I never imagined myself becoming a teacher. Not during high school or college. Not in the immediate years after graduating college. Me, responsible for a bunch of young children? Could you imagine it? I certainly couldn’t. Nor did I want that responsibility. It seemed like a headache waiting to happen. Assigning and grading homework, creating tests, talking all day (heck, just talking in general) … there were so many other things I would rather have done than become a teacher.

And yet, here I am already halfway through my fourth year of teaching English as a second language (ESL) at the elementary school level in Korea. How did that happen you ask? Well, don’t worry, I’ll tell ya.

The opportunity presented itself to me quite suddenly a few years ago, accompanied by some nudging from friends who have taught ESL in Asia. And, despite my non-education background and past resistance to teaching, I decided to give it some serious thought. I’ve shared exactly why I decided to pursue not just teaching, but teaching in a different country halfway across the globe, in a previous post so I won’t get into all of that here, but I will say it’s been an amazing experience thus far and I’m glad a took the leap of faith. I’m still not sure if I could or would ever be a teacher in the US, but I’m really glad I became one in Korea.

But for those of you wondering what it’s like to teach in Korea, wonder no more. I’m here to (finally) share my teaching experience here so far with you all. I’m at a public elementary school, where I teach 3rd-6th grade, so my teaching experience will be a little different than those teaching at a private or international school. My hours are from 8:30 am-4:30 pm, and I have 22 classes a week. I usually teach between 3-6 classes a day. However, this year my schedule is really balanced and I only have either 4 or 5 classes a day. The best part is my afternoons are all free, so I have lots of time for lesson planning. In Korea, the school year starts in March, with summer break separating the first and second semesters, so I’m currently enjoying some precious days off!

For ESL teachers, we focus mostly on teaching conversational English as that’s all our visa allows us to do. Each grade has an English textbook, so I simply follow the textbook and make all my lesson plans from that. The textbook also has a companion interactive online textbook that I use with the students during class to show the videos and other activities from the textbook. I don’t know if that’s how textbooks are now in the States, but I didn’t have that growing up. It would’ve made learning a lot more fun!

But anyway, I use the textbook to make all my lesson plans. But I don’t teach the students alone. I have a co-teacher for each grade that stays with me in the classroom. Sometimes they teach part of the lesson with me, but most of the time, they’re there in case they need to help translate for the students or if there’s a behavioral issue. But they all do teach as well. The students have two English classes a week. One with me and the Korean teacher together, and one with only the Korean teacher. We do this by essentially splitting up the textbook. If I do lesson one, part one, then they’ll do lesson one, part two and we keep alternating from there. The co-teacher for third grade helps out a lot more, especially with translations, as the students are younger and more rambunctious than the older students.

For the lessons themselves, we do various English activities focused on reading, writing, speaking, and listening. A lot of the activities come from the textbook or worksheets, but others are games. PowerPoint games to be precise. There is a whole world of PowerPoint games that I’ve discovered since coming to Korea. There is a huge foreign teacher online community within Korea that shares teaching resources. To be honest, I would’ve been lost without it my first year here. But just like with the interactive textbook, I wish we had ppt games when I was in school! Sometimes I’m just as excited to run the game for the students as they are to play them, some of them are seriously so cool and fun.

Hands down, one of the best parts of teaching is the students themselves. They are so fun and cute and hilarious, especially the 3^rd and 4^th graders (sadly, the 5^th and 6^th graders mostly grow out of it, but they still have their moments!). They treat me like a rockstar, no joke. Always screaming my name when they see me in the hallway or cafeteria, running up to me just to say hi, or in most cases, challenging me to rock, paper, scissors (RPS is law over here). And they’re (usually) always so excited to see me during English class (though not always as excited to learn English). One year even, a few of my 5^th grade classes clapped every time I walked to the front of the classroom to begin class. It’s all hilarious in itself as I am nothing special, but it’s nice all the same. Like I try not to let it go to my head but it does make me feel good to know that so many students like me. And maybe it’s because I try to make class time fun. Learning doesn’t have to be fun, but it can be fun and should be fun (at least for elementary students). I know not all of my students want to learn English, so I crack jokes, play fun games, act silly and use silly voices, learn as many of their names as I can, anything to make them smile or laugh. And I suppose it’s working since I am so well-liked, but honestly, 3^rd and 4^th grade is easy. Those students have so much energy and get excited so easily that it’s hard not to have a fun class with them.

I was really blessed to land at the school I did. The students are well-behaved (for elementary students) and excited to learn. The Korean teachers (my co-teachers and the homeroom teachers) are nice and welcoming. There are a lot of students and teachers at my school who speak a decent amount of English, including some who are practically fluent, so I haven’t felt isolated due to my (still) weak Korean skills. Not every foreign teacher that comes to Korea lands themselves in such a good position as I have so I don’t take it for granted. And also, don’t take my experience as the law. There are schools that are better than mine as well as worse than mine. As we like to say in Korea, it just depends.

The lyrics for this post’s title came from Childish Gambino’s My Shine