Winter Camp EXPLAINED
My winter camp is ending tomorrow and I plan to do a little reflecting on here soon, but I thought it would be best to give an explanation for anyone not familiar with the system here in Korea.
Basically, the school year here runs from roughly early March to late December/early January. This means Korean schools take their long recess in the winter during the months of January and February. Although this is called “vacation”, many teachers still report to work and many students come back for supplementary classes. For high school (at least at mine) the term “vacation” really shouldn’t be used at all… it’s such a tease. Students take a full load of supplementary classes during the “vacation”, coming to school every day like normal but being let out around 6:00pm instead of 9 or 11pm.
For native English teachers this can mean a couple of things. The best case scenario (which is EXTREMELY RARE but I DO know of it happening) is that your school realizes how silly it is for you to have to come in to an empty school every day and lets you take the time off. The worst case scenario is that your school has you come in for your regular hours every day to do nothing but keep you desk nice and warm. For some people they are literally the only ones in their school aside from the caretaker… talk about being useless. This happens because the school is sticking super close to the contract (we are here on visas, after all, to be working in schools).
However, what usually happens is something a little less extreme: a few weeks of winter camp. “Camp” is a way of making English conversation supplementary classes sound more interesting. I’m not sure if they do this for our or the students’ sake, but it’s another terrible bit of word choice. Most teachers end up teaching one or two weeks of winter camp and then desk warm the rest of “vacation”. Winter camp can be really refreshing for teachers who feel like they never get a chance to know any of the students. It’s usually a smaller group and is often voluntary on the part of the students so you end up with kids who actually want to be there.
What happened to me was somewhere between the norm and the “worst case”. My students take a full load of supplementary classes so I was expected to teach my camp in the evening during what is otherwise self-study time and after I usually go home. On top of that, my school wanted me to still come in at my normal time… meaning I would desk warm for 8 hours and THEN teach a two hour camp. Luckily the pity of my fellow teachers and the gossip that came from it put a bit of pressure on admin and I was told I could start coming in after lunch (pretty fair, considering my camp ended at 6pm).
Furthermore… instead of the regular 1-2 weeks of camp I was expected to teach camp throughout the entire vacation. Take away the days I was actually on vacation and that amounted to about 5 weeks of camp. I don’t know ANYONE else who had a situation like mine. Granted, most of my friends teach elementary or middle school, but that still only had somewhere between 2 days - 2 weeks of camp. Two of my friends who DO teach high school didn’t have camp at all.. but it’s important not to let other peoples’ situations make you jealous! (EVEN IF YOU ARE SUPER JEALOUS)
IN THE END…. my camp ended up being a lot of fun. Tomorrow is the last day, so it’s time for me to edit my students’ videos (more on that later) and prepare for our little fest =]
