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Life at Benjamin's Language Institute
27th
September 2007 Benjamin's is run by a guy called Benjamin (go figure). Benjamin is from Canada, married to a lovely Korean lady called Ji-Sook and - rather oddly - has the exact same birthday as me! May 17th, 1973. They have a lovely daughter called Lael. Benjamin's is a small-ish Hagwon (language school). There are three foreign teachers there. Myself, Liad - an Israeli lad who grew up in the States, and Katherine - a Korean-American girl who was brought up in Chicago. There is also Mi-Jin and Crystal who are the Korean admin staff. Now what strikes me as immediately odd about this compared to Kwak's (my old Hagwon) is that I actually know all this trivia. Who was the receptionist at Kwak's? No idea. Does the manager at Kwak's have children? I know he has at least one daughter. Beyond that, I couldn't say. I think the reason that I know the trivia, is that I am so much happier at Benjamin's. The transition here was great. Benjamin in particular went far
and above the call of duty. He took me shopping, and bought and
paid for all the things I might need in my new apartment. Knives,
plates, forks. Stuff like that. He even bought me groceries.
The stoopid visa run I did to
Japan was paid for by them. I just can't imagine Kwak's doing
anything like that. In fact, the bastards still owe me money but
refuse to pay up! Let's do some comparisons. Well, firstly I get paid more at Benjamin's. 2.2 million per month compared to 2.0 at Kwak's. Plus I get a pension which practically means that I get another 2.16 million when I leave Korea. My apartment is so much nicer than the hovel I was living at in Incheon. I was the first person to live in my apartment. Here is the apartment block I live in. More on the actual apartment at a later date. The maximum class size at Kwak's is ten, here it is six. My worst behaved class here is better than my best behaved class at Kwak's. At Kwak's I would do split shift classes. I would teach one half of the class for half-an-hour and a Korean teacher did the other half. This was horrible and stifled any creative input I could of had. Someone described teaching at Kwak's as being like a trained monkey. I think that is quite true. To say I was a teacher at Kwak's is an overstatement. At Benjamin's, I am solely responsible for my classes. Monday to Thursday I teach one class from 2pm to 3pm, another from 3pm to 4:30pm and another from 4:30pm to 6:00pm. The longer classes and sole responsibility is so much better. I can slow down when it is hard, and speed up when it is easy. On Friday, we have writing day where all the students come in and practice their writing skills. We usually plan some sort of interesting activity for the kids. This is - of course - an ideal time to push my hidden agendas. One writing day class that I planed, I showed the kids this video and ask them some questions. The beginners questions were something like: "Describe the women." Their answers were something like: "She is black. She has sad. She is big feet. She can play basketball."
The answers to that varied from the profoundly dumb ("Go to the supermarket") to the profoundly profound ("Hmmm. This is hard. I'd like to go over there myself and see what might be done"). For the month of August I did what is known as Intensive Month. Intensive Month is where keen little munchkins come in for extra classes to brush up on skills like reading, writing, listening and speaking. Intensive Month coincides with their normal school holidays. (Korean students are all about work, work, work). For me, it meant working about ten hours a day for a month. Lots of lovely overtime was paid. For the speaking class, I made a video of each of my children. If you want to see the videos, click here. Be warned though, they are deathly dull. So that's my new school and the types of activities that I get up to. Hagwon placement in Korea can be real hit and miss. Sometimes you lose, like I did with Kwak's. Sometimes you win, like I did with Benjamin's.
(c)
2005, 2006 and 2007 Malcolm Trevena. |
