Update on my probation

Hello again from Korea. The Land of the Morning Calm to the uninitiated, intentionally or not. My follow up meeting to my two week probation period ended on Friday last but the Director forgot to meet! Nice management skills, eh blog reader? What does that mean? Who cares. I guess I am in "the clear." No fire in the hole. No admonishment. Nothing.

My other colleagues are a disgruntled bunch, kind reader. One quit, another is looking for another job and will resign upon her contract signing elsewhere; another just hates it but will stay because she needs the cash, one teacher will fulfill her contract duties in late August but hates her students. She only likes seven out of fifty. Not bad odds if you were in Vegas but as a ESL teacher, not so goot (intentionally misspelled to imitate some of the kids pronunciation which is often cute)! They are cute, sometimes.

Bernard and I discussed creating a "hate index" that measures teacher's range of hate from one to ten, ten being most hating of thus job and one being loving it. Most fall in the 8 to 10 range of "hating" it. As you can surmise, morale sucks at the school. It's difficult teaching kids and these kids are often spoiled brats including some of mine. We run a pure, capitalist revenue model at my institute. So, when kids act up and are repeatingly warned not to throw their utensils at Mr. Matthew (that's my teaching moniker, dig?) they are not suitably punished by imprisonment, etc. Anyway, I haven't been blessed with cleaning up poop and I won't because I won't do that shit, no pun from the bun--intended. Holy Hay-Zeus, I am a rhyming poet tonight! My hate level is about five and can shoot up to ten like it did last Friday.

On Friday last I was tired and looking forward to teaching my favorite class, an advance bunch of kids all around 11 years. As a reward for their hard work during the week, I decided to play Uno with them. Those little buggers played one game and then decided to "rig" the deck so that everyone won the game except me. Much better odds than Vegas but not so cute because they didn't want to play Uno afterwards. That leaves about 45 minutes to keep them occupied. I was tired and wanted to play games but I won't reward them on Friday's anymore. They were ultra bratty on Friday.

One of my goals coming to Korea was to save money. I am saving money here and I still plan to go to graduate school next year and now that Yanne is in my life, I am not grumpy in spite of my fluctuating level of hate.