On
my desk was a Speak Korean language book that I had bought from Barnes and
Nobles. I was sounding out the vowel-consonant combinations that make up words
in the Korean language:안녕하세요 annyeonghaseyo, Hello; my first introduction to the language and the
start of a new language journey.
When people ask how did I end up
teaching in South Korea, it always takes me a long time to answer because the
reasons weren’t so clear to me then. Lately, I’ve come to realize that teaching
English in South Korea was one of the most transformative experiences that I
have ever had. There are many reasons why this is true. Part of the reason why
is that I was so unprepared for what lay ahead of me.
I had graduated from Queens College as an
English Literature major, not having much direction in my life and being
disenchanted with the whole idea of teaching high school. I wanted to be a
writer but lacked the fortitude and discipline to forge ahead and write, so I
was stuck in an idealistic phase waiting for something to happen. I wanted
something different; I wanted to live alone and get away from my parents, to
experience freedom and to seek ownership of myself. I was missing a sense of
autonomy and wasn’t quite sure who I was. It was then that I realized that
travelling would be a viable option for me. So, I sought out ways to try to
make that dream be realized.
The first option that I had heard
about was through the Peace Corps. I applied and did the necessary, long and
arduous paperwork that is required, including all of the restricting guidelines
and requirements that limits the Peace Corps as an option for so many people:
no prior history of depression, drug abuse, psychological imbalance, etc.
Because of my compatibility, I was selected to interview; my interviewer was a
very amicable woman who had done the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. She explained
her experience serving under the Peace Corps, staying in Burkina Faso with her
host family. I was intrigued by it all. It was such a radical change of life
and seemed like it could be the perfect opportunity for me to teach and be of
service yet at the same time be in a unique position to experience a culture
that was totally different from mine.
After the interview, I was
optimistic and really was making up my mind of joining the Peace Corps; the
only caveat that was places was that I needed volunteer experience of some kind
to see how well I coped with the ability to simply work and not receive
monetary compensation. I knew well enough that the Peace Corps was on a volunteer
basis and that I wouldn’t be getting paid for it, but I didn’t care. I knew the
deal, but the organization had to be sure that I would take the Peace Corps
seriously. Not long after that was when I got a call from another recruiter
that I sent a resume to. This opportunity lay in South Korea. I remember I was
at the Associated supermarket on 31st Avenue in Astoria, helping my
mom with the shopping. Leaving the store, I get a call from Don who tells me
that there might be a school available for me in South Korea: Would I be
interested? I told my Mom and she gave me an interested but quizzical look:
What’s in South Korea?
I had found about teaching in South
Korea by accident. Originally, I wanted to teach in Japan because I was
interested in Japanese culture, stuff like manga and anime—the usual otaku stuff that gets you through high
school. After applying to numerous institutions that offered chances of
teaching in Japan, including the JET program and AEON private schools in Japan,
and being unsuccessful I opted for other avenues to take me away. After
aimlessly wandering through my Facebook feed—it was during this time that they
first started introducing ads on the homepage, which annoying as it is now I’m
actually thankful for for letting me know about the opportunity—I saw an ad for
“teach in South Korea” and I was intrigued. I had heard that South Korea was a
popular spot for teachers that wanted to travel abroad. Other than that, I
really didn’t know anything about South Korea and couldn’t escape the countless
times that people would joke whether I was going to “north” or “south” Korea.
It was time to do some research. I
found out about the culture of South Korea and the fact that it was very
appealing to expats because of how technologically advanced it was. This was
the land of the morning calm, but this belied the technological and industrial
revolution that launched the country from Bangladeshi levels of poverty to
securing a spot amongst Germany as one of the most economically advanced
countries in the world. Even with all of this information at my disposal, there
was still a huge unknown element in the factor of teaching. I had no idea what
an ESL teacher needed to do, no idea about classroom strategies, Lesson plan
strategies, classroom management techniques. In hindsight, I probably should have
done a little more research on this but it probably wouldn’t have prepared for
what lied ahead in what was once famously called the Hermit Kingdom.
Incheon Airport: Mr. Yang greets me
at the airport and takes my luggage. I’m not really sure what relation he has
to the school but it is instantly a relief to be picked up at the airport and
be with a local that knows the area and speaks English. At this point in my
Korea, I know the bare minimum of Korean basic expressions but I could read
Korean. I spent the car trip reading a lot of the signs and absorbing all of
the sights and sounds. Incheon airport was 20 minutes away from Ilsan, my home
away from home for the next three years. On the way, the driver who picked me
up who was actually the headmaster, Mr. Yang, mentioned some notable spots in
Ilsan. We pass by a place called Tunnel Nite Club, which Mr. Yang almost
proudly, says is the biggest nightclub in South Korea. Of course a “night club”
in South Korea is very different from a night club in the United States,
something that I would soon learn because I would eventually step foot in this
nightclub. Mr. Yang also mentioned Lake Park, which gets its name because of
the artificial lake that was built there. I finally arrived at my new studio
apartment tired from the sixteen-hour flight to South Korea.
It was finally time to actually
start teaching ESL, the subject I really had no idea about. The most pressing
issues at the moment was trying to find restaurants to go to. I was hungry and
wasn’t sure what to eat. Luckily, I was introduced to a restaurant right around
the corner from where I lived. My first Korean meal was Kimchi jjigae, I had
told Mr. Jung that I liked spicy food and he was surprised when I told him
that, just like Koreans usually are when a Westerner tells them that they like
spicy food. They’re used to assuming that Americans don’t like spicy food.
After finishing, I went back to my apartment and bought a phone card to call my
parents. That was my first night in Korea.
My first day of teaching was a whole
other challenge that I was not prepared for. Mr. Yang gave me a stack of books
that I would be using for teaching. One of the acronyms that I saw was TOEFL. I
didn’t know what TOEFL was or what it meant but it took up a good portion of the
books in Mr. Yang’s bookcase. After I receiving a stack of books, I was told to
go over them. This was the first day as an ESL teacher and then the first week
arrived, and sooner than later I had spent a whole month teaching English and
by then the initial shock of teaching had already subsided.
The observations of the other
teachers really didn’t prepare me for the world that I was about to enter. Even
the other teachers didn’t seem to know what was going on. In one of my classes
the students, 5 students in total, were unruly and the teacher had to
constantly break up the lesson every three minutes by doing jumping jacks or
some other kind of physical activity just to tire them out. There was no sense
of any learning taking place. In other classes, I saw unruly and disruptive
students lashing out against teachers who made no effort, or had no idea, about
how to manage their classrooms. In some classrooms, the sense of boredom and
ennui were so steeped that it made teaching turn into some kind of jailer. I
felt like I was a jailer, a warden—the look on students’ faces were
heartbreaking to see. I didn’t know it at the time, but I what I was looking at
was a stifling education system that channeled all of its energy into cram
school, turning language learning from a fun and enriching activity to one of profit.
After a year of teaching I was fed
up and decided to actually devote my time to learning ESL teaching skills that
would help me in my profession. After doing research online, I came across
CELTA, a TESOL certification that gave opportunities for teachers to take
workshop classes and get hands-on instruction from qualified teachers. I
thought this would be the best chance to actually find out about the teaching
process and the ESL process. It ended up being one of the defining moments, the
transformative moments in my life.
My CELTA training ended up being an
important event in my life. I found out about lesson planning, and how to set
up activities. Something I never thought to do before in my lessons at Seoul
Language Academy. The activity was very hands-on and the workshops were
collaborative so we were able to really learn in an environment that encouraged
everybody to participate. I actually got to teach and apply what I learned
first hand. My first group of adult students was very exciting to teach. The
reason for this excitement was that I had finally found a teaching practice
that gave me guidelines and methods to effectively teach an ESL classroom. I
went from knowing nothing about teaching students to gaining information and
knowledge that would help me teach ESL.
This not only extended to teaching
ESL but also teaching in general. I got a better sense of respect for the craft
of teaching and this was due to the immediate hands-on training and coaching
that I got with the CELTA course. Through this, I also found out what kind of
learner I was. I preferred learning in an experiential way and I valued the
different kinds of styles that learners have.
This made me more aware of the
learning styles of my students in the classroom. It was also a very humbling
experience because I realized that learning a language encompasses a broad
range of reasons and motives. Some students learn a language for economic
reasons; other students learn the language for job opportunities. One of the
main reasons that I frequently saw was for economic, or job reasons. Koreans
viewed the English language in a prestigious way and their views on Education
focused on rigorous tests that saw English learning in an almost scientific
way, the language broken up into discrete components that had to be mastered or
else one couldn’t learn English. This made me think more about the nature of
the English language education system in Korea. What I was witnessing was a
form of Standard Language Ideology happening. Speaking English was the language
of prestige and if you didn’t have the means and access to get your son or
daughter an English language school, then you’re somewhat behind.
This has such troubling implications
that it boggles the mind if you think about it. Learning a language isn’t an
easy thing to do and if one doesn’t want to learn the language and resists this
hegemonic practice, then the effect on students could be troubling. I saw this
everyday when I taught at Seoul Language Institute; students that hated being
there, obviously there might have been other factors at play but I couldn’t
help but notice the stranglehold that English language learning had in the
country.
All of these things came together
and put me in a better perspective in my life. I knew that somehow I would
dedicate myself to teaching. I realized that my students far from being simply
mindless were actually very intelligent and they came into a schooling system
that is ripe with a certain ideology. This is apparent in all kinds of
schooling from K-12, to the upper echelons of higher education. No student
learns in a vacuum void of political context. I decided from then on, I would
try to be an agent of change. My CELTA certificate wasn’t the end of something
but the beginning of something and I realized that it will take more than a
certificate to be a teacher. My total experience in Korea, from learning the
language to being exposed to a different culture, to getting my first
experience teaching there was a transformative experience; each facet giving
meaning to each other and strengthening my total collective memory. Translation
for me, gave me a particular meaning. It was a personal translation of culture
that changed my life and put me onto the path that I currently am on today.
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