definitely not used to this yet. Granted I only work 4 hours a day but I suppose it's the fact that if I want to leave and visit somewhere else I can't. What is this responsibility? Why do you people live with so much of it?
Seriously though, I'm still getting used to it and really I couldn't ask for a better situation to get myself readjusted. The "academy" is tiny, with only about a dozen students at the moment. Most of the other teachers/tutors teach one on one, but I have group classes, with groups of up to 4 students at the moment. Given that not all students will show up to every class, it is not unusual to have groups of 1. There are most students set to arrive soon though so no doubt we will get busier. I need this time to sort of mess around and figure out what I'm teaching anyway. Management told me to teach something and keep the students happy and I can pretty much do whatever I want. Great, except I don't know what I'm doing, haha.
As the only native- English speaker around here I am supposed to know everything so I am also frantically trying to learn all those grammar rules that make English look impossibly hard, even for me. Nothing worse than telling a student his sentence is wrong and he says "But why? I'm using a gerund.". "Uh, well, it's just wrong" (meanwhile thinking "What the hell is a gerund?"). Ok, so I have since learned that a gerund is a type of verbal, when a verb form is used as a noun in a sentence (ya, whatever that means too), but I'd rather not get lost in the details.
I think that I'm supposed to be in charge of a conversation class so that means getting them to talk and correcting what's said. And I have to come up with lots of expressions and idioms to introduce to them too. You'd think this wouldn't be too difficult, and it's not, but Korean students are known for being tough and I'm new to all this.
The good news is that the boss likes me. Actually, she's the only friend I have at the moment and we spend so much time together that rumours are circulating. As the boss, she's generally disliked by everyone, including the assistant manager who is trying to cause all sorts of power struggles and get her fired. Office politics, fun fun :)
Don't ask me how long I'm going to be here teaching. I have no idea. I still think working is overrated and I will try to do as little as possible.... Really I'm just killing time and hoping for some offshore work.
Otherwise, this weekend was a long weekend here in the Philippines. They celebrate All Souls Day on the 1st of Nov. Filipinos are supposed to go visit the cemetery and pray for dead loved ones I guess. I don't know but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to plan anything exciting for the long weekend off. I do have plans for future weekends though so hopefully I'll have more to write about later.
Ammon

1 Comments:

At 6:42 AM , Blogger Ju_B said...

hey Ammon,
Just came home from a long day at work.. perfect time for some 'escapism' on your blog hheehehe..
but i'm confused.. are you in korea or philippines? either way, sounds like fun, stay well and good luck with gerunds.. hehehe.. :)

hugs,
Julie

 

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