School Information

A few people have been asking about how our school works and what a typical day is like. 
In teaching there aren't really any typical days, just normal crazy days with a few toned down days in between.  This particular post will be continuing on various topics of interest and if anyone has anything specific you are curious about please email or comment on here. 



1.  The school's name is Reading Town English Institute
2.  The school is located in Daejeon, South Korea (there are many independently owned branches around the world) it is on the 4th floor about a 5 minute walking distance from our apartment.  On the same floor is a piano private school, a math private school and our school.  There are 8 classrooms, a teachers room, an office of sorts and a reception area. It is "U" shaped.
3.  The grades we teach are the equivalent of kindergarten through middle school--the highest reading level is a Lexile of 5.0.  The comprehension level is a bit lower, around 3.2.  Fluency is definitely a lot higher than the comprehension level. 
4.  Joseph and I each have about 40 students and the school has approximately 150.  It is a smaller branch with 2 foreign teachers (us), 3 Korean speaking teachers, a director (assistant principal) and the owner.  Something interesting is that parents send their children to these private English academies to be specifically taught by the English speaking teachers.  That's why they want native English speakers and it is why Korean's pay so much for their native English speaking teachers.
5.  We teach Speaking, Writing and Reading.  The Korean teachers speak Listening and Comprehension.
6.  The students read in English but they often translate within the books to better understand the context and vocabulary

7.
A typical day is us arriving at 1pm and we begin teaching at 2:10.  Think of this type of school as an academy or private school like back home and you have the general idea--just very small.  We have 7-8 classes each day with no more than 10 students in each class.  Joseph has one class with only one student--how nice!  Our classes are each 50 minutes long.  In that time we speak English with the students about topics that are in the curriculum and also topics the students bring up in addition to the school curriculum.  We can talk about anything appropriate and we are encouraged to do so.  At the end of 50 minutes the students either stay in the classroom, go to break (5 minutes) or leave for the day.  The teachers switch to another classroom within that 5 minute break and are back in another classroom after that 5 minutes. 
Again, each school is independently run even if it is a branch.  They are each owned by a specific owner or one owner will own several schools. 

Our school is run through a New York based company.  Our day ends on M-W-F at 9:25 PM and on Tues-Th at 8:35 PM.  Back in Florida, Joseph and I used to wake up at 4am and be at our respective schools by 6:30am and home by about 6PM so this is a bit different.

Each school is different on the requirements for the teachers.  Our school requires us to do weekly and monthly lesson plans and mid-terms/finals in addition to bi-weekly vocabulary word tests.  Joseph and I are do-ers and find it hard to only do that so we when we inquired about the school library we were given the privilege to revamp it and just recently are talking with our school about writing a more effective writing curriculum.   

Something interesting we learned is that students here are not staffed.  For anything.  That is slowly changing but we have been learning that if a child is somehow learning disabled, EH, ADD, etc. the parents don't want their children tested.  From what we understand it is a non-issue at most public schools.  They just don't do that kind of thing here (in my mind this sounds a bit off so I will further research this topic and write about it at a later date).  If it is something severe, the child is usually not mainstreamed and is put somewhere else either kept at home and taught or another type of school.  From what we are learning it is rare for a special needs child (from either end of the spectrum) to be in a "public school" but we would like to do more research on this topic.  I find it interesting and a bit bizarre to simply let it go at that.  IEP's [Individual Education Plan] (or their Korean counterpart) have never been heard of here.  Can you imagine that back home?  My mind goes straight to the court cases for ESE and ESOL. 

We will have another blog with pictures and perhaps a video of our students and school.  :-) 

Further topics to research: *Korean ESE students, *ESOL standards?, *Private school funding
Any other ideas?