Korean School Year

Today is an important day for teachers at my school. Why, you ask? It's because it's the day they find out what they'll be teaching for the next year.

Ok, let me pause and explain the Korean public school year to you. It's quite different than the one back in the States. Here's a little rundown of the year:

March - New school year starts
March to June - First semester
July to August - Summer break (~5 weeks)
September to December - Second semester
January - Winter Vacation (~6 weeks...including last week of December)
First two weeks of February - Weird time of the school year (Students must come but it's not really part of the semester)
Last two weeks of February - Spring Break

Side note: Before you say, 'Wow, they have lots of vacation,' please know that students in Korea never actually have vacation like students in America. Students still go to their hagwons (academies) and lots of them come to school for extra classes. So they're pretty much learning all year round.

Ok, back to the point. Today is an important day. This morning the teachers found out their new assignments for the next year and now they're all busy shuffling things around. But, if you do the math, it means that yes, the teachers find out their teaching assignments three days (Thursday is a national holiday) before the students come to start school on Friday. THREE DAYS!! This includes moving classrooms for a lot of teachers, settling in for new teachers, and getting everything ready to see a classroom full of 30+ students on Friday.

Honestly, I don't know how they do it. The way the Korean education system is set up (I'll explain at the bottom of this blog) means that a teacher could go from teaching 6th grade to 2nd grade and have 3 days to prep for all of that. Or a teacher could go from being an English teacher to being a science teacher and have 3 days to prepare. Either way, it seems like a stressful situation all the way around. There's kind of a feeling of 'Trial by Fire' around here, and it just seems to me that it's not the most effective way to do things...but maybe that's because I'm a planner and an organizer and I like to know what I'm doing more than three days ahead of time. But, it seems to work for them, and I guess if that's what you're used to, then you don't know any differently.

As for me, I'm still waiting for word of what classes I'll be teaching exactly and with whom I'll be teaching. My fingers are crossed for an awesome last 8 months in the Korean public school system!


(For Korean teachers in Korea, it's a bit different than in the States. Each school doesn't do it's own hiring, but instead is controlled by the Department of Education. So pretty much, once you're in the system, you're set. You don't have to go interview at different jobs around the city. Instead, you apply through the DoE and request certain cities and schools that you want. You might get what you want, you might not. Also, they aren't applying for certain positions, they're just applying to move. They won't find out what they're actually teaching until the week of the new school year...i.e. today!

But Korea has an interesting policy. Teachers cannot stay at the same school for more than five years. Whereas at home, teachers might start and finish their careers at the same schools, this is not the case in Korea public schools. Usually after the third year of teaching, teachers will start applying to their preferred cities and/or schools.

As for how teachers are given preference over other teachers in this process, it goes on a point system. For each year you teach, you receive a certain amount of points. You can earn extra points by doing extra things, like coaching a sport or winning a contest, etc. The teachers with the highest amount of points is given their preference first, then it works down the list. So with hundreds and hundreds of teachers wanting/having to move around each year, it makes me curious to see how they organize all of that!)