All About 창원과학고 (Changwon Science High)

Changwon Science High's logo

I have just finished my first week of teaching! However, it was really only a half load of classes, because half of my students were on a class field trip to Japan and I didn't see any of them.

However, I think that ti's about time I wrote a little bit about my school, Changwon Science High School.

Of the twenty or so specialized science high schools in Korea, CSHS is the newest. It was built in 2010 and opened just last year. (The Korean school year runs from March to December, so I'm jumping in at the beginning of their second semester. Some students will graduate at the end of 2012, and I'll get new first-years next March.) The only other science high school in our province, Gyeongnam Science High, happens to be one of the oldest and most respected; it's in Jinju about one hour west, and Ryan, a fellow Fulbright ETA, is currently placed there.

CSHS' science building. Oh look, an observatory!

Changwon Science High sits partway up a hill called Namsan (southern mountain) on the northern edge of the city. I take a long walk around the hill to get to school from my host family's apartment. Theoretically, I could take the trails that run straight over the top, but that would involve more hiking than walking, and I'm not into doing that every morning!

A chemistry classroom. (Photo from the CSHS website)

Due to it having opened so recently, the campus and facilities are basically brand-spankin'-new, and it's obvious. On a tour of the school, I passed science classrooms and labs that were better-equipped than my college biology lab. The school is in possession of a scanning electron microscope and a small observatory for their astronomy classes. Every classroom I've seen so far comes with a smartboard, and the math classrooms have floor-to-ceiling chalkboards.

It's not just the cool gadgets, though; the designers were apparently thinking green with this new school. The main building's atrium and the gymnasium are partially lit by skylights, which saves energy for lighting. There is also a huge thing of solar panels on the roof, and some of the outdoor lights are powered by mini-wind turbines! I love how so much of it was constructed to conserve energy or make use of renewable energy sources. I like to think that these students' environmental science and earth science classes are showing them just how great of an example their school is of today's green architecture.

On the left, you can see solar panels on the roof. On the bottom right is the cafeteria, and between them is the student dormitory.

As for the students themselves, well, like I said, I've only met the second-years so far. Each class year is divided into four homeroom classes of twenty-two to twenty-five students. This makes a total of fewer than one hundred students per class year. And because our school is so new, there are still only two class years. A school of fewer than two hundred students total! And I get to teach them all!

Students in uniform (for special occasions) (CSHS website)

My students have already surprised me with their English level. Don't get me wrong; they're not all fluent. But I was told to expect an unexpectedly low level of speaking ability and comprehension. You see, while these students are top-of-the-line and test really well, the entrance exam they must pass in order to gain admittance to this school is pure math and science, plus an interview in Korean. They simply don't need to know any English to get here. So, I had fairly low expectations. As it turns out, some of them are very good, some of them are average, and some of them have no idea what gibberish is coming out of my mouth in class. It's the students who really get what's going on -- including one student who wanted to ask me about my thoughts on the Korean education system instead of doing the in-class activity -- who have been a pleasant surprise.

Whether my students can converse with me or not, all of them will have to ace the English section of the Korean SAT, so they still have English grammar classes -- which are usually taught in Korean -- and they study reading comprehension like no other. And they study biology, chemistry, computer science, calculus, and physics like no other. My students literally live at school; it's a boarding school that lets them go home twice a month on weekends. Their schedule is: wake up, breakfast, study hall, morning classes, lunch, afternoon classes, "extracurricular" classes (like more calculus and more physics), dinner, and then study hall until midnight. Five days a week, sometimes six, for two years. (Like most other science high schools, students are pushed to apply for university and graduate after two years instead of the normal three; imagine an entire class of American high school juniors being driven to apply for colleges one year early! If they aren't accepted into the top schools, they try again in their third year.) I asked my co-teacher if they're ever allowed off campus. Well, it's kind of a no-brainer: they don't have time to go off campus. Some students play soccer after lunch, but there are no sports teams. There are no drama clubs, no music classes, no school publications, no student organizations of any kind*. Just sitting in class all day and studying in small cubicles all night!

*There are, in fact, a number of student clubs, including academic clubs, volunteering clubs, a soccer club, and a dance club. I was wrong about this! But apparently all of the clubs can only meet on Sunday afternoons, because that's when the students have free time.

The entire campus, as it looked shortly after construction was completed. It's bigger than it looks... Also, where all the brown patches are, many pretty studio apartments are currently being constructed. But there's really nothing else around. (CSHS website)

With such an insane schedule, my students are often tired. But they still have tons of personality! I can already tell who the class clowns in each homeroom class are. I'm hoping that they'll help me energize classes for fun activities each day. Since they study English like Americans study Latin (read: without any motivation), I'm hoping to get them to use English in more interesting and relevant contexts. Here's to starting things off right at Changwon Science High!

This is their gymnasium and auditorium building. It looks awesome!

P.S. Just for the record, the cafeteria food here is fantastic. ;)

All About 창원 (Changwon)

One thing I've found is generally the case here in Korea: folks are helpful and well-meaning but won't often give you all of the information you desire. When it comes to directions, laundry, or hey, even important information about your placement school and city, I've had to figure things out for myself.

I've written before about how cultural workshops are always hit-or-miss here at Orientation. Yesterday's workshop, cultural introductions to the ETAs' respective placement regions, was a miss. The reason why was obvious: in all of Southern Gyeongsang Province (경상남도) last year, there was only one ETA. Basically, nobody had ever been before, no one knew anything about any of the cities in it, and thus there was no information for Rachel (in Gimhae), Ryan (in Jinju), or me (in Changwon). The presentation I attended could have been titled, "Cool Stuff to do in Daegu and Busan (Sucks For You If You're Somewhere Else)".

That being the case, yesterday afternoon and evening I decided to do some sleuthing of my own. Thanks to Google and Naver (네이버, Korea's preferred search engine), I found out a lot about my city, and I'm proudly disseminating that information now.

Panorama of Changwon, from Wikipedia.

Changwon means "Bright Land". All Korean cities can be written with hanja, or Chinese characters, so I can tell my parents that 今年我住在昌原. 昌 means "sunlight", and 原 means "source or origin", so when I looked it up, I thought at first that my city was called the source of sunlight. It's rather poetic.

As it turns out, Changwon is not simply located in Southern Gyeongsang Province (慶尚南道 in hanja), but it is also the capital city of the province. It is the 9th most populous city in Korea (after Seoul, Incheon, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, Ulsan, and Suwon), but probably only recently jumped into the top ten. I say this because today's Changwon was created when three smaller cities, Changwon, Jinhae, and Masan, merged in 2010, thereby tripling its population. The number is now a little under 1.1 million (compare to Philadelphia's 1.5 million in the city proper or Fremont's approximate 215,000).

After Wikipedia, I found Changwon's English website and plumbed its depths for photos and interesting random facts.

The Junam Wetlands, north of the city. Because we're in the south, this wildlife area becomes a huge destination for migratory birds in the winter. I can't wait to see them!

As a coastal city, it's famous for seafood. Local specialties include anglerfish (아구찜, agujjim), pufferfish, and Korean sushi, none of which I've ever tried but probably will. I might even try live octopus... Aside from seafood, I've heard that watermelons (수박... go figure?) and persimmons (감) are a regional favorite. Hooray! I wonder if Korean permissions are anything like Taiwanese persimmons...

NUBIJA bike terminal

Changwon calls itself "The Environmental Capital". One awesome perk is that it boasts the first public bike-rental program in Korea, called NUBIJA (which stands for Nearby Useful Bike, Interesting Joyful Attraction, I kid you not; but it's also a portmanteau of 누비다, nubida "to go here and there" and 자전거, jajeongeo "bicycle"). For a little less than $20 a year, you can check out any one of over 4,000 bikes from among 230 bike terminals in the city and ride it around for two hours. I like this a lot. I'm not an avid biker, but aside from being a fantastic carbon emissions-reducing initiative, it also seems like it'd be a fun way to see the city and local parks like the Junam Wetlands when I'm on my own or have friends visiting.

And here is a cute and ridiculous video that promotes the NUBIJA program.
I'm stoked that I'm moving to a city that's striving to be an example of eco-friendliness in Korea. On the other hand, Changwon is also a heavily industrial city. The original Changwon (pre-unification) was Korea's first planned city, re-envisioned in the 1970's to be the economic powerhouse of southern Korea (but it seems as if Busan has already taken that title?). So instead of beautiful beaches all along the coast, it's mostly ports, shipyards, and factories for companies like LG, Hyundai, and Samsung. The municipal organization is really interesting: the 대로, or Great Road, is a huge boulevard that stays perfectly straight for twelve kilometers. This road also acts as a boundary between the southern, factory-filled half of the city and the northern, residential-and-everything-else half. Take a look at this screenshot from Google maps:

The district of Changwon called Uichang, which was the original Changwon before it incorporated Masan and Jimhae. See all the blue roofs? Those are factories. The 대로 is highlighted in yellow. My schools is way up north, on top of a small hill.

So Changwon is more of a port city than a beach town. Still, the coast means milder, more temperate weather, at least compared to Seoul or Daegu. I'll still see all four seasons, and maybe even a typhoon or two.

What else? If I take the KTX, Korea's high-speed rail, I'm only 150 minutes away from Seoul. There are some universities downtown, which means I might have a chance to take Korean classes. As for a Hana Center where I can volunteer with North Korean defectors, I will probably have to travel to Busan in order to do that. Those are only found in larger cities. Lastly, some of Changwon's sister cities in the US include Houston, TX, Jacksonville, FL, and Jersey City, NJ.

I'll be reading up more on my city as time permits. I chanced upon the city's official WordPress blog, which is pretty cool and written in intelligible English. The posts alternate between random plugs for restaurants or kinds of foods to announcements on the latest renewable energy plan being put into action. Changwon seems to be very proud of itself as a quickly-developing city. The promotional video on their website says it all: "Changwon wants to become the best city in the world." Well, more power to them!

Anyway, that's enough for now. But you'll likely be hearing more about my city and my school in the weeks and months to come. The more I find out, the more excited I get about where I'm going!