One activity I took part in during the winter break from school was helping to proofread and revise questions for the Korean "mock SAT" exam. Students have an entire separate exam to practice for taking the life-defining college entrance exam later in their high school careers. DISCLAIMER: I signed a non-disclosure statement, so I will NOT be revealing ANY confidential answers for people to get ANY advanced information about the questions. All content that I read, wrote, re-wrote, listened to, or talked about it was "forgotten" the moment I got back on the train to come home. I'm just going to be writing about the experience in general and some of the fun interactions.
My supervisor has been a team member writing these questions at least as long as I've been here in Korea. I'm not sure if this is his first year working on this or not. He's asked me for input for last year's mock SAT English questions though, so I was familiar with the office of education having this committee. This winter, Mr. Kim asked me to be one of two native teacher participants helping out. It included (legal!) bonus pay and meals for the day, though I was responsible for transportation costs. The only time I could get there was a Sunday, so I broke with convention and made an exception of working on a Sunday. I didn't actually meet the other native teacher, since he was able to get there the next Monday like a normal person.
Suspecting this would be an informal gathering, I dressed neatly but comfortably, packed a few snacks, and prepared to set out on a three hour journey. The education center where Korean English teachers from all over Gyeonggi province were meeting was on the southern end of the province, so getting there would be quite a mission. I finally settled on a mix of savings and expedience: take a bus from Siheung to Suwon, and take the normal subway from Suwon farther south along the blue line to Cheonan where a Korean teacher would be waiting to greet me and drive me to the test development center.
My day began before dawn (no daylight savings in Korea), and I bundled up against the frigid winter air to wait for the bus around 7:20. The correct bus arrived about 15 minutes later, and I took my seat, watching the sun rise out the windows. It was a warm, reasonably cushy bus, and the passengers were all very quiet and peaceful. Nice start to the day. Suwon metro station was already a bustle of activity when I arrived, but not many trains go down as far as I needed to, so I had to wait a long time in the freezing cold. At least I had a seat the entire way there, though the doors stayed open a long time at each of the many stations along the way. Many of the Korean subway lines have heated benches, and this train car was no exception.
Just as I arrived, I got a call from an unknown caller. It was the teacher who had been sent to retrieve me! He found me easily as I exited the turnstile, and introduced himself as Kenneth. Apparently his school is VERY far north, almost by the DMZ. It's probably close to the school whose interview offer I turned down this time last year. He took me to a car with another driver and we all piled in. He was fairly chatty, talking about his wife and kids, asking about my hobbies, and finding out a bit about where I'm from. Typical questions to ask a foreigner, it seems. His English was very good though.
When we arrived at the new and somewhat imposing educational compound, the doors were all bolted shut from within, and a security guard had to come over and allow us access. I signed in officially, was whisked away to the office area where I signed my mini-contract and non-disclosure agreement met the head of the team, and then got whisked away to the teacher area where Korean English teachers had been working on exam questions for the past week, having begun work that morning at about 7 am. Mr. Kim was delighted that I had arrived safely, and hurried me around to the main discussion rooms to introduce me to his colleagues.
I was slightly famished, now that it was about 10:30 and I had been journeying in the cold for hours, so they let me take a little rest and served me juice, bananas, hot ramyeon soup, cookies, mandarin oranges, and access to the all-you-care-to-eat snack table provided for teachers. I made use of this frequently during breaks. As we snacked, several teachers chatted with me a bit, very interested in my teaching background, my experience at Sorae school and in South Korea, and just general gossip and small talk. They filled me in on some of the highlights of the week, lamenting the long hours, talking about late night chats with roommates, and the quality of the cafeteria food. All of this took place in English! It was so much fun!
Finally, the work began. First I sat down with the team in charge of writing scripts for the listening questions. Side note: they were impressed by my accent, enunciation, and clarity of speech, and said they might (long shot, but possibly) ask me to help with reading questions for the test at some point in the future! That would be fun! Okay, back to the topic. We were working on general flow, native-like phrasing, accuracy of descriptions, wrong answer wording, and question formatting. they had very good questions to ask me, and we had a very interesting discussion. I enjoyed that part especially! Kenneth was in that group, along with an administrative teacher from a foreign language high school and one more teacher.
The friendly lady from the foreign language high school asked in a roundabout way during lunch later if I was looking for another job since she was so impressed by my work and professionalism (yeah, this proofreading event was pretty much a "make Sarah feel good about herself" experience, all day long, haha). I thanked her for the compliment, but said I was already committed to Sorae High. I mentioned the conversation to Mr. Kim in a conversation later that evening, and he said with an expression that was half-facetious and half-terrified, "I hope you told her, 'No way!'" I reassured him that I fully intend to stay at Sorae another year. :P Nice to be fought over, haha.
Oh my goodness, what a fun lunch conversation! I was eating lunch. In a Korean cafeteria with Korean English teachers. And they were talking to me! In English! About things like Shakespeare plays and English-language TV shows! Haha, it was like my ideal situation for shared lunch with teachers. Even though it was hard not to compare it to the typical lunch scenario I have at school, at least I relished every minute of the interaction with these teachers who were excited about English education for their students, schools, and country. I ate lunch with the teachers from my first group. The food wasn't too bad either, though dinner surpassed lunch in nutrition and tastiness.
Round two of proofreading was pretty much just Mr. Kim and me working on questions that his part of the team had saved up to ask the native teachers when we arrived. Out interactions at school are so formal and awkward usually, but this was a great opportunity to work with my supervisor as a colleague with mutual academic interests. Reminded me of a few times when all the TAs and adjuncts got together at TTU for talking about grading tests, and trying to balance or norm our results. Bunch of English nerds all together talking about the intricacies of grammar and semantics and enjoying it. I... am... SUCH a geek. And oh, the things English teachers disagree about. I was able to settle a few disputes that I suspect had been rather heated and gridlocked before I heard about them. I just got that vibe. :) They had tons of questions saved up, but we worked briskly and I think managed to address all the initial queries.
Dinner was a subdued event in the cafeteria again. This meal had better side dishes. We were all quite tired, but still found some interesting topics to discuss. I did put my foot in my mouth once, hope I don't hear about that later, but otherwise it was a nice break before the super challenging last part.
I joined the second group after dinner, and it became apparent to me why Mr. Kim had just saved up their questions and gone over them with me on his own. Their English was only somewhat understandable. It may have been because they were all so tired, but I had a very hard time understanding them. We were trying to re-write an entire question that had several contradictions and content errors in it. I could tell the question's writer was in the room, but I didn't know who it was, so I tried to be as diplomatic about the awfulness of the question's text as I could be. I almost got angry a couple times since they kept trying to beat a dead horse.
Finally we reached some kind of compromise on the logic, everyone cheered the end of the day, I said my goodbyes, they said how much they appreciated meeting and working with me, and said they might call again for future work with their committee (quite an honor!). One older teacher hurried over as I was leaving and offered his hand in a friendly goodbye (not a traditional Korean gesture, so it stood out). He said with a smile, "I heard you are a Christian. When I heard that I was glad. I am also! I will see you again." Kind of a neat interaction, and it made me wonder what else gets discussed about the foreign teachers (and other gossip) at these intensive brainstorming sessions. :P Then it was time to depart! I left Cheonan at 8 pm, and arrived back home about 3 hours later, having taken the nearly-empty subway back the entire distance to Bucheon. What a day! A few moments aside, it was one of the most fun and refreshing days I've had while doing work here. I hope they'll call on me again, but even if I don't get the chance, what an opportunity this was!
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