Values in My Teaching Development

Life is a funny thing. Sometimes you have no idea where it will lead you or what you will end up doing. This holds true for me. Back in college, before I decided what I was going to do with my life, I promised myself that I would never become a teacher. Look at me now. In the past five years I graduated with a degree in education, hopped on a plane to teach English in Korea and now I am planning to start a MA TESOL program. Life is a funny thing.

I suppose I always looked up to teachers. When I was growing up, I would barely see my parents. They were too busy working and saving up to make sure that my brother and I could have opportunities that they never had. At school, I saw the teacher as a role model, a friend, a mentor and a parent. Maybe this is what drew me into the teaching field. I knew that a teacher could change and impact the world. I decided that I wanted to leave a mark in peoples’ lives, even if it was at the cost of economic gains.

I can still remember the moment when I told my mom and dad that I wanted to be a teacher. My dad was in clear shock and disbelief. He was an Asian parent to the core. He thought that I was going to be a doctor or some type of businessman, but I didn’t want that type of life. I knew that no matter what, I was going do what I wanted. And my mother, who is one of the closest people to me, said something that I will never forget. She said that it’s your life and you should do what will make you happy and she will support me to the very end. There is nothing like a mother’s love and support… nothing. So, on I went to become a teacher.

The year of student teaching was not fun. It was hard and mentally stressful. There were so many people, including veteran teachers, who said that I shouldn’t be a teacher. That it is a bad career path in these modern times. Hearing this wanted me to prove them wrong. I have always been a person who does things the hard way, and I took this as a personal challenge. I promised myself that I will use my teaching degree for something incredible. I wanted to prove that the field of education was not a dark pit that people fall into.

To this day, I still get odd looks when I tell people that I’m a teacher. I wonder if it’s the fact that I’m a male, or the fact that I’m Asian. You really don’t find a lot of male Asian teachers in western education. But here in Korea, it’s a bit different. Teachers here are a bit more respected and held to a higher bar. Yet, I feel like sometimes I’m not taken seriously due to the fact that any native English speaker can hold a similar title as I do. I guess this is one of the reasons that I am pursuing my MA in TESOL. I am still trying to prove my worth as a teacher and make my mark in people’s lives.

ICC MT [Presentation Stage]

When creating my lesson plan, I wanted to challenge myself to create an activity that I could use in my own classroom and not just a ‘one-shot’ lesson. I decided to incorporate a cultural aspect with my 5th graders textbook unit on ‘time’. I thought that it would be interesting for the students to experience the lives of two different high school students. At first I was going to compare two non-Korean high school students, but then I thought that my students would gain more meaning if one of the students was from Korea. I found two videos of high school students. One was a Korean male and the other was a Finnish female.

At the start of the lesson I had the high school students’ picture side-by-side on a PPT slide. I asked the class what they saw and then had class pair-up to decide which country the students were from. So I started off by showing the Korean high school student’s day. I wanted to show his video first because the class can gain an instant connection with the Korean student. After the video, I wanted the students to use the TLC intended for the lesson. I had the students to describe what the high school student did by eliciting the third person form. Throughout the lesson, I wanted to produce as much opportunities for my class to practice English, so I had them ask and answer phrases such as, “What time does he get up?” and “He gets up at seven fifty.” I followed the same procedure with the Finnish high school girl (watching her day and breaking it down by time) and had the class practice asking and answering again.

The last part of the activity is where the cultural discussion comes into play. In the MT, I didn’t have time for the class to complete the Venn diagram. The students were supposed to discuss in pairs for about 5 minutes to come up with similarities and differences with the two high school students’ day. A full class discussion will then take place by asking why and how are the cultures different and what might be the expectations of the parents and society for the students.

In the practice and producing part of the lesson, I would have the students interview each other about their day. The students would have to report back and state their interviewee’s day using the third person. I could also give the students an assignment to research a family member or a celebrity’s daily routine and then have them present it to other students in the class using the third person form.

I think that for my younger learners, the little ‘C’ aspect of the cultural lesson might be harder for them to be aware of than big ‘C’. I have to also realize that my students are still growing and gaining life experiences, so focusing too much on little ‘C’ might lead to some confusion. I would also have to point out to my students that both of the videos are extreme models of the two cultures and that not everyone has the similar routines.

Overall, I thought the lesson could have a better balance of TLC and cultural discourse. But again, combining these two with the class textbook is difficult. I tried to make it as student centered as possible but looking back at only the video, I would have say the ratio might have favored the teacher 60:40 in terms of discourse (not including the Venn diagram activity).

My main focus during the MT was to practice different MIC’s and to refine my ‘Top Down’ instructions. I thought that I had a good amount of MIC’s through the activity. Also, I thought my explanations have improved a lot more since starting the STG course. I find myself not having to repeat my instructions a number of times, but rather stating them simply and efficiently.

At the start of the STG course, I (and I’m sure that I’m not the only one) thought that incorporating culture into an ESL lesson would be a piece of cake. Well, I can now say that having gone through 14+ weeks of ICC, it’s pretty damn difficult to fit culture into young learners’ lesson. Trying to incorporate different cultural aspects within a specific unit of a lesson is daunting. But it's definitely a learning skill that will need time to develop.