Category: Teach in Korea

Last week we brought you the first installment of our teacher interview we did with Mary McCusker, a teacher that dropped everything in New Jersey to head to South Korea to teach English. Read the rest of her excellent adventure here.

Each year young Korean athletes, clad in their crimson or blue, face off in a series of competitions to prove their dominance over their rival. Korea University and Yonsei University are two of the oldest institutions in South Korea, founded in 1905 and 1885, respectively.

Mary McCusker is currently teaching for EPIK in South Korea through Reach to Teach. She has kindly shared with us her experiences and pictures in an interview. She had so much to say about her experiences that we have made this into a two part interview.

I’m sure we can all remember more than one class in high school or college in which we struggled to keep our heavy eyelids from shutting out an instructor droning on in an endless string of statements. Though the teacher or professor was doing their best to share the information in his/her head, very little of that information was entering ours.

The attitude, the rebelliousness, and the constant pushback teachers get from their middle schoolers often leave them with a bitter taste of those classes. I, however, find these classes incredibly satisfying. Here’s why.

South Korea is a fantastic place to start for new English teachers because the country is very welcoming to foreigners, its location in Asia makes it a great launching pad for additional travel, and the pay and benefits are quite generous. That said, many of us first-time teachers will end up at one of the ubiquitous private academies called “hagwons”. While these offer great opportunities, there are a few things you may want to consider before consigning yourself to a year in one of these schools.

Reach To Teach would like to welcome all of our EPIK and SMOE teachers to South Korea for the August 2015 Orientation! Learn about our EPIK arrival process for teachers.

The best kind of teachers are the ones that can recognize their mistakes and grow from them. After all, teaching is a huge learning curve, even the most experienced teacher can be presented with a new situation in which to grow from. Getting feedback from students is the best way to see where you are going wrong, but gaining that feedback isn’t always easy especially in a country like South Korea where challenging authority is often culturally inappropriate.