The advice of the teachers and professors with experience from years past has finally become something I wholeheartedly feel and understand in the classroom. As mentioned in my last blog, many told us to focus on forming bonds, building trust, sharing stories and instilling dreams in them in the process. This advice felt relatively abrupt and different from the expected, as we knew of our responsibilities as English teachers from America, not ‘inspirers’ or storytellers or listeners of stories. However, this advice was not only a recommendation, I’ve learned, but a necessity.
As the weeks went by and the kids we interacted with became older, it became harder to reach through them with English learning activities. The middle and high schoolers, especially, rebelled in the face of English lectures and forced conversations in English. Growing tired of being ignored and feeling directionless, my partner and I unintentionally took a different route for the last few minutes of one of our middle and high school classes – we let them go, let them talk and play games, and at that moment we had become listeners, not lecturers. What once felt like rowdy chaos in the back of the classroom became spaces where stories were shared, teenage joy was curated, and where kids weren’t sleeping with their heads down on their desks.
What I learned from this observation isn’t that our hours of lesson planning were useless; it’s that our impact is most meaningful when lessons are immersed in an atmosphere of intimacy, shared learning and comfort, not one of forced lecturing. It became clear with the younger elementary school students as well: when I had been the authoritative ‘teacher’ figure inside the classroom, this certain squad of four girls had a limited connection to me. At the time I didn’t think it was limited, but now that I am a companion and a listener to them, not a teacher since I’ve moved to higher grades, I know that our bond and relationship is stronger than it was in that week. I don’t think the girls learned a lot of English from the week of me teaching them, but I know with certainty that the jokes we shared outside the classroom and the relationship we built isn’t something that they’ll easily forget, unlike the English words we so hoped they would remember. It all goes back to the advice that the teachers and professors gave us before this all began – to become companions that can inspire, not teachers that try to impress words and numbers on the students.
There’s not much time left that we’re spending at this school, but learning this – and truly understanding what it means – allowed me to view my objective this summer wholly differently. I hope to carry on this mindset as we go into the other two schools and close off our summer in Korea.
-Mingyu ‘Matthew’ Joo
