Being an English Teacher, well more specifically being a ESL teacher in a foreign country, is never easy. There is first the language barrier to jump over, I'm currently working in ROK, better know as South Korea. I being the smart college graduate I was picked a country that I didn't even know the language of to spend my first year of independence in. Due to my personal choices I had more hurdles to jump over than I should have and mainly I am only to blame.
The main thing I'm focusing on right now is language. Now apparently I did an unusual thing for many of the ESL teachers who come to Korea and I actually decided to learn a little Korean before I came to live.....in Korea. Now I will stop and say this is a generalization, I'm sure that there are plenty of people out and about who have taught themselves a huge amount of Korean and can carry on conversations with natives. For my current situation when I arrived I was on of the 4/10 teachers who could read Korean. I'm including the teacher I replaced, who had been in Korea an entire year. If you will join me in a moment in stepping back and thinking "how could I live a whole year in a place and not be able to read 80% of things in my daily life...." I am a language major so it took me only 2 hours to learn how to read the Korean alphabet. In the entire year this teacher and many of my co-workers were here, they did not learn the alphabet.
So yes score one point for me (commences in some patting myself on the back), but I have also unfortunately kinda stopped learning Korean there, I think I have maybe 20 words in my toolbox for Korea and I've been here 7 months (now hangs head in shame) I feel if I put an conscious effort into this process I would have learned at least 500 words by now. I would also argue how can I be this old and still have a rather shaky grasp of English grammar. I digress, not knowing a lot of Korean can make teaching more difficult and at the same time easier. Students cannot unfortunately express many ideas to me, at times I'm glad when it involves them wanting me to help them wipe their butts (more on this later), but then I cannot understand them if they are insulting me. The later point I find a blessing and a curse because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be as nice to these children if they actually were insulting me in Korean.....opposed to the other teachers which they insult in English. The butt wiping part comes in because I occasionally teach children who are Korean age 5....now wait what do I mean Korean age 5? There is this magical thing in cultures who follow the lunar calendar where you get to add one year based on the time in the womb....yeah scream now you are older than you are, but that makes these kids western age 3.5, so it is understandable that they want me to help them with basic tasks. I'm pretty sure I've actually learned the Korean word for poo...and I choose to ignore this fact.
When I leave work though I get to experience what I just put these children through, where I am the beginner trying to express my wants to the masses of Korea, and half the time it breaks down to me showing them a word on my phone's dictionary, thank whoever for smart phones, or miming what I want....I was never good at charades as a child, I would like to think I'm pretty good at it now. So finding food, ordering food, shopping for things...becomes a trial in itself, but it can be grand.
Sometimes the language barrier is fun.....sometimes it isn't.
