Small School Is In!

by: Hyun Kyung Lee

The year 2020 was the beginning of a very different schooling system. After the COVID pandemic, most parents were starting to consider sending their children to smaller schools, where kids can learn and enjoy studying without worrying about their health. MAY 2026 Cheonan Small School Is In! Our school is one of those small elementary schools with less than fifty students in total, on the outskirts of Cheonan City was Song Nam Elementary School. This 101-year-old school has witnessed a lot of things, from Japanese Colonization to the Korean War and, recently, from a pandemic.

My parents sent me to Song Nam Elementary School because both of them were working, and they wanted me to enjoy my elementary school days. My first-grade year was when my teacher, Ms. Yu Sujeong, taught us so many interesting things and walked us around the neighborhood, making us enjoy our mornings while she explained the different kinds of plants we saw around us. While our principal at that time, Mr. Park Ik Sun, often sang songs to us using his guitar. It was really different from the other schools, where most children only stayed inside the classroom.

Our school has few students so we also play with the other students from different grades. We play together and we knew them very well. We even knew the names of their sibling and pets too! funny, right? Aside from happy memories, I also learned so many things from school. We learned how to read, write, and do science and math. In addition to that, we have a lot of after-school programs such as English, piano, violin, AI classes, sports, and group sound (band). All of them were totally free! Our parents do not need to worry about sending us to a private academy because all the programs in our school were covered by the Ministry of Education. I can finally say that studying in a small school gave us a lot of benefits not just learning subjects but also giving us a chance to enjoy our early school memories. Our school may look small but it feels like one big happy family. Everyone from our principal to teachers and staffs truly cared about us. Attending our school feels like going to our second home, where we felt loved and protected.