I like teaching in Korea so much that I've decided to get my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate before the year is done so I can make myself more valuable here as well as to other foreign countries. For some, teaching English is a gap year between college and real-life, an escape from real-life for a little while, a chance to save money and/or pay off bills while experiencing something new and life-changing. And while I will eventually return to the USA, my life is officially changed and I love this living in a foreign country stuff, traveling, saving money, paying off bills, and experiencing new things so much that I am going to continue it for a while. I love Korea, but I'm definitely thinking about other countries I want to experience as well, and a TEFL certificate will open more doors for me so that I can cash-in on some unforgettable experiences.
To help you understand what I love about teaching English as a second language, you need to have an understanding about the format and process that it is here in Korea, and I'm sure it's quite similar in other countries.
I teach English at a hogwan in Gwangju, South Korea. Korea is great because housing like mine (a 4-5 story walk-up with tiny apartments) is so cheap and buildings like mine are everywhere. The school pays for it, and most will get the new foreign teacher within walking distance of the school. I am very close at a 5-minute leisurely walk. My area is relatively quiet, and I like it very much. I pass 8 coffee shops on my walk to work, 4 mini-marts (think 7/11), 1 larger mart that is more like a grocery store but only slightly larger than 7/11, a few literally hole-in-the-wall business that include a stationary store, a cell phone shop, a taekwondo hogwan with a piano hogwan just upstairs, a Chinese restaurant, a kimbop shop, and a skater shop. Two blocks away is the big blue construction wall that surrounds what will be the Asia Cultural Center for the whole of Asia when it is complete sometime in 2014. Just on the other side of that is downtown. If you take the shortcut through the center of it, underground shopping is available 3 stories above the subway tracks.
This is my very first time teaching in a foreign country, so I didn't have a lot of experience on how to choose a school when I signed up and picked my school. I feel I got somewhat lucky, though, because my school is new. This means that at 1-4 students per class, every class is smaller than it would be with the normal 6-8 students. While it is sometimes hard filling an entire 50 minutes while teaching to just one kid, it's an easier stepping stone for me.
However, teaching to just one kid who is bored with the curriculum because it never changes can be very difficult because I've got to stay 'animated.' And animated means that I work at Disney World. I am selling this material because my hogwan is the coolest, and most awesome hogwan to attend in all of Gwangju, maybe even Korea, and the kids have got to come to my park. Even if I don't believe it. Because it's a business more than it is a school. If you can get past that, you've come far. Trust me.
My hogwon is open from 2pm until 9:20pm. I start work at 1:30 Monday through Friday. The half-hour before the first class gives me time to prep my daily information sheets and review each lesson I will be teaching that day. Our first students arrive just before 2pm, and they are among the youngest. They typically come straight from home because at 5 and 6 years old, they are not old enough to be in regular school yet. From 3pm onward, kids come to the hogwan following regular school. The earlier in the day it is, we are usually their first hogwan of the day. However, the later in the day it is, they've probably already attended several other hogwans and are getting quite tired, but possibly have another school or two after ours. Even our latest class, which ends at 9pm (we have room for another class that would start earlier and end at 9:20, but that slot is not yet filled), one of those students goes on to another school that starts at 9:10 and doesn't end until 10pm. Koreans are dedicated to their education to the point where it becomes sad for those of us who grew up differently. But these kids also have no ordinary goals. They don't want to grow up to be firefighters or artists or teachers. No, these kids aspire to be UN diplomats, presidents, big-time inventors (think: Steve Jobs kind of big-time), major-impact scientists, and the like.
As far as curriculum goes, every other day, my co-teacher and I switch classes. That is the way our school works, and it gives the kids a different view for each lesson, because each one is three days long. They get three pages at a time that are all completed on the first day of the lesson. On the second day, the other teacher goes in and reviews the material with them and offers a different perspective. On the third day, the kids sit in a computer session and take a few easy tests that test their knowledge on the lesson they were just presented. Every three lessons there is a big test, with 10 multiple choice questions, 5 fill-in-the-blank questions (with an answer block to choose from), and then 12 writing questions where they have to write the answer and the question from the lessons they just learned. Every six lessons (monthly) they move up a level to virtually the same material. It takes six months to complete one color (Spring, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple) and then the material changes just a bit more (past tense, future tense, more in-depth questions, longer stories to read, etc.) Because my school is new and we don't have a lot of students, not much happens if they don't do well. We are not at that point yet where we can provide repeat-classes, let alone discipline for the kids who don't want to be there and act out at every chance.
To the native English speaker, the curriculum may sound extremely repetitive, and it is. But a few weeks ago, I had the chance to work with a native Korean speaker who substituted for my co-teacher while she was on her honeymoon for a week in Jeju Island. She speaks fluent English and even lived in Canada for a while, but grew up in Korea and can appreciate what it takes to learn another language from the ground up. I got her point of view of the material, and she thought that exposing the kids to the same material presented in different ways was a fantastic way to get them to keep practicing over and over again, without realizing it. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I completely agree. And soon, our school will bring on a native Korean teacher who speaks fluent English so that we can offer TEFL Junior classes. These classes will prepare the students to take their Exams, which take place every year and they must pass in order to enter into the next grade level. English is always a part of that exam, as well as Korean, Science, Mathematics, History and/or Social Studies, and whatever instrument or individual sport (such as Taekwando) they have decided to pursue.
Through all of the adapting I have had to do to learn a new profession, acclimate myself to my new surroundings, and start to learn the native language (I've finally learned my alphabet and can read now! It's great!), I've really come very far, even if I don't always remember that I have. When I first started, I thought I had confidence in my classroom, but now I know that I didn't. Because NOW, I do have confidence. I can spot my students thinking about misbehaving. I've mastered 'the look' to give them that makes them stop thinking about it (most of the time). And I've learned that I like teaching. I've also learned what to look for in my next teaching job in Korea, and that's a pretty big step right there.
To end things, I want to introduce you to some of my most favorite students. They are all wonderful, but these boys are over and above spectacular in their personalities and enthusiasm for being in my class. I only teach them every other month, and they show up Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6pm for an hour and a half each class. Yes, it is much harder to stretch a lesson of 3 pages that long, but they make it fun for me, and that's another reason why I absolutely love them. (I feel the need to point out that James is no longer at our hogwan because his mom was disappointed with the amount of homework - we didn't give enough, at 7-10 items every night.)
From Left to Right in each photo: Britain, James, Brad Pitt, and Steve
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| "Posing for the Camera" |
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| "And Right After" |
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