If you look around on peoples blogs and social media updates, you will find that many ESL teachers in S. Korea have to teach over the winter and summer vacations. You will even see many complaints about it and exaggerations. "What the heck is going on out there?", you will ask. Let me break it down for you.
I can't speak for every teachers situation, but if they are in public school it should be similar to mine. Keep in mind that this particular situation is middle school. I was told to teach a 2 week out of 6 week vacation period Winter camp class. 4 periods in 1 day from 8:30am to noon. (Remember that classes don't normally start on-time.) Not exactly backbreaking work...I also still have 4weeks left to fool around and get to know my city or visit friends or travel!
Many people also create camps that are filled with movies and games. Do they do this the whole 2 weeks? I have no clue, but it sure seems like it the way some people talk. I hadn't planned on that at all. I had planned to have a full lesson all pertaining to vacation. I started with getting to know each other of course and jumped right into dream destinations or sights to see. I hadn't made any paperwork at the time because I didn't want camp to be a total bore.
Well, during the second break of the first day I peeked into the other classrooms to see what was going on. I've never taught a camp for a public school before so I didn't want to be too easy or too hard. I saw many teachers had worksheets and were reading from books. Some teachers had even made the students sit with their desks in a circle. 'Ok,' I thought,'I can totally do this!'
The students cried about wanting to watch movies and play games and I made a rule for them. If they spoke in only English by Friday, I would show a movie. That's right. All English. The first week was rough for them. Some of the students had come from the lower level and some from the higher. All of them were "first" graders though. (U.S. 7th grade) I had to remind them all the time to only speak English all day. It did seem like they enjoyed my slide shows and the little activities I had planned, but I ended up assigning homework because I felt that they didn't speak enough English.
I know. I am a harsh teacher!! Anyway, they almost cried when I gave them the weekend homework. It was so long hahahaha Oh well. I was out and enjoyed my New Year! When I came back on Monday all but two students had done the homework and of those three had not really finished because they didn't write complete sentences. We went over it in class and continued the "vacation" learning. I even had them make scrapbooks of their dream vacay. I assigned more homework for that night but didn't want to make anymore demands.
This week was awesome because the students were trying so hard to speak English they were actually yelling at each other when they said simple sentences in Korean. They played the games that I'd assigned and tried to do good on the projects given to them. I was proud of them so I did show a movie on the last day. They had said they were sad that camp was over because it was "funny". They may not know the difference between fun and funny, but I let it go because we laughed a LOT in there. They found out that I speak more Korean then I let on and they decided to try much harder in English because of it. I don't plan to speak any Korean in the year, but since I had to do the camp alone (which is normal) I used it a little bit. A really little bit just to bring home the point.
Well this was a long post but I hope you can get a feel of what you'll be expected to do in a camp. It's really a free reign as far as I'm concerned. It was fun and I'm glad they had it. I don't feel like it was an unreasonable request because I was hired to be a teacher and so that's what I'm going to do. Teach.
