Same Town, Same Year...New School!

Wow, long time no blog, hey?

As I'm still sitting here in the tea fields, you can safely assume I've renewed for another year of teaching down here in Boseong, Jeollanamdo.  I had a great year at my elementary schools and high school, and the town of Boseong truly feels like home.  When it came time to renew my contract, there was no doubt I wanted to do a second year!

Sadly, funding was cut for my elementary school at the county level, so I wasn't able to stay there for a second year.  What followed were some rather anxious few months as I waited to hear from my coordinator (and probably drove him crazy) about my new school.  I had initially applied for a switch to an elementary school in Suncheon, but the day before our new placements were officially announced, my old co-teacher from my vocational high school reached out to me.  Her new school, the academy high school in Boseong, had received unexpected funding for a Native English Teacher (NET)!  We had a quick get-together that evening after school and decided to call the main office first thing the next morning to catch them before making the placement announcements.  Somehow, all the pieces fell into place and I was able to stay in Boseong!  As great as Suncheon would have been, staying in a town I knew in my same apartment and working with a co-teacher I know I already get along with fantastically just seemed like the most logical choice.

Now I am happily settled in at my new high school, which is just across the river from my apartment complex.  This school hasn't had a NET since 2010, so both the students and staff were buzzing on the day of my arrival.  Especially the students, who are absolutely adorable and so polite.  Judging from their reactions, you'd think I was Beyonce or Taylor Swift!  The boys battle one another to say hello, and the girls shyly wave and dissolve into a mess of giggled when I say, "Hi!" in return.  I even got a marriage proposal on my second day, but all the girls in the class told him they wouldn't "accept" our relationship as he was unworthy. Poor guy!  They crushed his dreams harder and far more swiftly than even I could!  I'm sure it will all die down by the end of the semester as I go from Dazzling Celebrity Foreigner to Regular English Teacher.

The school itself is beautiful--it looks like something out of a Korean TV drama!  The campus is fairly large, and there are many new buildings.  As an academy high school, there are dorms for students who live in the countryside or whose parents want them to focus more on their studies.  Our classes begin at 8:30AM and while 7th period ends at 4:15PM, the students don't get to go home until 10PM or sometimes even 11PM!  Both lunch and dinner are served on campus, and students spend their evenings in "self-study," which is supervised by teachers.  In fact, many of the teachers who live 30-60min away in Gwangju actually stay in the teacher's dorm building during the week because of their supervision duties.  Both the students and teachers work very hard and incredibly long hours.

Yes, this is actually my school.  Yes, it actually looks like this.  Who said country living wasn't cool?

Stereotypes & Cultural Differences: Parenting in South Korea

As my first year here in Korea inches toward a close, I feel as though I've finally experienced enough of Korean culture to comment on repeated observations I've made while living here.  Some of the biggest stereotypes of Koreans and Korean culture involve parents. If you ask someone from a western country to describe what they imagine parents in Korea to be like, you'll often get the image of some English-obsessed mother who storms into school to yell at teachers and principals for inadequate grades and forces their child into hours and hours of hagwon every day after regular school lets out.

Obviously stereotypes exist for a reason, and there are unfortunately some parents out there who try to push their kids like this I'm sure this has to do with the fact that I'm in the country and down south, but I've found the majority of these to be untrue!  Here are some of the most common stereotypes of Korean parents, and how I've found they actually manifest themselves.

South Korean parents all want their children to grow up to be doctors or business professionals.

There are countless popular dramas in Korea that take place in and glorify the medical world.

Out of all the stereotypes I have here, this one probably still hold the most truth.  There are a lot of parents who still push their children to become doctors and businessmen and women, or work for Samsung or LG.  "What do you do for a living?" and "How much money do you make?" are common questions my Korean friends are asked by both their parents' friends and even their own peers.  Even dramas seem to be obsessed with doctors and the chaebols of the business world.  I suspect this is still fairly prevalent in Seoul, but I've actually found this to not necessarily be the case in the south.

When I ask my students what they want to be when they grow up, numerous times I've gotten illustrator, diplomat, game designer or programmer, and athlete.  While some of these seem like typical childhood dreams, I find diplomat in particular to be interesting.  More than one student has mentioned this to me, at both the elementary and high school level.  If there's one thing you can say has been successful about the English program in Korea, it's that it has inspired Korea's younger generations to take more of an interest in the world outside of Korea.  Also, I think it's worth noting that none of them wanted to be Kpop stars!

English Teachers' Orientation: What to Expect (And What Not To)

Every job--even within the same field--will be different.  And every orientation, even within the same company, can be different.  Some throw you out there on your first day and watch as you sink or swim.  Others hold your hand and hammer their way of doing things into your head, denying you any freedom to experiment and improve the system.

No comment.

I've held a variety of jobs  and participated in a range of activities over the last decade, and I've experienced countless orientations that fall all over this spectrum.  When I came to Korea in August of 2014 to teach English as a second language, I didn't know where our program's orientation would entail or how much it would or wouldn't help me in my new teaching job.  Obviously even within the same orientation everyone's personal experience of it will be different, but here is what I took away from mine:

DON'T EXPECT everyone to be on the same level.  There were some people I met that I was incredibly impressed with.  One girl spoke gorgeously fluent Korean (and blew away all the Korean co-teachers at our introduction!), and others still had years of teaching experience or were working on Master's degrees while abroad.  And others were new, just like me.  In fact, you may even meet some people whose qualifications you strongly question, but at the end of the day, take everything as a learning opportunity.  Pick up good tips from the more experienced teachers and learn what not to do from those who set bad examples.  You have control over what kind of teacher you want to be!

DO EXPECT to meet some awesome people.  Not only are you all in the same boat, but that boat is floating in a foreign sea, and you're all feeling equally out of place.  Orientation sort of feels like being a freshman in college all over again--friend groups are formed, everyone is a little awkward and out of their element, and no one wants to seem like they don't know what they're doing.  But everyone is new to something--whether it's teaching, or Korea, or both.  Orientation is a huge opportunity to make friends...and go visit them in their respective placement cities later!

Teaching in Rural Korea (And Why "One School" Sometimes Means "Three")

Before I left the USA, the one thing I was the most excited about was getting my placement.  I was constantly online searching all over Jeollanamdo (전라남도), trying to see what regions and cities there were, and what life was like there.  When I finally received my packet from Canadian Connections, I had been placed in my second choice: Boseong county (보성군)!

In hindsight, I'm actually very, very glad I ended up here and not Yeosu (여수), which was my first choice on my application.  Yeosu is a beautiful, larger costal town about a 75min drive from me, but nothing quite has the beauty and charm of a rural town in the Korean countryside.  Boseong county has a population of about 63,000, but the town of Boseong itself is only around 9,000-10,000.  It's actually around the same size as my hometown of Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Swung by the tea fields on a rainy day...You can imagine what it looks like on a sunny one!  Stunning.

In total, those 63,000 people are spread out over 256mi^2, or (663km^2), which means once you leave the towns, it's relatively sparse.  Children have to be bused all over the region to attend school, and as a result, many schools have a very small number of students.  For us teachers, this often means teaching at more than one school.  This both cuts costs for the schools, since they split the cost of an English teacher among themselves, and makes it easier to ensure all students in the region are receiving English education with a native speaker.