Teaching Middle School with EPIK

With EPIK placements for the Spring 2018 intake coming up I know that many of your are in the horrible in-between waiting period. With nothing much to do other than think about packing and study Korean, I know that I spent a lot of time just desperately trying to envision what my life was going…

Korea Month 8: Highs and Lows

  This month was good one. It has been a month of seeing my sister, taking a break away from school, and then taking an even longer break at school. First there was Chuseok. We got about 10 days off and I went to Hong Kong to see my sister. It was incredible. Feel free to…

Story Time #2: The Time My Student Helped Me Get BTS Concert Tickets

This story beings a long time about when I first heard about SF Music Festival coming to Daejeon. It was one of those things that lingers in the back of your mind and occasionally you think, "I should really buy tickets for that," or "I should really double-check what date that is." And so, as…

An Evening in Naksan Park 낙산공원

Evening in Naksan Park 낙산공원   Friday night, after a very long day at work, I headed up to Seoul to see a friend and get out of Daejeon for a bit. That night we got some drinks with her friends from university where I was proud to understand about 20% of the conversation going…

If You Give a Kid a French Fry

I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but for many of my classes I can pinpoint the exact moment that things took a turn for the better. For some of them, it was right of the bat. The little ones, for example, aren't hard to please. They like me because they just like everything. The…

How I Stay Organized At School

For the record this is not a suggestion. I have absolutely no idea if there is a proper way to keep these things organized, and I'm certain that there is a better way than what I'm doing now. However, I do know that when I started teaching and suddenly had 24 classes to separately keep…

Building Relationships At Work

Being the single non-Korean person in an entirely homogenous workplace is quite a unique experience. In some ways I feel like I benefit greatly from it, and in other ways it's quite difficult. So today I'd like to talk about the relationship between the Guest English Teacher/Native English Teacher/Foreign Teacher however you like to call…