At times the amount of material my co-teacher and I are supposed to cover in a single period feels overwhelming. Last semester, we had to use a text book for every class, now we use both a text book and a work book. I think that it helps most of the 6th grade classes we teach, and possibly 5th grade ones too, who were often bored, but it definitely makes the 4th grade classes feel overwhelming. I don’t think it’s too much knowledge for a single 40-minute increment, but that it is too many activities to complete in that amount of time. I often feel that while it may be helping the best students in the classes, it is just really hurting those who aren’t as good at English, putting them further behind and making them more confused as we have to spend less time on each individual activity in order to make time for all of them.
Definitely as of now, my 3rd grade classes are my favorite. I think that’s partially my own temperment, but partially because I feel as though the standards are the most reasonable. We don’t have to get through an overwhelming amount of activities, like with the 4th graders and the kids don’t feel as overwhelmed, and the activities are all age appropriate. I really don’t like the fact that the format for the 3rd-6th graders is identical, just with different material. A good portion of the periods consist of a dialogue with the new vocabulary, a listen and repeat section with some of the new vocabulary or expressions, sometimes a song or chant (the 5th and 6th graders, and often the 4th graders, are way way way too old for this), and a game.
Just to give some background information, English elementary school teachers in Korea have to follow a curriculum set up by the government for every single day of the class – there is no flexibility at all. The curriculum often seems to assume that the kids are perfect and well-behaved, when really they are 8-12 year olds, so of course they’re not. Speaking of which, today my co-teacher was complaining about the 3rd graders talking a lot and I wanted to say, “Yeah, they were acting like a bunch of 8 year olds.”
There are a lot of great things in Korean schools and a lot of what I’m complaining about I think are also problems in the United States, but I really don’t know because I’ve never worked in an American school. One big difference is the value placed on education in Korea and how parents often make their childrens’ education their number one financial priority. It’s hard to imagine Korean parents fighting to lower their school budget, like what often happens in America. It’s not a coincidence that the countries that have shown staggering economic improvement highly value public education. In the years since many of these countries that value education have seen their economies expand dramatically, public schools in the United States have often seen budget cuts.
Many Americans completely disbelieve that maybe one day, possibly one day in our lifetimes, the United States won’t be the world power, even though it’s happening as we speak. We completely don’t believe it, while cutting back public education, both K-12 and public universities. The Korean education system is not perfect, but maybe Koreans are concerned about the educational system here and are voicing their concerns and one day that will change, but what won’t change is the value that the society places on education.
