Hello again East ‘Hantsonians’ and welcome to the third edition of Tanner’s Tales. This week’s topic: Teaching in Korea 101.

Visualize the following: You’re a teacher, there are 40 kids aged 12-15 in each class you teach and only a handful of them speak your language with any proficiency. What kind of struggles do you think may abound? Provided you are not Ronald McDonald with an infinite amount of cheeseburgers at your disposal, harnessing control in this sort of an environment can be a challenge.

Adolescents in Korea are no different than any other country in the world. Their bodies and minds have been overtaken by raging hormones and as a result, are not always the best students. Classroom management as any teacher knows is the single most important element to induce learning. In an unruly classroom, learning is not possible as there are too many distracters that compromise it.

In my early days of teaching in Korea, there was many times where I wanted nothing more but to give up. My classroom roused minimal learning and student behaviour gave the impression that I were standing in front of zoo animals instead of young teenagers. Rather than a teacher, the students looked upon me more as a unique individual dropped in from a distant planet. As a result of this, many students viewed my classes only as a time of pleasure and a break from the rigors of their ‘real’ classes.

To anyone who is considering making the trek to this great country to teach ESL (English Second Language), I urge you not to get too bent out of shape in your first few months of teaching here. It probably will be difficult at first and you will probably hate getting up and going to work. When asked within my first few months in Korea if I would stay an additional year, without even thinking about it I would flat out answer: are you kidding me? Now 10 months into my one year contract and I am certain that another year in Korea is in my future.

I wish I could give some magical recipe for my recent successes as a teacher here, but ultimately I think it is fundamentally a result of my changing attitude. You don’t need me and you certainly don’t need to read a copy of “The Secret” to know that by looking at things more in a positive light will make your plight in life that much better. In addition, this changing attitude allowed me to take a genuine interest in what I was in fact being paid to do, that being, teach English to Korean youth. My changing attitude has turned my experience in Korea from one that was at first abominable to one that was tolerable to its current state of being enjoyable.

Korean children work their tails off to succeed academically. Many go to school for over 12 hours a day and face exceptional pressure from their parents to be the best. As a result of this, I have tried to make my classroom a place that not only maximizes learning, but rather and perhaps most importantly, a place that does so in an entertaining way. The learning curve has been steep, but the reward has been worth it.

Until next time.