Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nathanrutledge]

You want to work on your own stuff, that's cool (I have my own extensive, time consuming hobbies), but from my experience, you're going to be swamped for quite a while. Like another poster said, your schedule is going to be broken up into chunks and each day is going to be different from the last. If you haven't taught ESL before, there is a pretty steep learning curve to go from new teacher to someone who can hold their own in the classroom.

My personal experience, I spent my first year at a school where I only had ten classes a week. That gave me plenty of time to work on lesson plans and prepare assignments and tests, work on presentations, et cetera, and I still found myself struggling for time. My second year, our school had doubled in size and I had 19 regular classes, plus 8 hours after school with a remedial and an advanced class, and using my old lessons, I was still finding myself busy throughout the day.

This is a job that, unless you have done it before and have a wide assortment of plans and games ready to go, you're going to need to devote 100% of your time to while at work.

That being said, you're going to be at work 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday, which leaves you with plenty of outside time to do your own thing. Go to it! But don't be surprised when you find you have no time between 9 and 5.