I returned home to Australia in March of this year, following a very eventful 10 years teaching English to a variety of age groups in South Korea. Most of that time was spent in academic coordinator roles at three different private institutes.
Alex Case from TEFLtastic recently challenged me to write about my Korea-based experiences, and I thought I'd kick things off by summarizing some of the best and worst experiences I had there, specifically with regard to the Korean language institute owners (usually referred to as "directors" in that context) I had to deal with over that time. This post is dedicated to some of the "bests" I personally saw and experienced during my time in Korea.
THE 'BEST' LIST
- Director 1 let me use his car whenever I wanted after school hours and during school breaks.
- Director 1 and his wife (the principal) gave me time off only four months into my first contract to return home to Australia to attend my sister's wedding. They bought a beautiful custom-made Korean hanbok to give to her as a gift, and the director offered to drive me to the airport to catch my flight to Seoul, from whence I would fly to Australia. He had too much to drink and overslept, and I ended up having to take a taxi in haste to catch my domestic flight from Busan to Seoul. As I sat on the international flight on the tarmac in Seoul, a few minutes from take off (roundly cursing my unreliable director), a flight attendant approached me with a package. It was the hanbok and a box of Korean baek-seju wine. The director, mortified at oversleeping, had rushed to the airport, caught the flight after mine to Seoul, and had managed to convince the flight staff to bring the present parcel to me just moments before I was due to take off. Amazing.
- Director 1 and his wife took all the teachers (all 20 of us) on a three day trip to Jeju Island, all expenses paid, as an expression of thanks for our help in achieving a school enrollment of more than 1,000 students.
- When it was clear we needed more targeted textbook resources for our younger learner students, Director 1 and wife gave me a paid month off to write the materials for the school.
- Director 1 introduced me to the lady who would later become my wife.
- Director 1 became concerned when I spent too much time late at night developing materials and programs for the school - he'd call me to tell me to either get some sleep or else join him for a drink up.
- Director 1 remained a very good friend in the years after I left his school to work at another one, and supported my role as a Korea TESOL Chapter president by sponsoring, covering the cost of our chapter website and paying the membership fee for any of this teachers who wanted to join the association.
- Director 2 gave me private housing with two bedrooms in a beautiful part of the city (at the time hardly any teachers managed to get single housing), and later gave me a computer for the house (first thing I did with it was build the methodology section of English Raven!) and paid for all my Internet bills.
- Director 2 bought me a brand new bicycle after watching my first teacher development seminar (he was that ecstatic to see actual teacher development happening at his school).
- Director 2 organised all the wedding invitations when I got married, and sat at the family table at the reception, acting as a translator between my and my Korean wife's parents.
- Director 2 forked out a heap of money to let me develop an immersion-style kindergarten program and setting, with few questions asked and minimal intervention in how the program was designed and run.
- Director 2 was often a very good listener, and a great motivator and supporter of positive change (even when there was no direct profit involved).
- Director 3 actually gave me a share of the profits from the textbooks I made for the school.
- Director 3 actually paid me generously for the special online program I developed for her school.
- Director 3 paid US$500 towards the cost of my flight ticket to go to IATEFL in Cardiff in 2005 (plus allowed me a week off to attend).
- Director 3 offered to pay for TESOL methodology books for the school, and for any of her teachers who decided to embark on MA TESOL courses (at one stage we had 4 of our teachers doing MA TESOL degrees - at the time unheard of in private institute settings).
- Director 3 made allowances in my teaching schedule for both MA TESOL study and also coursebook writing when I won the Boost! contract with Pearson Longman.
- Director 3 regularly paid generous bonuses to her teachers after intensive sessions or at times when the school was doing particulary well in some way.
- Director 3 generously sponsored Korea TESOL's YLT-SIG, by paying for and organising printing of conference booklets, and in one instance organising a bus to take all of her teachers to the other end of the peninsula to attend a YLT-SIG teacher development event.
- Director 3 insisted that all staff meetings involving foreign teachers be conducted entirely in English, and herself attended all teacher development seminars as an active participant.
- Director 3 organised the best darned hwe-shiks (staff dinners/parties) imaginable.
- Director 3 was genuinely warm-hearted and open in 95% of my (and all the other teachers') dealings with her.
Now, before you read this and think "hey, obviously all that negative stuff I've read about Korean directors isn't true!" or even think about packing your bags and heading off to TEFL paradise, remember that there are two equal sides to this coin. This list showcases a lot of generosity and dedication to TEFL professionalism on the part of these directors, but often it was a result of teacher actions/guidance in the first place, and very often it was offset by some other kinds of behaviour that weren't quite as noble, generous, or considerate.
In a later post (Part II) I'll be listing some of the more prominent "worsts", and they feature the very same three directors portrayed here. For now, however, these are the "gems" - so to speak!
:-)
