Seoul Christian School Teacher

The market's downturn in 2007-2008 led me to examine my current placement at BFDS.  I was at a critical place of reaching the need to take the next step upward or to advance down another avenue in the direction of my career with the company.  A series of circumstances caused me to pause. 

First in the series was, as stated above, the market's downturn.  At once, we were doing grand and making money and the 401k seemed awesome.  At once, my pitifully sized 401k became worth a third of its original value and the money was drying up. 

Second, promotions and pay increases were frozen.  In essence, I was as far as I would be going for awhile.  I was at the perfect position to move and now I was told that I could no longer go anywhere.

Third, I had come to dread going to work.  It wasn't that I was bad at my job and it really wasn't as if I hated the people with whom I worked.  I just needed new challenges and without those challenges, I was stagnating.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, my wife learned through her sister that there were two teaching posistions in Seoul, South Korea.  To make what could be a long story of provision, contemplation and stepping out in faith short, I put in my two weeks in December of 2008 and we made the journey to South Korea.

Before I go any further, let me make sure that the reader is greatly aware of this one fact.  Stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something that makes you both excited and scared is almost always worth it.  Notice that I am not saying dangerous--although there is probably room for that at times.  I am saying uncomfortable.  Scare yourself by going beyond the boundaries of what you know to do something that is unknown.

Now, we stepped out and took a chance.  I had always wanted to try my hand (or is it mind?) at teaching.  I grew up in a homeschool family that believed that every situations and circumstance in life was a chance to learn something new.

In August we learned about it.  In October we had all the required paperwork prepared.  In December I put in my resignation and by January 5th, we were standing in Incheon airport completely surrounded by something we really knew little about.

Without creating a huge post, I want to somehow distill my 3.5 years in Korea down to some simple to understand concepts with real worth.  So here it goes.

The one word I think I could use to some up my entire time in Korea would be: overwhelmed.  This word describes my trying to learn the Korean language.  It describes me trying to learn how to teach while being a teacher.  It describes daily life in my attempts to simply live in a language and culture I didn't fully understand.

Try to imagine teaching people with whom you have such limited commonality. Moreover, we landed on the 5th and by the 7th I was given a textbook and with a clear message: sink or swim. I stood before 20 eager students who I didn't know how to teach. Every interaction, every activity, every single thing that happened while we lived in Korea came with an added level of difficulty.

I did learn one great truth about teaching that applies. It comes from the motivated sequence. Before you can get people to change, you have to impress upon them—you might even say create—a need. Being overwhelmed creates a need to change how you are reacting to a given situation. You learn to adapt and if need be, you learn another way to handle a situation. I didn't know the language. I adapted. I learned. I didn't like the food. I adapted. I ate it anyway. I didn't know how to teach. I adapted. I still am not great at teaching, but I am far better than that first day.

To close out, I want to describe a major shortcoming of my first full year at school. I was given the job of "floor coordinator". For all intents and purposes, it was a somewhat frustrating, largely mechanical role. In my desire to be a great teacher right away and do a great job as the floor coordinator, I found I did both poorly. Worse, I probably made several people very tired of my constant complaining about why I was put under so much pressure in my first year as a teacher. Someone said this to me—perhaps more out of frustration than anything else—"yeah, it may be difficult and hard, but it is where you have been put, now what are you going to do about it?"

Still learning that lesson.