Seoul Education Training Institute
630 Bangbae 3 Dong, Seocho-Gu, Seoul, S. Korea 137-825
Phone) 82-2-3019-8194, Fax) 82-2-3019-8101
  My Life as an English teacher in Korea
Priscilla Jwa
Seoul Education Training Institute

It was June of 1998 when I received a phone call from the Korean embassy in Australia. I was just finishing off my last semester of undergraduate studies at the University of Sydney when I was notified that I had obtained a job as a native English instructor for the Ministry of Education in Korea (EPIK). In university, I had majored in Japanese and was planning to do a master's program afterwards so that I could be a Japanese teacher in Australia. My dream has always been to be a teacher. Since I was a child, I loved teaching things to my friends. I wanted to be an English teacher when I lived in Korea. I enjoyed learning English, and even though at that time there were no English classes in elementary schools in Korea, I learnt English from my dad. However, when my family immigrated to Australia soon after I finished elementary school, I realized that being Asian and an English teacher in an English speaking country were not easy. When I first heard the news about my acceptance from EPIK, it was as if my dream really had come true. I could return to Korea and become an English teacher! I did not hesitate to take the offer.

I returned to Korea in August of 1998 as an EPIK teacher. I completed two weeks of orientation and was sent to a small town (Ko-Sung, which is about 10km north of Sokcho) in the Kang won province. When I was first assigned to Ko-Sung, my family told me that it was too close to North Korea and that I shouldn't go. In fact, it is probably the closest town to the DMZ in South Korea. But I wasn't going to give up the chance of being an English teacher in Korea, so I decided to stay. It turned out to be probably one of the best decisions I've made so far in my life.
When I first started teaching at the Korean public middle school, I was frustrated and surprised for awhile. Even though I was raised in a Korean family with Korean customs, there were just so many things that I could not understand about Korean culture. I had a hard time learning and adjusting to Korean culture for the first year of my stay in Ko-Sung. For example, sharing food among co-workers was one thing that troubled me. We would sometimes order Chinese food from a local restaurant and I realized that there seemed to be little concept of "my food" and "other people's food." Everyone would put their food on the table and it would all be shared. I just didn't think this was sanitary and I ended up ordering two plates of food so that one could be shared and the other could be eaten by myself. My Korean co-workers would laugh at me and say that people in Korea become friends by sharing food and drinks together. To make friends in Korea, I would have to learn to share.
Teaching students was also not that easy. There were about thirty to thirty-five students in each of my classes and my co-teacher would often just sit at the back of the classroom and mark exam papers. I was the second native English instructor at the school and it was the first time for my Korean co-teacher to work with a native English instructor. So he didn't really seem to know what to do beyond helping me with classroom discipline. Another co-teacher at an elementary school would just have me stand next to her while she taught her students. I was the "tape recorder" whenever she wanted me to read some words or sentences to students.

After a couple of months, I decided that I wanted to do something about my classes. I wasn't happy teaching English at school and it was not what I expected it to be at all. I was depressed. When I first came to Korea, I wanted to contribute to Korean English education, but I didn't feel like I was doing anything to help my students or teachers. I needed to do something about it. So, I sat down with my co teachers (I had two, one in middle school and one in elementary school.) and expressed my concerns. Surprisingly, they were glad to know that I actually cared about my classes. We began to talk about the classes more often and started to actually plan lessons together.
It wasn't easy at first. Sometimes, our teaching methods or philosophies would conflict. My co-teachers had to cover the textbook lessons to prepare their students for exams. However, with time, I learnt how to make lesson plans and how to co-teach. Rather than sitting at the back of the class, my co-teachers would do role plays with me and while my co- teacher was explaining grammar functions to the students in Korean, I would walk around and see if there was anyone having trouble with the exercises. At the end of each semester, we would have a big English quiz contest in the school gym for all the students. Additionally, my elementary co-teacher suggested having an afternoon English drama class, so I volunteered to teach it once a week. My drama class ended up winning third place in the provincial drama contest later that year, with the play, "Three Little Pigs."

One day, I received a phone call from the Kang won-do Office of Education. Apparently, my supervisor in the Ko-Sung district office wrote a letter to the supervisor in the provincial office to let him know about the activities I was doing in my schools and how these activities were motivating students to study English. The provincial office later asked me to come to Chun Chon (the capital city of the Kang-won province) to share my experience with all the other native instructors and their co-teachers in the province. Soon after this event, my contract expired with Ko-Sung and I was transferred to Chun Chon and to become the head teacher in charge of all the native instructors in the Kang-won province. I worked in the provincial office for most of my first three months of my second contract with EPIK. During this time, I organized monthly meetings with native instructors where we could visit different cities and watch each others' classes. The office work was bearable, but I missed teaching English. Teaching was why I came to Korea in the first place. So I talked to my supervisor and he agreed for me to go to a boy's high school three times a week. I was happy to be able to teach again.

I worked as a head teacher two days a week and also as a native instructor teaching English to students and teachers in Chun chon area. I had many opportunities to judge different contests (drama, speech and debate) and to be able to work with some great teachers and supervisors. I also had the privilege to teach English to the superintendent of the Kang won province for two years. During this time, I would tell him about my school experiences and he would listen and have discussions with me. Sometimes, these discussions led to embarrassing situations. Once, I told him that I was going to have an open class for English teachers in the Chun chon area and he decided to come and see my class. Because he was the superintendent of Kang won-province, a few reporters from the local newspapers decided to come, so the school panicked and decided to hire professional cleaners to clean the entire school for his visit. Many parents, teachers and supervisors came to see my class and it went really well, thanks to my students. Soon after this experience, I was asked to write an article about the differences between Korean and Australian school cultures for the newspaper. When I left Chun chon, I received a distinguished service award from the superintendent of Kang won province.
In 2001, I transferred to Seoul to work for the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) hiring new native teachers for the Seoul district, but after six months, I asked my supervisor to transfer me to a teaching position as I really missed teaching. In March of 2002, I was transferred to the Seoul Education Training Institute (SETI). I have been training elementary, middle and high school English teachers here for almost nine years now.
Looking back on my twelve years of teaching English in Korea, I must say that I was fortunate to meet all the great people I've worked with and to have so many new experiences. During my twelve years of English teaching in Korea, I was able to meet famous people, such as the mayor of Seoul, Mr. Oh, Sae Hoon. I also had the chance to record scripts for numerous listening tests for the Ministry of Education, edit national English textbooks for public schools and be a judge for various competitions.
Now I'm a teacher trainer at SETI, but throughout the year, I'm also lecturing at EPIK to help new native English instructors and Korean English conversational teachers. I have the opportunity to meet a variety of English teachers for public schools. In two weeks, I will be lecturing to principals from across Korea. These principals will be participating in the very first very workshop for native English teacher management. This workshop will help them to develop ideas for managing and accommodating native English teachers who arrive at their schools.
On numerous occasions, I have been tempted to quit working in the public sector and to go into the private. A president of a large private institute contacted me early last year with a substantial offer that included my own website with the staff to run it. I was tempted, but after a careful consideration, I declined the offer. For the moment, I am content to stay where I am because I feel like a real teacher. Currently, I'm in my last semester of my master's degree program in applied linguistics and TESOL. I don't really know what other opportunities await in the future, but I know that whatever I do, what I love to do most is to teach English. Even though I may need to take a break once in awhile, I will always long for my students and come back to the classroom. It is when I teach that I feel like I'm really alive.