Teaching in Kangnam

Last week, I changed locations and my teaching subject. On March 2nd, I started working at the Kangnam branch of Pagoda Academy. This location is the main branch of Pagoda, so there are many more teachers and students. This month, I will be teaching 6 classes from M-F and one class on Saturday. I have the dreaded split shift, which means I teach from 7-10AM and 7-10PM. Since most of my students have business jobs, they have to attend class before or after work. I am not excited about waking up at 5AM every morning and not getting home until 10:30 or 11 PM, but I will get adjusted eventually. I do have a nine hour break in the middle of the day. I will use this time to prepare for the next day, eat lunch, workout, and eat dinner.

My morning classes have about 5-10 students and my evening courses have 10-15 with 15 being the maximum in a class. This is quite different and challenging for me because my previous classes were 1-10 students in size. The students' English skills are better, so communicating is a little easier. Some students are disappointed that classes are too big because they want to have more opportunities to speak. At least, I can have small group discussions and it will allow me to speak less in class. Surprisingly, many of my students are fairly close in age to me with a few exceptions.

I was asked to teach a Saturday course, so I decided it would be a good idea for my teaching review. I teach from 10:30AM-1PM and have 15 students. It is definitely different have such a long class and trying to keep discussions interesting. My other classes are 50 or 100 minutes. It is only four weeks unless I sign up for another month. Pagoda does try to make it worth my time to work on the weekend. I get a percentage of the class tuition. Since the class is full, I should about 2-3 times more per hour for the Saturday class than my normal hourly wage.

Earlier, I mentioned that I will workout during my break. I found a fairly nice gym to workout that is located across the street from where I work. Hopefully, I will have enough drive to workout a few days a week. I need to start losing some weight because I have had enough physical problems with my body.

My Korean is still poor. Pagoda decided to start offering Korean, but they only offering intermediate and advanced classes, so next month, I will have to find another "hagwon" to take a class. There are some organizations/universities that offer scholarships to Korean adoptees, but my schedule unfortunately doesn't allow me to travel across the city for the classes. Starting in April, I will start taking classes because I am starting to get frustrated and embarrassed that I can speak simple phrases and words.