All the foreign teachers hate school breaks because, while the over-worked Korean teachers finally get to chill at home, the foreign teachers have to fulfill their contracts and come to school and pick their noses.

Only this foreign teacher has been writing the corresponding book to go along with her morning broadcast, and freaking out because she doesn’t have enough time to get it done before school starts.

Turns out there won’t be a broadcast in the mornings (because both the English teachers are home-room teachers this year), there may not be a broadcast at all, the book may not be printed, and I won’t know about it until probably next week, just before school starts.  Neither will I be writing my own curriculum this year, but will instead be following the Korean national curriculum.  Which makes sense, something I’ve thought was a missed opportunity all along – reinforcing the lessons the kids are getting – but which also sucks because I have to ditch a lot of good things I’d come up with from the last two years and have to start all over again.

One of the books is really awesome, heavy on the speaking and listening skills, and the other two books SUCK.  All of them the lingo is slightly out-dated (and here I am approaching half century)  The worst books have a script for the Korean teachers, as if they were trained monkeys.  I guess in this case the robot teachers would be really appropriate. I feel I should be sitting in every class, making corrections, but there’s only one of me and I’ll only see the students twice (? – have no idea yet – haven’t been told) a week.

Anyway, all this stressing about getting the book done and mapping out a year’s curriculum and coming up with an engaging first week of lessons – all totally pointless – I could have been doing something productive for TRACK or writing the great American novel or something.  (And here I’ll sound like the old-timers on that toxic techer’s forum, Dave’s ESL cafe) But we’re in Korea, where every decision is last minute and nothing is planned in advance, so it’s really not worth your while to take any initiative…

So today, today I am just taking out my red pen and marking up their text-books.  And checking out all my facebook friends…