And thus, our first week at Woorideul School has come to a close.

 

Woorideul School is an establishment that provides Korean lessons and other subject education for North Korean youth from China and also straight from North Korea.   I can’t deny that I was incredibly anxious about teaching at the school. We had little information about the students other than their ethnicities and their very general language profiles.  We also had the daunting task of coming up with lesson plans on our own while also trying to decipher a very confusing schedule. Not to mention, the demographics and setting of the school is completely different from our previous school, Jiguchon.  The students are much older and have very different experiences than the young children and tweens we taught at Jiguchon. The burning question in my head the night before was: what could I possibly offer these students in nine days?

 

We arrived on the first day with a lot of anxiety but excitement.  The structure of our days are quite complicated but the general format is: first period is Reading Club, or a reading practice class, then depending on the day, one or two other classes with usually a different group of students.

 

I teach three students in total, all of whom who are in the lower English proficiency levels.  My first student for Reading Club is the sweetest woman who I will call K. I was incredibly nervous to meet her because all I knew before entering her class that I would be teaching one adult for an entire class period.  However, after we exchanged some very short introductions, I discovered that she was the same age as my sister and we became much more comfortable around one another.

 

K is absolutely lovely.  She is twenty-seven years old and is a very recent arrival from North Korea.  She works incredibly hard to learn even though she finds certain things difficult. This week I have been really emphasizing the alphabet and the phonics of English and she has been working with so much dedication that I can’t help but admire her and reflect on my own work ethic and passion.  However, the most incredible thing about her is her story. Without going into too many specifics, K has faced many hardships, including separation from her family and traveling from the northern part of North Korea through two countries to arrive in South Korea. Despite everything, she speaks and acts with a gentleness and an air of grace that transcends her circumstances a thousandfold.  By telling me her story, I feel like I have received the most precious gift that I could receive from her and I only hope that in the next four days at Woorideul I can reciprocate even ten percent of what she has given me.

 

My other two students I will call O and Y.  They’re a lively pair and despite having only known each other for a week, I am incredibly jealous of how comfortably the joke around and hang out with one another.  O and Y are also very similar to my sister’s age, twenty-six and twenty-five respectively, and I found myself to be quite comfortable with them. O also has an incredible story like K although much different in many ways.  He arrived in South Korea years ago but had worked in Russia for two years as part of a Christian volunteer organization. He’s spent the last nine years pretty much on his own but when I asked him if it was difficult, he answered no. His attitude towards his life after leaving North Korea was that he did what needed to do, and it seemed to me that he faced things on without hesitation and with a determination.  He approaches learning English in the same way. Despite often joking around and loving to make tangential conversation, he never deviates from the task and often makes notes and asks good questions in order to further his English education. Unfortunately, I have gotten to know O a lot better than Y because she was out our first day at Woorideul, but in the last few days, we have been able to bond over our shared love of fantasy and superhero movies and being playfully annoyed at the other male students in the class.  Both O and Y are preparing to enter into college, with Y making the rounds for interviews as of yesterday July 5th.

 

In essence, the students at Woorideul are an incredibly diverse group.  I personally haven’t been able to teach every single one of them as about half of the students are arrivals from China and, despite being ethnically or at least partially ethnically Korean, they mainly speak Chinese and have their fair share of stories and experiences I have yet to get to know.  Hopefully in this next week I will.

 

DESK meets the Woorideul students in morning assembly.

One of the DESK teachers, Thomas, teaches one of his classes.