Last week, it was Teacher’s Day – although not a major holiday, it’s still commands much attention, especially from students and parents. Traditional gifts from students include letters, carnations, socks and either handkerchiefs for men, or cosmetics for women.
As the photo above indicates, I scored socks, a handkerchief and a “bun” which one attaches to one’s cellphone. Koreans love attaching things to their cellphones, as if they were keychains. I also received some sweet letter, even though I’ve only been here two months.
Often, students will sing songs for their teachers, and sometimes there is no school. My school had classes in the morning, but in the afternoon, we had a volleyball finals tournament.
There is an interesting phenomenon in Korea of virtually all public school teachers playing volleyball on Wednesdays, from 3-5 PM. One is expected to either play or cheer on one’s fellow teachers, and it’s somewhat of a serious game. Our games always have a referee AND a scorekeeper, even though they’re just for fun. However, each school has it’s own team, and they play other regional schools for the regional title, and it gets very serious. That’s what happens on Teachers Day. Winners get a huge flag and trophy cup, along with bragging rights for the year. However, many schools – especially in the rural county of Goheung – don’t have enough players to sport a team, so they combine teams to compete. But because they aren’t able to practice enough as a team, they rarely, if ever, win titles – which is why I found myself rooting for them during the tournament.
Afterward, the schooled sprung for a nice dinner, at a typical Korean restaurant. I hope to write about the whole Korean food scene soon, but in the meantime, this photo is very typical of how Koreans eat.
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Mark,
Your S. Korea experience sounds wonderful. I wonder, do your students speak english already or are they learning from the NETs? Also, how is your lack of the native language keeping you from communicating? Are you learning the native language as much as your students are learning to speak english?
thanks,
Susan
Thanks for commenting. Those are all good questions that I will address in upcoming posts!
Mark
I love reading your blog. Good stories posted here. So teaching in Korea… hmm sounds like the Koreans prefer to hire Native Americans rather than korean-americans/australians etc.. I'm a bit worried because I'm from NZ but Korean born. I can speak korean fluently, but I speak english like a native. Is it true that koreans discriminate? Is it harder to get into elementary schools than hagwons if you're not ethnically european?
Hi Cindy,
I've only just saw your post, so sorry for the delay. To answer your questions:
Visa requirements stipulate you MUST be a native English speaker, and you can come from only one of six countries – and Kiwis are amongst the invited guests! However, I've noticed a strong bias towards Americans and Canadians, in their hiring practices, especially in the public schools. However, there are folks from other countries here, including NZ. In fact, many Koreans send their children to NZ to learn English. But I've heard from Koreans that they have a more difficult time with Australian and NZ "accents" than us N. Americans, mostly because of cultural bias and many of their training materials are someone with an American accent.
There IS discrimination here on a number of different levels, as there are in most countries. And I've heard that while kypos (Asian-Americans) are hired (I personally know of one) they prefer young, attractive Americans of European descent as their top choice (I'm lucky that I'm one out of three). Feel free to email me for more info: surmonk@gmail.com.