Gregory May:  

ish teachers.I found out quickly that I was woefully unprepared to teach English.There is a lot more to it than I ever thought.To clarify, it's not really "teaching" it's more like leading students in conversation.Easier said than done when dealing with a culture that puts so much emphasis on education at an early age. Each student preferred a particular teaching style.Mine was rather exploratory. We'd start with one topic, but if we happened upon a tangent, I went with it. I also liked talking about controversial topics. Many students were turned off by this and opted to attend one of the classes taught by two recent elementary education graduates whose classes were all about fun and games.My philosophy was that high-level students of English should be trying to converse about any and all topics not play childish games. As one of my devout students commented to one of the lady teachers "how does drawing clown faces help improve my English?" He was back in my class the next month, yes! The kind of students that I had that first year was an interesting mix. I had a minister, an aesthetic surgeon,a medical doctor, and a University Professor in some of my classes.The older students were always the most interesting. In August 1994, I landed my second job in Korea in Pusan.This is where I was introduced to the dreaded children's classes.How interested is a five year old in learning a foreign language? A: not at all. I hated trying to control them much less teach them. I was more of a baby sitter than anything else. All of my western socialization that taught me that one shouldn't hit children went out the window real quick.Corporal punishment is the only way I survived. The classroom resembled something out of the movie "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest." Except in my case, the patients were in charge.Needless to say, I began to dread teaching. After returning to the States in'95, I worked for my stepmother's tour business. Korea beckoned again. In 1996 I got a job in Haenam, Korea. By this time most schools began teaching predominantly children's classes. I really began to loathe teaching.The best part about this job was that it was where I met my wife Yonah.It didn't look good for the institute to have one of its teachers seen in public dating a Korean woman and I was told this not so subtly.So for me it was an easy choice, I quit the job and went to the U.S.embassy to apply for a temporary visa for my wife. But it was not to be.The embassy would not permit my wife a temporary visa so I was forced back to the states alone until I could find another job in Korea and take care of visa matters at the same time.My final job was at a high school in Inchon, Korea. There I fond myself in a classroom with 50 high school students teaching alone.What a challenge that was! It was supposed to be "team" teaching but my big mouth and American contract got me in trouble. You see, I took a couple of sick days(all on Mondays)and they grew suspicious of just how sick I really was.They decided to boycott my classes as punishment to teach me the lesson that in Korea, unless one is on one's deathbed, one reports to work. The ringleader - a guy who just didn't like me - was the vocal leader and managed to sway most of the teachers against me. How could I argue "my contract" in the face of thousands of years of history? It was a good lesson for me and one I learned throughout my stay in Korea: individualism is good, but collectivism is much more important in the long run.