Taking control of my career..

My career in ELT is yet to start... Moving to Korea was definitely the biggest turning point in my personal and professional life. Up until moving here about three years ago, I worked at public and private hospitals as a clinical dietitian. One of my main responsibilities was provision of nutrition education to patients and their families. I was involved in nutrition classes for kids, expectant mothers and patients in the psychiatric wards (not just those with mental illness but teenagers struggling with eating disorders as well). Even though on the surface, all this had nothing to do with ELT, in fact, it taught me a great deal in terms of how to devise the right strategies to get through to different individuals with different personalities as well as cultural competence having to counsel people of different races, ethnicities, and religions.

Once I moved to Korea, I struggled for a while trying to find where my skills would be the best match. I also wanted to get personal satisfaction from what I did for living as I was not able to continue my career as a clinical dietitian (at least not until I pass the national test administered in Korean). I have been working in my current position with the Ministry of Health and Welfare for a little over two and a half years. Pretty much from day one, I have been doing what Koreans refer to as “language exchange” with my colleagues. Although we are supposed to be splitting time between English and Korean, and helping each other out, I am pretty much helping my colleagues with their conversational and, to some extent, writing skills in English. I have realized how much I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others and take pride in helping them to move forward with their language skills. I shared how I felt with my family and friends. I then started looking into how I could teach in Korea. I knew that I did not have enough experience nor did I have the right educational background. But I knew I had to start somewhere. It did not take me long to come across SMU TESOL Program’s website and the rest is history.

As a side note, I do have something to share about my interview for SMU STG Program. I remember vividly how after the interview I called my husband and told him that I wouldn’t get in. I felt that I didn’t manage to really show my whole heart and sincerity during the interview when I was asked why I wanted to teach. I am very privileged to be a part of such a great group of classmates who all bring different experiences and points of view to the table.

I look forward to our classes on Saturdays and teaching on Sundays. Once the class is over, I am planning to teach more. However, I feel that I am a better fit for children in elementary school and above for the time being. My ultimate goal is not only to teach English but also food & nutrition, hospitality management or public health to put to use not only my teaching skills but my medical knowledge as well. I have never really been driven by money. What I value the most is waking up in the morning and wanting to go to work (as opposed to thinking “oh gosh, it is another Monday!!"). 

I value professional development and having a sense of purpose in what I am doing. Right now, I am a part of many health care projects between Korea and other countries. But I fail to see the “big picture.” I seem to be constantly working on some kind of internal report to present information to the higher executives or gathering market data to put together a report, again, for the higher executives. I don’t seem to see the “point” in all this anymore really. I have lost my enthusiasm over the years. I am surrounded by many people at work and outside (family friends, acquaintances, etc.) who have shared similar stories with me or with others who have told me. Why don’t they do something about it? Are they scared of taking any risks? How can they go on with their lives doing something that doesn’t give them personal satisfaction? We spend more time at work than anywhere else, if we add it all up. I am not a big risk taker. However, I do not see any problems with taking calculated risks. I would like to quote Albert Einstein by saying: “A ship is always safe at the shore - but that is not what it is built for.”

I have been questioned by several colleagues, friends, and family on several occasions. They all tried to encourage (some force!!) me to teach English. Even after I would tell them that I didn’t have the formal educational background or any appropriate teaching certificate, they would still stick to their guns working under the assumption that “if you can speak the language, you can teach it.” I have also heard of many native speakers doing so without any proper credentials. I would have never considered going down this path, as I don’t believe that it should be just about making money. How could I live with myself if I ever..?

Once I start teaching as part of an establishment whether it is a public school or a hagwon, I need to prepare myself for the fact that I may be marginalized. I will need to persevere, keep up-to-date through professional development, share my knowledge and grow with others in the field and have a ball teaching. :)

  

~ICC Microteaching Reflection~

I was quite excited to do my 3^rd microteaching on table manners. I have a personal interest in anything related to food and nutrition. :)

Where to start? How to put my thoughts about my microteaching on paper?

Well… I felt that it was better than I had expected. I felt that my text was well received as we all can relate to dining, dining etiquette… Students were amused by the fact that it contained words such as “belch” and “pass gas” contrary to their expectations I guess. This was one of the main reasons why I had picked this piece of authentic text among a zillion available out there…

That being said, after watching my video, I had much to reflect on.

I found it much easier to imagine and treat my native-speaker classmates as my students this time around. However, I still had that feeling, to some extent, as if I was racing against myself to get to the “better” parts of my presentation stage. I had really hoped to have the opportunity to go through my first activity at the very least but my time was up...

On the bright side, I realized that I did interact more with the students as they were doing pair work. This was something I had reflected upon before and has been trying to improve.

Furthermore, I tried my best to manage the class. There is the natural tendency for the “students” to start giggling, talking (signs of losing focus) after the first few microteachings. Therefore, when I called on one of them when not paying attention, it was met with humor and a few commented that “I had eyes in the back.” Well, I wish… :)

I had planned to do more comprehension checks by asking a student to report back what he/she was supposed to be doing before they proceeded with the task at hand. However, in the heat of the moment, it sadly escaped me...

It was good practice having an opportunity to tackle vocabulary questions come up prematurely. In fact, this had never happened to me in my classroom. I meant to just tell John to be a little patient and that we would talk about all unknown words from the text in just a little while. Then, somehow, I decided to write his name and the word he had asked about on the WB. In fact, my initial thought was that this would be sort of like a promise, a contract, if you will, I had made with John in this regard. Literally, it was too late by the time I had written his name on the WB with the word “fart” next to it. I know that everyone was amused by that. However, after the fact it made me think… Could this have possibly offended anyone with a different group of students? {Thank you in advance for your feedback. :)}

Overall, I thought that I did make better use of MICs (WB, gestures, repetition – with directions and verbal repetition of what I had written on the WB while underlining the words “five” and “eight” as an additional MIC– and giving examples) throughout. As for CIs, I mainly utilized T-S-S-T (I made sure that students used the question I had modeled, which was also written on the WB), pair work as well as asking students to summarize and report what they have read in the text.

When I watched the video, I witnessed something funny. In an attempt to use simpler and more authentic language, I asked the students: “Any questions about the questions?” It would have been better if I had instead said: “Anyone got any questions?”

Lastly, as my last BU processing task, I asked students to circle all adjectives (recycled TLC) found in the first paragraph. I did check to see if they had remembered what we had covered last class on adjectives. However, I only asked Jeff and David to give me an example of an adjective. It occurred to me while I was watching the video: “How about the rest of the students?” I had no way of knowing because I hadn’t checked with them. It would have been much more effective if I had asked the whole class to write down a sentence and circle the adjective in that sentence. I could have then randomly nominated a few to share their sentences or used T-S-S-T.

Although I believe that this microteaching was better than my last, surely there are areas I need and want to work on… Till next time!! :)