Schedule

I’ve gotten many questions about the schedule of foreign teachers here. To be honest, every school is different (which is the standard answer for most questions about day to day school life). In the EPIK (public school) contract, we have 22 class hours and 18 planning hours every week. The school can go beyond the teaching hours with after school classes or teachers’ classes, but they’re required to pay us extra for every hour that we’re in the classroom over the 22.

So that’s the number of classes in one week that a foreign teacher can expect. However, how many lessons each teacher has varies greatly between schools.

This depends on:

1) How many grades do you teach? How many classes?

2) How spread out are your classes?

3) How many co-teachers do you have?

On one extreme, teachers might have one grade only and do the exact same lesson 20 times, meeting a different class of kids every time for their one English class a week. On the other hand, a teacher might teach multiple grades and have 20 different lessons, likely meeting the same kids when they’re at different points in the book.

The other factor is the co-teachers. If you have one co-teacher, lesson planning is pretty simple. More co-teachers mean more unique lessons. You might have the same grade with the same book going over the same page, but do a lesson 3 different ways.

Personally, I teach 27 classes and 14 different lessons every week. Of all the teachers I’ve spoken with, this is the highest number I’ve heard.

Factors that play into this are:

1) My school is huge. I meet with 21 different classes of 30 each during the normal school day (9am-3pm), 15 students for my after school class every day (3-4pm), and maybe 5 teachers for my teachers’ class once a week.

2) I have 5 co-teachers.

3) The students (grades 4-6) have English class 3x per week, but I only meet with each once, which means the same grade with the same co-teacher will be at different pages in the book.

It can be very draining to have so much planning to do in a week, especially because on the weekend I want to be exploring and meeting friends. But it’s getting easier now that I have more of a handle on my schedule, and am learning to utilize every bit of time I can. 20 minutes here and there help to iron out my after school lesson plan for the day, brainstorm a game for class, etc.

Now you all know why I’m tired and go to bed at 10 like an old lady… Sorry for lack of contact. Although that is what this blog is for, right?

I’ll go into more detail about my co-teachers and after school class in separate posts, as I can go on and on about them J

안녕!

Anyeong!

Bye!