MJ, Cindy, Hannah and Hyuni are all elementary teachers in Suwon, South Korea. We all attended a TESOL training course with twelve others for four months. We are almost at the end of this training course. Next month we are going to go abroad to study English. Some teachers will go to Los Angeles, USA. Some teachers will go to Vancouver, Canada and others will go to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Flip asked me a lot about the education system of Korea. There are some differences between Korea and Australia. So I will introduce the Suwon and Korean Education.

Left - This picture is one part of Hwaseong Fortress which is a World Heritage listing in Suwon. It surrounds the boundary of Suwon. All Suwon citizens are proud of this. Suwon is loccated near Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. Its’ population is over one million.

The Educational System of Korea

Korea values Education very much. The Korean Government and parents have paid great amounts of money to educate their children.  I think one of Korea’s strongest assets is education. The education system consists of 4 parts: preschool, elementary, secondary and higher education. Kindergarten- age 5 to 6 and elementary school-age 7 to 13, Secondary education has a middle school for 3 years and high school for 3 years. Preschool and secondary schools are compulsory. Higher school, college and university are optional.

My Classroom

I’m teaching 5th grade students at Sunil Elemantary school.  There are 38 students in my classroom. You might be surprised with the large class sizes, but other facilities, such as large screen televisions, computer rooms and  well-resourced libraries  are very good. Here is my classroom and my lovely, beautiful students.

Whole class

Field Trip

PE class

Art class

 

In the classroom

School Exhibition day