Friday, November 28, 2008

Open Class day at Primus Kids

Today was the day that I had been dreading for forever. I haven't felt this much pressure in my whole life. I can't even begin to explain how stressed out I've been the last few weeks. Mostly because Kelly, my boss, has this ridiculous ability to piss me off and make me so stressed out at the same time.

Open class is when parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings come to the school, sit in the classroom and judge me. Parent complain SO much in Korea, its unbelievable. Every little thing they complain about. I couldn't even begin to list the stupid things that they complain about.

Kelly has been all over me for the past 2 weeks (more this week than the other). She wants to "make sure I'm a good teacher". She sugarcoats her insults by pretending they are there to help me. That she can help. She has never been a teacher in her life. She always talks about how she's a 'business woman'. It isn't the same thing as a teacher. We have been constantly fighting for the past week... daily. I tell her off... she tries to defend her degrading actions. Etc Etc.

So today was a very nerve wracking day. I got to work at the same time but I didn't have to do anything until 10. There were parents everywhere.

I got into my classroom and I expected 30 parents (which is how many they listed as attending). In reality only about 15 showed up. Which was great. There was plenty of room in the classroom for them and my kids and a little bit of air flow. The kids were amazing. They did so great. I was worried that they would freeze up and not be able to talk. Turns out they weren't nervous at all. They yelled out the answers just like I wanted.

Then I went to Bambi class (Michelle's class) like I always do. She only has 2 kids in her class Alice and Daniel so it definitely has a different feel to it than my class. None of the parents were in the classroom which was really odd. I started teaching and then Kelly came in and talked to Daniel and Alice in Korean. I asked her where the parents were and she said 'they are very disappointed in the class and are unsure if they want to continue...' I couldn't believe it. Michelle is a great teacher. And of all of us at the school... she's actually a Kindergarten teacher in the states. So ridiculous. Kelly pleaded with me to "save things". I'm not sure what she expected me to do. From what I understand she didn't have much confidence in my abilities.

So I pumped up the 'overly cheerful teacher' up a notch.

The parents seemed pretty excited. Daniel and Alice who are usually very quiet were yelling out the answers and jumping up and down to answer the questions I was asking. I couldn't have asked for them to do any better. I was very pleased.

Who knows how the parents feel. As far as I can tell... nothing pleases them.

After we finished up, Christine, Michelle, Mike, Erik and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant near Beomgye station. It was delicious. Apparently we were supposed to eat with the parents. None of us were feeling that idea, so we snuck out. They can't make us eat anywhere they choose. No thanks.

Kelly then told me that one of my students parents was complaining because their child didn't have as many stickers on his paper as the rest of the kids. I told Kelly that parents need to stop being so immature. The reason Max had less was because he had already filled up a paper and this paper was NEW.

I told Kelly that I didn't care what the parents said, I thought the day went great and that was how I was going to think of it. She told me "we will talk about it Monday".

Then 3 hours later I went to leave and she stopped me in the elevator and says "i just wanted to tell you that you DID do a great job today, your kids parents liked you a lot.... so don't worry."




Duh. I'm a very smart individual. ;)

1 comment:

Teresa said...

That's great! I was going to message and ask how it went cause I knew you weren't looking forward to it. I'm so happy it went well!