What am I teaching?

Before I left many of you had been asking questions, such as: what will you be teaching? What is the school year like? Do you get vacation time? What is the school day like? Do you know the curriculum? Today I was extremely thankful to have a meeting with the vice director of the school, and she went through and explained the teaching manual to me. I was SOOO happy to see my prayers had been answered. Last night I felt lost and confused as to what I was supposed to be doing here as a teacher, but after this meeting it is much more clear.

My kindergarten schedule looks something like this:

9:00-9:40- Morning Prep

9:40-12:00 - three 40 minute periods with 10 minute breaks in between

12:00-12:40- LUNCH

12:40-2:10 - two 40 minute periods with 10 minute breaks

2:10-3:00 - Afternoon Prep

During the afternoon/evening is when the older and more advanced students come to the school. These past two afternoons I have been observing other teachers classes. My afternoon/evening schedule is yet to be decided by the director and vice director of the school, which makes me a little nervous since I take over classes on Monday... yikes!

My official title is English teacher, which includes teaching: reading, writing, speech, social studies, phonics, grammar, music, art, and vocabulary. I was so happy to hear I would be able to teach music as well :) 

The school year for my school is year-round, because it is a private school. The new school year starts in March and second semester starts in September. We get breaks for Korean holidays as well as 2 weeks of paid vacation time. Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, is coming up very soon on the weekend of September 30th. We get a three day weekend, which I guess I could plan something fun for that weekend. Also, today I found out our weeks of vacation are scheduled, because the whole school is closed. Christmas break will be from December 29-January 6.

Alright, last but certainly not least is the curriculum. Korea Poly School has many sister schools all over Korea and the curriculum is same among all the schools. This means that all of the material I need to cover in a month is predetermined, and all I have to do is fit that information into each month.

Again, it seems I have blabbed quite a bit about school, but I learned so much today it is hard not to share. In completely unrelated news, I have my Korean cell phone, which is this small pink thing and has a stylus.