New job

It seems an absolute age since I blogged about work...just been filling my posts with details of my life as a sight-seer. I suppose that might have something to do with the fact that I've been out of work for over a month, thus the shock of getting back into a routine is hitting me let alone writing about it.

Except so far, it's not a routine. This week we've so far spent our time printing out worksheets and flashcards, laminating and cutting out, thereby developing some minor strain of RSI from scissor overuse. Yesterday we ventured into town to choose some storybooks, only to find that our boss had gone out and bought some without consulting us. Tomorrow we're raiding our old school to see what we can salvage from the closing aftermath and teaching an informal storytelling class to a bunch of keen after-schoolers.

The fact that we're introducing this new English program into this Korean kindergarten is a mixed blessing. It's good that we don't need to take on routines that we don't like or teach dull/inappropriate books. We were assured that we would have full say over the curriculum, choose all the books and decide on our teaching hours.

However with the "Korean way" that we are unfortunately getting all too familiar with, things aren't quite turning out exactly the way they were presented to us. The real problem is that our boss isn't always in school, and when she isn't she's generally elsewhere being incredibly busy. It's therefore often difficult to get hold of her, and her English isn't perfect so communication isn't perfect anyway.

For instance, even though our teaching hours are at a maximum of 30 hours a week (which we aren't really supposed to be teaching all of anyway with regards to our negotiations) we've been told that we have to be in school from 9 to 6 preparing. I'm particularly frustrated about this since the main proviso for us working here (opposed to, say, that school with the 2 Ronnies which we ran away from) was that the working hours would be short, potentially finishing work at 3.30 or around abouts. I think if we talk to our boss - she's a nice lady with a lot on her plate - she'll understand, but for now wires have been crossed and this is the situation we are in.

Also, since the school year starts in March, we have four weeks now where we are essentially running a trial period, just giving three lessons each a day before the two week school holiday where we will be preparing for the following year. Although this is reasonably unstructured, it's pretty cushy to be honest...as long as we don't have to be hanging around all day until 6pm!

Apart from my qualms about the working hours, at the moment we're just chilling out with the laminator and drinking tea; Lunar New Years is coming up at the beginning of February where we'll only work a 2-day week; and then we have those two weeks to do more laminating when it's the school holiday.

So all in all the deal isn't bad - I'm not particularly looking to be an excellent teacher, in fact I've rather condemned the job to a money-making means rather than my reason for existence. It's a little sad that it might not be the dream job we'd searched for, but as long as we put up with the fact that things are going to be pretty disorganised for a while, it's not high stress by any means and at least it brings the money in.