Teaching English in South Korea One Summer

One of my first posts was entitled “Why Travel?” I listed four reasons for traveling, but of course there are more reasons than that. One such reason is to travel to actually work. Businesses have often sent their workers to various locations to offer face to face contact with clients. In my case I traveled to do what I do best, teach. The location was South Korea.

In 2006 recruiters came to the school where I was teaching with an intriguing offer. They were looking for teachers who would be willing to go to South Korea for about a month to teach English to students in a summer school program. The program would provide for our airfare over and back as well as room and board. They would also pay us $1000. It seemed like a great opportunity to experience a new culture so I checked into the program, interviewed, and they accepted me. There were seven other teachers from my school going as well as teachers from other schools in the area. I wasn’t going alone so that made it easier.

We flew over to Seoul and arrived at the school where we were to hold this summer school. Here was our first hint that perhaps things were not all as they seemed. The people that had recruited us flew over with us, but once we landed, they seemed to disappear. Other people took over from them which we had not anticipated.

The location for the school was actually a boarding school with multi storied dormitories. We were assigned rooms with a roommate. I roomed with Dave, a friend who was the Spanish teacher from my school so I was comfortable with that arrangement. There were only four men on the teaching team.

The first week was a time of orientation. The leadership gave us the curriculum we were to teach and assigned us the age levels we would have. This was done after an interview of our skills and experience. We had two classes, one group in the morning and another group in the afternoon. My morning class was a group of young middle school students who were at a low intermediate skill level. My afternoon class was to be with high school students who were at a more advanced level. Of the two classes I enjoyed the morning class more as they were just more fun to be around.

The leadership also assigned us an assistant, a college student proficient in both English and Korean. Some of them were actually students attending college in the United States so in general their English was quite good.

During the time of orientation they did try to create a positive atmosphere. They took us to a restaurant for a typical Korean barbecue dinner. That was good except that we had to sit on the floor which I found very uncomfortable as the picture below shows.

On the first weekend they asked us what we wanted to see as tourists in Korea. A number of us wanted to attend church on Sunday. The largest church in the world at that time was in Seoul, South Korea, Yoido Full Gospel Church. It seemed the perfect opportunity to check it out.

So Sunday morning we boarded a bus which took us to the church. It turned out to be quite the experience. On the outside there seemed to be various groups, perhaps from all the buses we saw. Inside the sanctuary there was a location specifically for visitors from other countries. There they had headphones to use with various translated languages available. The church was packed, and I was surprised when they announced communion would be served. However, it was very organized with ushers passing the elements down the rows. They finished in just a few minutes despite the large crowd. After the service they invited visitors to an information meeting to learn about the church which some of us attended. It was certainly an interesting church and service.

Later on Sunday they took us to the National Museum of Korea. The place was huge. We had the chance to wander around on our own and see the various art and cultural pieces on display. It was quite interesting and educational but impossible to see everything with the limited time that we had.

As the students began to arrive for the summer program that week, we had our first major challenge. We were all suddenly told we would need to change to a different dormitory room. We didn’t quite understand why that was necessary, and it was a major inconvenience to pack everything up again and move to a different floor in the building. However, we did it, but I must say not without some complaining.

When we started our classes, we also discovered that our students were not all as we thought. In my morning class I had one student who could barely speak any English. Supposedly the students had all been tested as to their English ability before entering the program. Their placement was based on their test scores. However, this student was not placed correctly. Unfortunately there was no lower class. As a result he was not able to keep up with the other students, which as any teacher can tell you means that he was more likely to act out in the classroom.

I also began to learn about the Korean educational system. Students in Korea are really under a lot of stress to succeed in school. They attend their schools in the day time, but then they will go to specialty schools in the evening. These might be English schools or math classes or other specific areas of study. Those classes might go until 8:00 at night. Students would then come home and do their homework. I asked one student what time he usually went to bed. He said around 1:00 am and was then up at 6:00 am to get ready for school the next morning.

Even in the dormitory I found students up at 10:00 or 11:00 at night studying. This created very tired students. We would usually have a break in our class time. During that time many of the students would put their heads down on the table as if to take a nap. The very fact that during their summer vacation they were there at an English camp to learn English indicated the level of significance that the families placed on education for their students.

Once the students arrived we also began to eat more regularly Korean style food from the cafeteria. We went through a cafeteria style serving line of very nice ladies. We could choose the food that we wanted. Some of the food was pretty easy to recognize, but others were not. One of the popular and common Korean food is kimchi, which is a very spicy dish, and not one that I ever tried. Something I did learn, however, was to use chop sticks. Practice helped a lot.

One of the young teachers really struggled with the cultural challenges of the food and other aspects of her experience and became quite homesick. Fortunately the other teachers rallied around her, and she eventually was able to see things from a more positive experience.

As the days went by, we had even more challenges with those who were running the program, but also were able to experience more of Korean culture. Next week I’ll share more of my Korean experience.

Have you been to Korea? Have you eaten Korean food? Be sure to share your experiences in the comment section below.

Credit: Photos that include me taken by Dave Gertlar.