Teaching in Korea
After reading this blog, a few people have asked whether I am actually doing any teaching here in Korea! Yes I am, and I love it. Teaching students whose second language is English, or students from non-American cultures, was barely touched upon in my doctoral training. This was a major oversight given the makeup of the American population. I am learning many crucial lessons here that I will be able to apply back in the United States.
In some ways, teaching here is no different than teaching in the U.S. There are some hard-working, diligent students with their eye on future success and there are some students with no clue why they are in college. Many students in Korea put in 15-18 hour school days from middle school onward (including Saturday classes) . Increasingly, children in wealthier families spend a year in the United States or Canada to master English. Since “school reputation” is the number one hiring criterion in Korea (60% of government officials and 70% of top company executives graduate from the “top 3″ universities), your score on the college entrance exam determines much of your future life. Pyeongtaek is not one of the top three. So my students are late-bloomers, bad test-takers, kids from less privileged schools and backgrounds or kids who simply wanted something other than the academic grind during their childhood.
Almost all of the students have studied English for 10 years, but most have only spoken it for 1 or 2 years and many have never spoken to a foreigner before. Their grasp of grammar is amazing, but also inhibiting to them as they deal with Americans’ highly ungrammatical common speech!
I have one class and two study groups; the latter are informal weekly meetings to discuss culture and practice English. Here are some windows into my teaching here.
1) In one study group, a few students were too shy and nervous to get out a coherent sentence. Since some were urban planning majors, we headed out to the green where I asked them to describe to me their favorite building on campus. Soon we were discussing what buildings should be torn down, where to put athletic fields and whether to save an orchard or build a gym instead. Focusing on content enabled them to move past their embarrasment about their English, which consequently improved.
2) In another study group, I asked students to bring in debate questions. One student asked whether or not Koreans should be getting plastic surgery to improve their job prospects. Another asked whom should we blame : inviduals who forge their degrees or the society that values degrees over ability. A third asked why Koreans were buying so many high-priced luxury items - whether to show off for others, or reassure themselves. Each debate led to questions about values and to comparisons with American culture. Cross-cultural understanding is at the heart of what I do here.
3) My class is on Race and Gender in America. It is fascinating to teach about race to a nation that has long defined itself as mono-racial, but which is rapidly becoming multicultural and multiracial. In addition, I am teaching “Asian-American” history to people who question the concept of “Asian”. My students wonder how I can like America so much, yet also be so clear about our racial fault lines and injustices. Discussing such complexity would be hard enough with native speakers - making it accessible in simpler English is my greatest challenge.
4) In class, the students discuss the reading in small groups. Small group discussion is rare in Korea, so the students love the chance to help each other with translation, debate the main points, and answer my discussion questions. In order to enable deeper discussion of content, I allow the students to discuss in Korean. This is a bit of a problem for me though - how do I tell if they are on track or getting the right answer if I cannot understand the conversation?! I have been amazed to discover that a little Korean and careful observation makes this perfectly feasible - a timely intervention here or there works perfectly. The students then present their answers in English, so I have a second chance to check and correct their work, just in case I misgauged the small group!
5) I try to get out with my students when I can, so I have taken one group to dinner and another to a cafe in town. As always the students teach me as much as I teach them. One group has two exchange students from Mexico in addition to my Korean students, so our cultural sharing takes on different depths. Once we went to a cafe to experience the hot new Korean fad - Dr. Fish. These little fish eat the dead skin off your feet and massage the capillaries. Not your usual history class, but we all learned a fair bit about China where the fish come from and Korea’s passion for the new.
Overall, teaching has been the easiest thing I have done here - I have years of practice and I love experimenting with teaching styles. But at times cultural differences are an issue. Professors are both elders (by age) and superiors (by status) and thus there are extensive rules for faculty-student interaction - none of which are obvious to me. Being a foreigner means those rules are modified for me, but the students are not sure how much or when. Even the question of name is an issue - am I Professor Salerno (American style), Salerno Professor (Korean style), Salerno Kyosu-nim (Korean words) or just Beth (as some other American professors are)? I opted for Professor Salerno. It is my American title (I am teaching American Studies after all) and I thought a little formality might make up for my complete ignorance of the other formal rules. It hasn’t. However, not knowing the rules has forced the students to articulate them. This allows us to discuss the differences between American and Korean universities.
Sometimes I do not know about the cultural issue until it is too late. In a lecture about the evils of plagiarism, I joked that I would flog students who copy from the internet. After students looked up the word in their electronic dictionaries I got very respectful and amazed looks. I later discovered corporal punishment is still legal in Korean schools (though it usually involves a ruler, not a cat o nine tails!). So once again I got to explain the differences between American and Korean schools.
In the end, that is the essence of my teaching style - even my ignorance is a teachable moment. Having humility and a willingness to listen have been the biggest assets I bring to my teaching (my friends will tell you I’m still working on the humility). As one student told me after class “I have learned a lot about America and a lot about Korea. This is really interesting.” Another slightly tipsy student told me at a recent department dinner, “You give me pride in my English and my thoughts - you listen, you understand, and you reply. Thank you.” I cannot ask for any more than this.
1 comment October 14, 2007
