My class(es) and students, yes all 800+ of them.

I teach at a public elementary school. It is your average public Korean school. Two janitors, three Korean English teachers, at least twenty Korean teachers and... me. "The foreign teacher," "teacher Nikki." My three English co-teachers are so kind. One is quite fluent in English and has been my greatest help at school. The other too are quite wonderful too, but the communication is so circular sometimes. We can talk for 10 minutes and I will still have no idea what the answer was to my question. It can be quite frusterating, but you have to learn to go with the flow.

The school itself is about ten years old. Squattie potties are standard, along with brushing your teeth at lunch and wearing socks with your school sandals. (Yes, there are special shoes for the school building.) The other classrooms are nice, but the English room is fabulous! They re-modeled it about two years ago. Now it is called the "English Village". New books, tables, chairs, mock airplane seats, grocery store/guest concierge stations, and a "theater" that is really the interactive computer screen which doubles as the white board.

To be honest, I have no idea what goes on most of the time. Remember that ole line, "just smile and nod?" Yup, thats me! There is far more Korean spoken then English, as most of the kids are still learning simple sentences and ideas. Only three other teachers speak English well. It makes lunchtime very, very quiet. Sometimes there is jibber jabber between the Koreans. It is then I make up stories as to what they could be saying. "Oh did you hear that Hyo Jin went out with that older man? He wants to marry her. He has lots of money but she does not love him. She wants to marry that K-pop singer." Although, most of the time I am sure it is more along the lines of, "look the foreign teacher cannot pick up the noodles with her chopsticks." (It is then I am so thankful I don't know Korean.

Back to my job... I teach six class periods a day for grades 3rd - 6th. Each day consists of about 180 students. However, Wednesday there are only five classes, which means my afternoon is spent lesson planning.

The job itself is quite easy material wise. Powerpoints, videos, handouts, songs, and games are all part of the curriculum. Yet most of the songs and videos are quite pathetic, what I mean to say is for the 5-6th graders the videos are no longer "cool". I don't blame them when their little eyes roll everytime the 90's characters with neon clothing and haircuts come on the screen. So it is my job to entertain. This is mostly done by including K-pop and other modern applications in the lession. Patience, creativity, and google.com have been the most helpful tools.

The following is are photos and short video of my class, office and classroom.

The kids doing a SnowWhite "Happy Birthday" role play, the shortest ones are my favorites of this 3rd grade class:

Classroom:

Office: