My Students: My Little Joys and My Occasional Headaches

I finished my first semester (currently 4 weeks into my 2nd) and I got to say, teaching is hard, but it is definitely worth the effort. At Sewanee (my university), one of my favorite professors made a comment to me after I lead a group discussion on Catholic Relics and their prominence in period works of literature that I should conciser teaching as a potential job after I graduated. As any potential global politics major will tell you, I was going to change the world either working for the US government or some NGO somewhere across the globe. I never saw myself as a teacher or someone who would like working with kids before. Sure I was a swim coach for a summer and work as a lifeguard at my local YMCA, but those were just summer jobs where I was with other people my own age for the most part.

Plus to be quite honest, when I originally applied for the job I was curious to see if my professor was right, but I mostly really wanted to come back to Korea (esp Seoul) to find out why I am so drawn to this country. But after the training and being put into a classroom with on average 10-12 students everyday, I learned I really do like teaching the kids the material and helping them hone their skills in the English language. I really like being in the classroom and interacting with my students. Of course I would like them to really learn more and to improve, but for me the best thing is when I can relate and really get to know my students. I am always asking questions about their life and interests. I really try to relate what we are learning/talking about to their own lives to make their learning more personal. For me, showing them that they are able to express themselves and relate to others in a foreign language is the ultimate goal (besides having them level up and improve their English).

Teaching is hard, I am not going to lie. I have to not only teach the students the material, but I have to always be aware of classroom management and make sure that the students are not playing on their tabs when they should be following the lesson (all my classes are taught on tablets). I have had to deal with kids not wanting to be in my class so they feel the need to just go crazy, distract others, or even to just ignore me. I have had students refuse to work with others and out right tell me they hate a classmate.

But I have had more instances of students joking around with me, coming together to create and imagine different view points in a story, see a connection to their own lives to the life of the character in our books, learn to voice their thoughts and opinions on a topic they might not be able to talk about outside of the classroom in a language they are learning (example the War on Terror, plastic surgery, Humanoids, and whether or not the government should provide free lunches to students). Teaching so far has been life changing and very rewarding.

Will I be doing this for the rest of my life? I am not sure, but for now I am just going to enjoy experiencing this new chapter in my life.