Jennifer Patience - Korea

After having already spent a year teaching in Korea in 2005, I returned to Korea from Australia 18 months ago (while I waited to see if I was allowed an Oz visa) and at first taught at a Montessori kindergarten in Suwon. After 6 months, still waiting for a visa, I changed jobs and went to SNFL: Seongnam Foreign Language High School in Bundang. Totally different experiences but I learned so much from both of them. With this kind of job, to be successful you have to be utterly honest; half the battle is gaining the trust of your students. Pre-schoolers aren’t going through any of the angst of teenagers and you know their reaction is intuitive and straightforward. If they like you, they really like you. High school students have a lot going on. They have so much stress from studying and exams, and figuring out their future plans, but if you are honest and show that you respect their ideas and opinions rather than imposing another set of rules on top of everything, that can go a long way to establishing a good relationship.

It’s been great in Korea, I’ve been looked after pretty well. I’ve been lucky with the jobs that I’ve had and the people that I’ve met. I don’t intend coming back, I think I’ve spent enough time here, but you can never say never! It is time to go somewhere else and try something new. That is a huge reason for me to do the CELTA. My teaching experience up til now has been mostly focused around kindergarten – high school. I’ve taught adults, but not to any great extent and it will do me good to get my head around that methodology.

But it is still sad to leave…

Three of my favourite students came to say goodbye..

Left to Right: Jin-Yeop, Me, Ho-Sang and Dong-Jae.

On my last Monday in Korea we went out for lunch together. I wasn’t the only native teacher leaving SNFL: it was a goodbye for three of us. After lots of umming about where to go, we ended up in a Korean restaurant in Jeongja, 5 minutes from Sunae. I’d been there once before when Tiger (Korean teacher) took me for lunch and as you can see from the dishes on the table it was typical Korean style, many many dishes for everyone to share. The really cool thing with this restaurant was they didn’t just bring the food to the table, they brought the table to the table. Everything was laid out, presumably in the kitchen, and then the staff wheeled out a table top and slid it onto the table that was in front of you. It was a great place to go for a goodbye meal as there was a little bit of every Korean dish I liked: fried fish, noodles, spinach, pajeon (a kind of pancake), soups….

Native teachers together!

From left to right: Yoshimi (Japanese teacher who is leaving to go to Russia), Ting Ting & Lili (Chinese teachers), Me, Mario & Josh (English teachers), Guido (German teacher who is off to teach at a university) and Honma (Japanese teacher). Tiger (Korean teacher) is taking the photograph.