4. About Me

I have a master’s of science; I am educated well beyond what is needed. The Ministry of Education recently downgraded what people needed to below a bachelors degree; now, you only need two years of college. I came here along with my fiancée because it was difficult to find a job in the recessive economy. I came with an open mind, full of aspiration, and ready to take on a challenge. My experience and thoughts in Korea have changed over time as it does, often, with the native foreign language teachers here.

For about the first 4 months I was adjusting to a different job, a different culture, food, etc, and I was learning to do things as best as I could on limited resources (none). I spent a lot of time making good lessons. I was awesome, so amazing, in fact, the co-teachers were telling the teachers in other schools how awesome I was. I didn’t hear about it until I went to a demo and an outside teacher was like, “wow I heard about how well you teach!” or something like that.

The middle four months, I came to the realization of how much I was being exploited due to the Korean way of only following the parts of the contract that are convenient for them. This came into a major conflict. I was also stressed and tired out of my mind by that point. Doing all the work constantly and seeing your co-teachers slacking, or doing as little as possible constantly, takes its toll. There were quite a few arguments and a few tears shed on their side.

The last four months were spent refusing to be accommodating to people that weren’t ever accommodating to begin with. I did as little as possible, always, in that second semester. I went from “damn, I hope this is a good lesson, I hope they’re learning”, to “man, how do I pretend to teach them and keep them busy for 45 minutes” – yeah it sucks to say, but very true. They would ask me for lesson plans that I had used prior… nope, they’re already deleted, was my excuse. If I was proving that I was doing something for my job, which is not difficult at all considering I do everything, I would show my lesson plans. If they want to save their own ass when an auditor comes by, that’s not my problem. That’s what happens when you’re surrounded by people that don’t care. I bet they submitted something anyways. It’s amazing how quickly things get falsified under outside pressure within Korea.