Last saturday we had a 6 hour workshop at school. The workshop itself wasn't so bad, It was kinda a waste of time but not as bad as I thought was going to be. During the last five minutes though one of the Korean teachers basically humiliated an English teacher. Yeah that gave us a great mood the rest of the day. My Saturday was basically shot but I did get to go to my first YW activity and spent some time with the girls. That was fun, we listened to my Ipod and shared songs.
Then during the week I found a monster cockroach crawling around near my bed. Yeah that gave me sweet dreams during the night and lets just say I had a field day cleaning my apartment thoroughly. The evil creatures come out of the drains or from the front door. I couldn't figure out how, being on the 11th floor, I would get the monsters. Then yesterday I saw that my neighbor left out their dishes still with the remains of food on them outside their door. Right next to my door. It is a cultural thing but it does not help the pest problem.
The icing on the cake was today, All week we have had the final test for the students which means more videos for the Director to criticize and demean and the work load triples. Well our director decided to take what small amount of time we had and told had a meeting with us. In this meeting she basically told us what our jobs were, and that we needed to get better, she expected drastic improvements from the kids over the past month. She said that our success at the job is depending on the happiness of the students and parents. She said that this was a business and we needed to see some results. I felt like what I was doing was inadequate and that any improvement the students made was not enough. The fact that we are losing any students is obviously my fault as a new teacher. Mind you they didn't really train us in the beginning. I feel like I have had no success where I am at right now, the whole situation is so frustrating. I was considering quitting throughout that whole meeting, if I was not helping what is the point of me staying.
I am no quitter though and speaking with the other teachers afterwards they said basically like they were going to lose their cool in the meeting as well. She was basically critiquing us for things we can't control. Even with the videos, she hadn't even seen any of them yet, but was already telling us that we had to improve them. It is because we as English foreigners we are easy targets and basically the fall back for problems.
The director later talked to David and apologized to him but I have not been addressed and doubt anything will be said to me.
Oh and I am not finished, Normally the kids are my enjoyable part of the job. I get that feeling of everything I am doing is right when I see the students enjoying themselves or doing the work. Well one kid decided to upend that today. Mark is in one of my best classes. (It is the same class as the recorder kid, funny how my best class has given me the most pain) Well we had a good lesson where all the kids were participating. We were making a newspaper about the subjects we learned this term and after the bell rang, I was getting the kids to help clean up after the activity. There was a broken window at the back of the class and Mark was poking at it, so jokingly I asked if he broke it. He just looked at me so I thought he hadn't understood so I repeated myself. He then proceeded to freak out and he threw his book on the ground and ran out of the room in a huff. Feeling like I just unknowingly opened a can of worms I grabbed a few of my things and chased after him. I found him outside looking out a window still in a sour mood. I explained to him the situation that it was not meant to hurt him and that it was a joke. I felt like he needed still some time so I went to the teacher who was going to teach that class next and explained the situation to her. I then went back to the teachers lounge still planning to approach Mark after a while. Well not a minute later the director came in hauling the kid behind her. With her help I again explained that it wasn't his fault, and that I didn't really blame him for the window that it was just a joke. I apologized that I offended him and that was that. The director took another half an hour explaining that the kid had bullying issues and that at one time he had called the cops because people were making fun of him. He is a darker complexion then the other children and sad to say Korean are really racist. The situation was not ideal but it worked itself out, I had him for one more class and he was normal in that class. It was just more frustration on top of an already stressful day.
So here you go, that is my current feeling this week. But this whole post is really negative so to make up for it I will post a picture of my babies. They are the two kids from the french family that has taken me in. They both love me!!! At least someone does :)
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