This week was the end of our Spring II session. We had our final exams this week. One of the disadvantages to working at a good School as opposed to one of the many crappy private schools (Hog wons) here in Korea is the amount of extra work I have to do compared to many of the teachers in Gumi. Most of the English schools here just do a minimum amount of work with the students, there are a lot of games and handing out worksheets and puzzles and that kind of stuff. However there are a few reputable schools and mine happens to be one of them. As a actual teacher I find this comforting because I do actually like teaching the kids English. But the downside to this is that I have a lot of extra work to do. Normally we give the students a test or essay every week which I have to grade, this is not normal most English teachers don't give or grade papers. We also design our own curriculum, I don't have to do all my classes but I have a fair share of all the classes we teach, there are 9 foreigners at my school so I design 1/9 of the curriculum. This is a lot more work than many of the other teachers in Gumi do, but I like the fact that my school isn't a joke. That said, I hate finals week. We have to design the tests, 2-3 for each of us. Then we have to administer the tests which is the easy part, but I have 100-120 students during the week, so I have to Grade 120 final exams, half of them long essays in 2 days, then tally the scores, also the session scores, quizzes homework, participation, etc. Then add all that up give them a grade, write a paragraph comment on each student, enter their scores in the computer, than handwrite them on their report cards( I don't know why this isn't electronic, but it isn't). I also have to write a review of each of our books. needless to say this isn't a fun week.
My only salvation is that I am leaving in just a little over 7 hours to go to the Mud Festival, its a party that draws around 1 million people to a resort town in Korea where they have a mud party, everyone gets all muddy and drinks excessively. It's gonna be awesome. I will write about it in my next blog.
