Week 14: The Final STG Blog Post

Here's my last official reflection during my time on the STG course! To make it clear what I'm talking about I'll begin by reposting the questions from Johnston (2003, p143).

4) Reflect for a moment on your career in ELT. What have been the major turning points and decisions in your professional life. How have these related to your personal life? What values have guided you in choosing your career path? What conflicts of values have you experienced, and how have you tried to resolve them?

5) Think about your own teaching situation. Do you consider that you are marginalized in any way? If so, what forms does this marginalization take? What forms of advocacy are or would be useful in your situation?

Let's Get Personal

Some of you may know I've only been teaching for three years. I graduated from a Drama and Theatre degree, and came over to Korea teach and to be with my then girlfriend (now wife, Emjay). I've never regretted that decision.

As with many teachers here, though, I had no teacher training and didn't view the job as lasting more than a year. I did it, in a way, to have a source of income while I worked out how serious my relationship with Emjay was. It turned out to be pretty serious, and it gave me a lot of direction. I found that I loved Korea and teaching, and began to consider teaching as not just a job, but a career.

How I proposed!

This change of mind was also brought about a lot by the excellent co-teachers I had. They were professionals in precisely the way Johnston describes: always changing, trying new things, developing dialogues with their students - the lot. They took me under their wing and showed me what it meant to be a professional teacher, even though I had no formal training. This wasn't just how these two teachers approached me either. I was surprised and embarrassed at how much I was trusted and esteemed by the school in general. My vice-principal asked for private lessons, and I was given a lot of freedom in my classrooms despite being so inexperienced.

I look at this experience in comparison to the horrible stories of marginalization I've heard from other non-Korean English teachers, and am very thankful. I really feel that as a young white British male I've been on the end of only positive discrimination, and have gained greatly from it. I seem to exactly fit the mold of what Koreans want to see in their English teachers.

I doubt that this will continue as I pursue professional development, however. Both my family and professional status have changed enough to ensure that. As both of these develop I have the same choices to make as Johnston did - I've talked frequently with Emjay about what we would do if my work, or even my study, took me to another country.

To support our international family my wife quit her job early this year to pursue her dream of being a translator. This will mean our family isn't tied to any one country - we could both work anywhere in the world. She's doing well, too, but still earns peanuts. That means that for now I earn for the both of us, and needed to take on an extra after school English job. This financial need will only grow as we work on growing our family!

My career could take me anywhere in the world!

Taking on this extra job, which I don't really enjoy, has meant a lot of adjustment for me. Before it I was very comfortable in my job and had more than enough time to prepare my lessons. With these extra classes I find I have little or no time to prepare, and have to make the most of every minute in my working day. It has meant that the overall quality of my classes has decreased (especially the after school ones I don't really want to be doing), and this has caused a moral dilemma. I really want to give my students the best classes possible, but my current working situation doesn't allow for it.

I could perhaps work on this in the evening, but my professional development on the STG course means I'm busy most evenings with homework, and I place importance on investiong the rest in my personal relationships, particularly with my wife. This course has also meant that I now truly feel like I could call myself a professional teacher, with great implications for my future. I've been inspired to work hard at self-development and the development of the teaching field in general.

It has also, however, opened up my eyes to many of the shortcomings of the Korean English education systems. I wasn't inspired to leave education as Rafal, the Polish teacher Johnston mentioned was though. Quite the opposite. I can't say for sure if I will go for it, but part of me would love to be a part of reforming Korean education, be it increasing the quality of Native teachers in Korean schools through developing some half-decent internal teacher training programs, or working as an advocate for Korean teachers of English and calling for less Native speakers in schools.

By considering this kind of career path I'm effectively opening myself up to many forms of potential marginalization - many people might rightly question my right to judge and comment on the system of a country not my own. Even if I don't work on the Korean system I have ideas for how I could develop my career, and none of them involve staying in my current job. I want out, and I want to push myself and whichever field I find myself working in as far as I can. I'm bound to meet some opposition on the way!

But I don't think I would see many of these things as marginalization as Johnston does. I don't think, for example, that Johnston's example of ESL teachers being viewed as unprofessional is a form of marginalization. It is, after all, based on some truth - just three years ago I too was an amateur doing a job I wasn't trained to do, and I too thought any native speaker could do it. To me this merely seems a natural progression of popular thought about a young field filled with unskilled workers which is on it's way to being recognized as a worthy professional career path.

Perhaps I'm just an optimist, but I try to see such "marginalizations" as opportunities. I don't deny that many examples of marginalization are very real and very difficult to deal with, but many times they mark areas which have room for development - they are places I, and all teachers, can be at work in, advocating good teaching, fairness and equality, and the practice of personal and corporate reflection and research.

I'm excited at the many opportunities the field of Second Language Teaching holds for my future!