Back to School

Be under no impression that teaching English in a foreign country is an extended holiday; in fact neither is working in any job in any foreign country for that matter.  Kudos to you if they don't even speak English in that country; it makes it that much more interesting.  Having said that, teaching can be incredibly challenging but an equally rewarding job and with my little experience in the job, I can honestly say teaching as a profession does not get half the credit it deserves. But we march on.

I teach at Daeryun Middle School, an all boys 'junior high" school in the suburb of Suseong-Gu, which my friends have rightfully dubbed "The Upper East Side". I was incredibly nervous when this news was first revealed to me since the only teenage boy I knew was my 17 year old brother. In retrospect however, this is working out pretty dandy for me. Besides the occasional punches being thrown around, my kids are well behaved.  And since I attended an all-girls high school, I have no choice but to resort to believing that all boys at that age generally behave like hooligans. The sick bay is as busy as your local home affairs and ice-packs are "the bestseller".

The school is on a hill, sharing the property with the (Daeryun) high school. The school is pretty top notch and that's not just me blowing my own trumpet, I assure you. It is located on a gorgeous campus with great facilities: sporting and academic. The performance of the students of my school in the whole city last year, I'm led to believe was excellent, so from day one the pressure to perform has been very high. Like most schools in Korea, we have a dedicated English Zone which is the specific classroom where students attend English classes. The classroom is equipped with a super cool "smart board", which is an interactive white board- totally rocks. There are also a handful of computers in the room for activities that may require research on the internet.

It can be quite daunting to realise the responsibility we have on our shoulders as foreign teachers, to help these students improve their English conversation skills, but I am quick to take comfort in the fact that Rome wasn't built in a day, right? Its all in a day's work.

Final Thoughts: "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller