Thank You & Love You, Lots!

Jin Choi Number of people coming to Korea to teach English has increased immensely since 2002 when I joined EPIK. There were many reasons for my decision to come to Korea but I had no idea that I will stay here this long. I'd thought that one or two years would be enough. In looking back, coming to Korea has given me more than what I had expected to achieve and I came to know and understand Korea. My family immigrated to the US right after my graduation from elementary school. Although we have lived in the States for close to 30 years, I had kept up with Korean language and Korean culture. So in making the decision for coming to Korea, problems that may occur in adjusting to life in Korea was the last thing on my mind. But boy, was I wrong! After arriving in Korea, we left for our POE on a Friday following the 10-day orientation,. When we arrived in Gwangju, we were given a welcoming banquet and were put up at a hotel for the first night before being taken to our apartments. I still vividly remember the day of our arrival at the apartment. It was big but needed lots of cleaning and since I had not brought any bedding, our co-teachers dropped us off at a close by mart on their way home for us to get the stuff we need. We were also told that we were expecting a typhoon that weekend. We both bought lots of things we needed for the apartment including food to last a week, cleaning stuff, beddings, etc. Since it had already started to rain and we needed to take the public transportation home, we decided to take what we can and leave the remaining at the store and return for it. The weather outside the store was a disaster. Wind was blowing so hard that having an umbrella was of no use. So, we took a cab home. When we got home, rather than returning to the store immediately, we went on a cleaning spree thinking by the time we are done, hopefully the rain would stop. Well, there was our first mistake. We had no idea what a typhoon entailed. We thought it was merely a heavy rain storm. The rain did not stop but was even getting heavier by the minute. Waiting for it to stop was useless so we headed back out to the store for the remaining things. Again, we decided to take the taxi and told the cab driver the name of the mart. Here was my next mistake. The cab driver asked us where? Not knowing what he meant, we repeated the name of the store. Then he said, "Which store?" What we didn't know was that this mart was a chain. How do I know which since the co-teachers just dropped us off at the front of the store? My mind went blank. Then it hit me, THE RECEIPT. We told him where and we were able to go get the things and SAFELY(?) return with them. Being able to speak a language does not mean knowing its culture. And I had to learn it the hard way. Because I am what I call "made in Korea" and speak Korean fluently, people expect me to be just like Koreans and this was the hardest for me in living and working in Korea. In Gwangju, all EPIK teachers are assigned to work at two schools. Three days at the center school and two days at the visiting school. However, all schools have different expectations and requests from native teachers. Because I had attended school in Korea before leaving for the US, I thought I can settle into the school setting without much difficulty. And here was my next mistake. I was expecting Korean education system to be similar to what I am used to, the western system. Schools had expectations of me but I guess I also had expectations of the schools as well. For example, since Korean schools go on a long winter break, I wanted to go home during the break and get some ESL teaching supplies as well as things I missed from home. However, when I asked my co-teachers about the last of classes, all they said was it will be sometime in late December but cannot give me a definite date. When they were not able to give me an answer by the end of November, it was very frustrating and I just couldn't understand why they were not able to give me a definite date. It took me a couple of years of working in schools and at the education office to understand how schools are operated. Unlike the schools in the US, Korean schools calculate the school year by class hours and not school days. Therefore, with the 'Pink Eye' that went around in the fall of 2002, schools had dismissed early when more than a third of students missed the school due to the eye disease. With all this, they had to push back the final exam dates and had to do calculations for completing the school year. Another thing I was not able to understand was that each school had different last day of classes. So, it ended up that one school finished at the end of December and the other school finished the first week of January. Rather than working at two schools, starting March of 2003, I was assigned to work at a school and at the education office as my visiting school. At first, my responsibility was not as the EPIK coordinator since we only had about twenty-some native teachers but in coordinating student exchange programs. Here, again, I had to struggle through working with Koreans because of my lack of Korean culture. They thought that I was the best one for the position since I am bilingual and have worked with Korean exchange students back home. I didn't mind the work. Well, actually I enjoyed it since it gave me an opportunity to experience and learn a new aspect of Korean education system. However, it was not as fun as I had expected. The work was great but the problem came in working with others in the office. There were constant misunderstandings due to cultural conflicts. When another title, 'EPIK coordinator' was added to my position description, I decided that I will do my best to alleviate this problem for other native teachers. With help from a few colleague EPIKers, we established our city's own orientation and workshop for the native teachers and set up a mentor system for the new comers. They helped me develope the orientation packet for the incoming EPIKers to Gwangju including all kinds of handy little tips for life in Korea. One of the quickest ways to make friends at work place is to speak a word or two of Korean. As long as you show that you are trying to learn and adjust to Korean culture, Koreans will go out of their ways to help you. And you DO want to have many friends at school beside your co-teacher. Even the principal and other administrators will have a much more amiable impression of you if you greet them in Korean. And this will make your life so much easier. For these reasons, I had pushed the education office to either offer Korean language classes for the native teachers or offer some kind of support for those who wish to learn Korean language and Korean culture on a regular basis. In working as a native English teacher, I cannot say that I had improved students', teachers' and/or parents' English skills. I met with them once a week at the most and for only about 40-50 minutes. How much English can I teach them in that time period? Once I realized this, I changed my objectives for my lessons. On the surface, my lesson objectives went hand in hand with the textbook objectives but if you deeper, my main concern was not in teaching the students to speak English fluently but for them to become more confident and to realize that learning English is not all that difficult. And that it can actually be fun to speak a foreign language. Some people did not understand why I spoke strongly against all the English contests and tried to convince them that there should be a festival instead. But in 2005 with changes in national education policies, Gwangju English Festival was started. Instead of competing against other students, this was an opportunity for students from elementary to high school to come together to share and to show-off what they have learned in the classroom. Gwangju English Festival could not have come about without cooperation from English teachers and native English teachers. Teachers worked as volunteers giving up their time and talent for their students. Being a fluent bilingual Korean-American English native speaker, I was given more opportunities to be included in the KOREAN EDUCATION COMMUNITY. However, it was not all roses. I had my share of struggles and challenges because of cultural differences which Koreans just could not understand. Although I still live in Korea, I have moved on from EPIK and am in the process of pursuing a doctorate degree. Working as an EPIKer has led me to another path in my life. I owe a lot to all those who are involved with EPIK, all teachers and students whom I have come across and those whom I have worked with at Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education. I also thank NIIED for giving me this opportunity to share my story with others but most all for making me look back to my EPIK experience and once again think of those who have touched and changed my life. I THANK YOU AND LOVE YOU ALL! ¢¾¢½