The Foreign Teacher

Between the pupil's desk
And the teacher's realm all lined with books
There is a no-man's land
Filled with half-lid eyes and baleful looks
The pupil dares not cross it
The teacher plans a daring offer

Extending words of peace
In hope to guide to students to him
A simple question rings
To charm the jaded hands to action
One lovely girl she sings
A lame response to a boring question
"Who else will give a shot?"
Heads turn about for a second victim

"Mr. Halstead, then, why not."
The heads now turn in one direction
The boy (who's more a man)
Looks up from the screen he's got his mind on
Balls up his burly hand
And stands alert to some distant scion

His eyes show lack of presence
His true domain: crushing opponents
But somewhere from the depths
A distant chime of heaven's mercy
The bell rings out three times
And pupils are spared the teacher's query

When I walked into school yesterday morning I had a big smile on my face and a warm feeling in my heart. The sun was shining, streets were full of mirth, the birds….well, there aren’t any birds in Korea, but if there were they certainly would have been singing along to the chorus of life all around me. Why was I so excited on this morning? Could it be that I reveled in the satisfaction, the sheer pleasure this job gave me? I mean, I work all day in roomfuls of people who aren’t old enough to drink coffee on a regular basis. Children are so naïve and innocent that teaching them should be a considered a chance to mold the future of the world. To help stop the constant flow of assholes that populate this planet and begin to add to the chronic asshole epidemic, incidentally, around the time they are old enough to start enjoying coffee. So it must have been this deep sense of responsibility that brightened my morning, no?

In fact, the reason for my elation was two-fold: a) It was Friday; and 2) It was Graduation Day. Now, graduating from elementary school is certainly a rite of passage (especially for those students who peak around the third year of middle school) and I should have been full of joy at seeing my little pupils move onto the next stage of life to fulfill their dreams. To unfurl their delicate wings and fly into whichever bold direction they so choose. To see them swinging their arms in joy and singing K-pop tunes in the hallways in jubilation for the triumph they had won over primary school. I should have been, but I wasn’t. Instead I was happy that I didn’t have any classes so that I could spend the rest of my morning and afternoon reveling in freedom from work.

I have been a public school teacher in Korea for some two-and-a-half years now. That time has felt truncated, compressed, probably because of the novelty of being in a new hemisphere and among a different culture (for my first year), adjusting to realities and getting over the “honeymoon” phase and learning to live a mundane life in Asia (my second year) and getting older (always). And of course there have been the occasional overseas and overland journeys to keep my eyes and ears from self-destructing due to the sameness of city life here. But one thing that I have failed to fully reckon with during my time here is the impact that my job as an [attempted] educator of students has had on my character, on my personality and outlook on life, and on my assessment of the passing of time.

Marcel Proust said of time (among many things Proust said about time), that time “which we have at our disposal every day is elastic, the passions we feel expand it, those that inspire us contract it, and habit fills what remains.” To which of these categories does our time spent teaching belong? I know many who would agree that, at least here in Korea, to teach English in a public school (I can’t speak for private schools), entails a great gift be bestowed upon us-—the gift of downtime.

We can use our downtime for pretty much anything, and rarely is it for anything teaching related. But what about our time in the classroom? We spend at least twenty hours every week in direct contact with groups of adolescents and pre-adolescents. Most of it (one hopes) is pure in its teaching-learning essence. That is, the games and activities we construct, the questions we ask and responses students give, the social interaction with students as a single unit, in a small group or as individuals—we want these moments to be pure transmissions of knowledge, of understanding, or perhaps of an increase in confidence for the learners, even if the content is somewhat lost. Our roles as teachers can therefore be expanded to that of guiders or guardians; we guide students to have faith in themselves; we guard them against an environment that is overly punitive and stifling of creativity. So if we can really achieve this kind of flow at any moment, we are in fact expanding our time, making it worth more to us, and transcending the job title and position written on our contracts.

Of course, this magical educational theory and self-congratulation is all well and good. But do we really internalize such moments? How do they affect us as people and how do we view ourselves in relation to this role?

From many of the comments posted on Facebook and in ESL forums by native English teachers in Korea (and other countries in which foreigners are teaching English), I get the sense that many of us have great relationships with our students, a few less with our co-teachers, and still others with nobody and nothing whatsoever, life in Korea being just a kimchi-colored shitstain on their otherwise brilliant and eminent existences back in South Africa or the United States or whatever utopia they come from. These wildly different attitudes about being a teacher make me think that it is a profession not everyone is fit for, and that what we pour into our roles as educators is equal to the pleasure we will derive from our students and co-workers. If you loathe going to school every day on principle, you will most likely miss out on the time-expanding experiences that come out of meaningful interaction.

Culture does play a role in this dynamic as well, no doubt about that. And if the culture feels hostile to you, you might feel hostile to the culture, driving down the level of satisfaction you can get from your job. I wonder if this has been the case with me. Not that I see or ever saw Korea as hostile to me personally. But I did and do find it somewhat alienating, myself being an “other” in this land of “our country”, “our language”, “our culture”, “our Korea”. I was part of “them”, not part of “us”. The effect this had on my performance at work at times was closer to one of fatalism or apathy. If a class in my middle school sucked really hard, I might just chalk it up to students’ disrespect towards “the silly foreign guy”.

Hey, it seemed plausible enough. After all, how often does a Westerner (a white- or black- or other-clearly-non-Northeast-Asian-skinned person) hear the words “외국인이다!” (there’s a foreigner!) whispered or shouted by children (or the occasional adult) behind our backs or directly in from of us, sometimes accompanied by a pointed index finger in our direction, as if we were some sort of curiosity in a random street freak show. Or how many times do we endure Koreans coming up to us out of nowhere and reciting, “Hello, how are you? I’m fine! My name is Kim Nam Suk! Nice to meet you!”, before giggling and running away with their friends? I’m not suggesting these are wholly negative experiences. But they do contribute to our notion that Koreans see us as “weird”.

To be sure, these are really general and somewhat superficial observations about being a foreign teacher in Korea. If you are part of a school team that embraces and includes you, then your experience will most likely be positive. And if you believe in what you are doing as a teacher, that even the littlest bit of good achieved validates your presence in the classroom and in this country, then you might certainly develop a beautiful symbiotic relationship with your students, where they need you to guide them to new waters and you need them to feel like you have a job that you can feel proud of. After all, the downtime we have after our classes are over for the day will more than likely be used for reflection and self-assessment. We want to find out if our day in the classroom meant anything to us at all. If it is worthy of reflecting upon.

I think the next time I go to school so happy as I was on graduation day will be the first day of spring classes, when I get yet another chance to find that flow that I so often take for granted or overlook. When I can reach or inspire one little boy, one little girl in the germinal stages of learning a new language to give their best effort, knowing that I will be giving mine.

I am curious to hear thoughts of other teachers, of English or other areas, in Korea or anywhere else. What are your overall attitudes about teaching?