This is What It Looks Like When I'm Not at Work =p

New schedule means I have a new prep everyday (however, they are all mid-level classes, so preparing doesn't take long); but it also means that I have Wednesdays off! Finally, in week 3, I'm taking advantage of this - for fear that something will happen, and I will lose them..

I knew that moving to Korea would change me, but something has happened that I wasn't prepared for. In college, I was surrounded by people who were going to be teachers. Then I got a job as a teacher in America. Both groups had something in common: teaching was their thing. There was no something else.

Well, that's not what happens in Korea. Getting into this, I knew that Chungdahm *wasn't* a job where I'd be surrounded by people who had the same life experience. I remember in my last conversation with my Footprints recruiter, we talked about how hagwons weren't something that would further my teaching career the way a public school teaching job would. That said, I think I did make the right decision. Chungdahm (or, well, my coworkers here) have definitely stopped me from taking myself so seriously, and have made me a much calmer person who doesn't stress *nearly* as much about the small things.

As a teacher, Chungahm has taught me a lot about being an instructor. There is a difference - a teacher has much more ownership of what they do, an instructor just kind of passes on what other people create. Even though the former is a profession and the latter a job, I think that teachers do need to know how to be instructors. It's a humbling reminder that I definitely don't know the _right_ way of doing everything in this profession. Although I think I've always been a strong writing teacher (my FCAT track record shows this), my reading curriculum left a lot to be desired, and I've definitely learned a lot about how to be a more effective reading teacher from CDI. Teaching someone else's curriculum has taught me how to listen to what other experts expect. It has an effect on being an employee. Teachers are terrible employees - we spend all day being The Person In Charge, and it's hard to revert back to the mindset that someone else is the boss.

Being Head Instructor has become this second chance for me to fix all of the mistakes I made as Building Leader at AOE. I've learned so much about communication with employees (as opposed to a vague, "yeah...do....thiiiissss..."), and the best ways to talk to people when you want them to do something. Still working on the last one.

Back to the point I brought up earlier: working here has put me around people for whom this job is just a stopping point between college and real life. Teaching isn't their real life. And for the first time, I'm around the idea that maybe this isn't it - which is kind of frightening. Could there be something else that I'm meant to do? As of now, I'm thinking no - as much as I abhor school politics, I like kids. I'm still stuck on the idea that that's the most important part..

Also, the lyrics of "Drops of Jupiter" are either idiotic or genius. I still can't decide.