So, if you know me, you know that I just scored about the best flippin' job that I could hope to get in Korea. I have spent the last two years working for hagwons, which are after school academies like Kumon or Sylvan Learning Center in the U.S., and I was extremely frustrated by the working situation there. I was a "teacher", but I was not allowed to actually teach the kids correctly.
"But Marisol, you're a teacher! What do you mean you weren't allowed to teach?" Well, there's a huge difference between the Korean school of thought on education and the western one. In the U.S., for example, a good teacher is someone who can get his or her students to think. A good teacher is someone who can get his or her students to not only read and remember facts and dates, but to understand what it all means. Aside from that, a good teacher is someone who can teach his or her students to question everything without being a jerk about it. "Who wrote the book?" "Why did that person write the book?" "What did that person want me to learn?" "Did that person have any hidden agendas?" "What does this mean for me and the rest of the world?" A good teacher is someone who can get his or her students to apply the information they have learned to real life situations. That kind of thing.
Korea, on the other hand, has a very different definition of education. Korea is all about memorization. They think that the best way to learn is to open a book, read it, and memorize everything that's inside it. It's not necessary to understand it, but it is imperative to remember all the facts within the book and to do it quickly; quick enough to pass all the tests that the schools give to students and with flying colors. It's an absolute information overload for the kids. Because of that, I always felt that I was not allowed to truly teach my students anything. Whenever I tried to teach them anything, I was slowed down by the sheer amount of work that the kids were expected to do. They had, for example, vocabulary books that they had to do as homework every week. In the U.S., kids are also give vocabulary word lists, but they are given usually (for elementary students) about 5 words to learn for every story that they learn. At my last hagwon, however, the kids were given on average 40 vocabulary words to memorize from every story. THAT'S WAY TOO MUCH! Especially because they had about 1.5 to 2 weeks to do it before they were tested on them. It was ridiculous and frustrating. I tried talking to the head teacher and the hagwon owner about it, but they simply told me that the parents wanted us to give the kids a lot of work and since they were paying, we had to do whatever they wanted us to do. "Don't worry about teaching. Just make the parents happy."
Needless to say, I was miserable at that job. I lost a lot of hair, which has never happened to me before in my life. I got physically sick. My back was full of knots from all the stress. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be a student here. Being the "teacher" was bad enough.
So, I think the universe (and I) finally decided that I'd had enough of compromising my integrity as a teacher. I was able to get a job at a university where I'm working with preschool students! It's a dream job for me right now. I work with kids, I have my own classroom, I am allowed to actually teach, not just make the kids memorize everything, I get treated with respect by my coworkers, bosses, and the parents, AND I get paid more than the university professor get paid! It's awesome! I'm so happy at this job! My life has gotten exponentially better since I scored this job. And it kinda just dropped into my lap. I had been looking for a university position because I had heard that the working conditions are much better there, but I was having no luck. Then one day I got an email from a guy who said he heard I was looking for a job and he thought there was a position opening up at his university which might be a good fit for me. Turns out that this guy was one of the people in charge of hiring foreign teachers, so I had a good in for the job! I also had a few other friends who worked at the same university and they all vouched for me and I got the job so fast that I didn't even know what happened.
So, my life is much better now. I feel like a real teacher now. What's the point of me blogging about all of this? If you work hard, even if you are faced with a shitty situation, and you continue to strive for something better, you will eventually get what you want because you've earned it.
Happy Friday, everyone! ^_^
**Thank you very much to all of those people who submitted my resume into the university and helped me get this job.
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