I’m almost up to date with the blogging, just Luna New Year and the kindy performance to go. Time for a post to remind myself of the happenings at school!

Today saw the oldest kindy kids graduate from kindergarten (a post with lost of video to follow), I have tomorrow off kindy, Thursday is a national holiday (not that anyone has told me or Kat!) then on Friday everything changes as the new school year begins.

It’s going to be an interesting transition because since I arrived in September the number of students attending the school has fallen dramatically, probably because of the opening of a state funded hagwon nearby.

I used to teach thee Kindergarten classes yellow, blue and pink. When I arrived yellow class (aged 4, Korean age 5) had four students, this is the one class that hasn’t changed much one kid left and another one arrived. Blue class (aged 5, Korean age 6) had 12 students, it now has seven and pink class (aged 6, Korean age 7) had seven students, when they graduated today there were only four left. As Pink class have now graduated each class moves up a level, blue become pink, yellow become blue, but there are no new kids arriving in yellow class so kindy is down to just two classes.

It is harder to tell who is coming and going in afternoon classes. The essay class all left to go to university and the younger kid in that class was taken out of the school. In other classes the odd student here and there has left but there seem to be very few arriving to replace them, despite the director employing someone to go door knocking to promoted the school. We were told a while ago that the school has lost over 50 students which, in a school of just 250 is a lot! On our new timetables Katrina and I have gone from having one 25 minute break per day to having two 25 minute breaks three days a week – so we are almost down to working the number of hours stated in our contracts – the director must hate that!

The drop in students has also lead to a drop in the number of Korean teachers and changing roles of the Korean teachers.

When I arrived we had three Korean kindy teachers Ji, Joyce and Kang plus myself. Then Joyce and Ji would teach afternoon lessons until six, I would teach until seven and we had four Korean afternoon teachers Yoon, Cindy, Henry and Anne who taught until nine plus Daniel who taught until nine.

Shortly after I arrived Yoon left to get married and was directly replaced by Jennifer. Then a little while later Joyce left and Jennifer took over her position teaching kindergarten and afternoons until at six but no one took on Jennifer’s previous teaching until nine. Then Ji stopped teaching afternoon lessons and Kang (who’d always been in school until six despite not teaching any classes) took on some of her classes.

Daniel left and was replaced by Katrina.

Now Cindy and Jennifer are leaving and Anne is moving to kindergarten. So two new teachers have arrived and appear to both be taking on afternoon roles (no one has actually told us anything about their roles).

This means that kindy is now down to two Korean teachers Anne and Kang plus myself (which makes sense as there are now only two classes). Kang and Anne will both teach until six but I get the impression one of the new teachers is taking on Kang’s afternoon classes. Henry is still teaching afternoons along with (I assume) the two new Korean teachers. This means afternoon lessons are down to three Korean teachers plus Katrina.

So in all we have lost two whole teaches in six months. The school must be having mega problems attracting students. Maybe the parents have figured that the kids memorising books they don’t understand is not the best way to learn English!

* Posted by j150vsc on 27/02/2007.