Author: bridgeteujin

  • Songs I play to fill the extra 5 minutes

    Sometimes you teach a lesson and it’s perfectly timed the first three times you teach it, but then one class of students will fly through it and you’re left with a few extra minutes before the bell rings.

    Sometimes I have a few minutes of extra time and nothing prepared, I play a song that is related to the lesson or just a song that I know my students will enjoy (and maybe learn some English at the same time).

    Here are a couple of songs I’ve discovered myself or learned about from my co-workers that work really well for my students in Korea.

    1. Any video by Dream English

    For some reason, my kids love this guy, even the slightly older students. I think its his goofy smile and his awkward way of staring into the camera as he sings.

    This particular video is great if you’re teaching daily routines. The channel is called Dream English Kids has lots of videos that you can choose from.

    Something about these videos feels very nostalgic to me, like a PBS kids show from the early 2000’s (for those who don’t know, PBS kids is an American non-profit educational media brand).

    2. Lemon Tree by Fools Garden

    I had no idea this song was so popular in Korea. Even my kids who never speak in class can sing the chorus of this song entirely in English.

    It has been rewritten into Korean and covered various times by different Korean artists over the years, so the song has sustained its popularity. Of course, I always play the original English song for my students.

    3. Line Rider – Mountain King

    This one doesn’t have any English, so I haven’t used it much, but it’s a good one to have in mind to use during a waiting period or whenever the occasion pops up. And the kids will lock in on this once it goes up on the screen.

    4. Alphabet Dance

    Tell me why my 3rd graders love this SO much?? They are always requesting this song, and they go all in on the dance moves too.

    This is definitely better for younger students who haven’t learned what it means to be an overly self-conscious pre-teen yet. Not every student enjoys dancing, but the ones who do will dance to the fullest with no shame and make it fun for everyone in the classroom. It’s so great every time.

    5. When I Get Old by CHUNG HA and Christopher

    This is a good one for my 6th graders. They stop chatting so much and pay attention to the song lyrics, which is a welcome break for me. In this video, I like that the lyrics are in Korean and English because there are always some students who give up and stop listening if they see too much English on the screen, but the Korean translations help them out a bit more.

    6. Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary

    Another one that is a surprising hit with the kids. This is a classic song by one of the most influential folk-singing groups in American music history, so it’s not too surprising that it is still internationally recognized. But it was written in 1963, so it really is surprising that elementary students in Korea know of it too. Even if your students haven’t heard of it, they would probably still enjoy it because it’s just a nice, relaxing song. I use it for younger students when they need to chill out a little. This video has the lyrics in English and Korean!

    It’s always interesting to me to see what lands with students, particularly my elementary students in Korea. Even if they would never watch these on their own time, they still enjoy seeing it in class. Having these videos ready to pull up from time to time has really saved my life as a teacher!

    I wonder what other time-filler songs are popular among students here or around the world? Let me know if you happen to know.

    Love,

    B.

  • “Teacher Tired”

    I knew teaching was hard, but nothing could have prepared me for the special type of fatigue I’d face as a teacher. After a long day of teaching, I feel particularly drained in a way I’ve never felt. Not when I was a student athlete, nor when I was overloaded on credits in college and was pulling all-nighters, nor during my internships or when I was working up to five different jobs in NYC to piece together a salary. I mean never.

    I don’t even know how to describe this feeling. No matter how many hours I sleep, handling the kids all day wipes me out, especially when I teach certain classes with some particularly rowdy students. Maybe my personality is simply not well suited for public school teaching, but I think this is honestly a universal feeling among all teachers at some point. Here are some ways fatigue from teaching has changed my thoughts and habits.

      1. I eat better.

      It’s simply necessary. If I don’t pay close attention to my nutrition, I inevitably get sick over and over again, either from the stress of managing a classroom of energetic students all day or from the exposure to germs from yelling over the energetic students all day, every day. Luckily my school provides pretty nutritious meals for lunch. It’s also easier to get nutritious meals at an affordable price in Seoul than in NYC, but unhealthy options are just as readily available, so I still think my job has influenced my improved food choices more than simple convenience. It would definitely help to sleep more as well, but I’ve found that sleep is a harder factor to control than nutrition while I’ve been in Seoul.

      2. I value silence more.

      I used to be the type of person who filled my day with social activity and could be reenergized from a conversation with a friend, but now I need to mindfully schedule times to enjoy silence. Working in a public school all day means I only ever have maybe a few minutes of silence at a time, and even after school hours when I am working in my office, I can hear the children shouting outside my door as they play with their friends or attend their afterschool classes, many of which also take place in the public school building. Sometimes I notice the silence when I’m alone in my room at home and feel a strange overwhelming sense of appreciation for it. That’s where we’re at now.

      3. Coffee is back.

      I was an avid coffee drinker during college but after graduating I had cut back a bit. Now that I’ve started teaching, I probably consume about as much caffeine as I did during peak finals season back in college. My morning coffee ritual has become necessary to survival. It allows me to get to work and fall into a familiar routine immediately without thinking too much about what to do next, because once my classes start, my brain is switched on for at least five hours straight. I can get through a day without my morning coffee, but whenever that happens, I feel slightly off or low energy. I basically give presentations, field questions, facilitate projects and activities, think on my feet, watch the clock, make hundreds of different decisions, and manage a crowd of humans with underdeveloped brains for hours at a time every day, work that has definitely increased my caffeine dependency.

      4. I crash more often.

      I said earlier that getting more sleep would help me and this is absolutely true, because there are times when I simply crash. I fall asleep anywhere (usually at my office desk or somewhere at home) and don’t even know when it happened. This is another quirk of the job that I haven’t experienced before, but I have heard of other teachers suddenly needing ten hours of sleep a day in their first few years even if that wasn’t their regular schedule before. I totally understand this now. Something about this job causes my brain to require more sleep than before. It’s really physical exhaustion, but more mental and emotional exhaustion, so sleep is really important. The crashing problem has gotten better over time, especially if I maintain my nutrition, good sleeping habits, and emotional regulation skills, but my point is that I have never needed to pay so much attention to these things to function daily.

      5. I think several days, weeks, or even months ahead

      Curriculum planning is just like that. I do follow the YBM curriculum, but it is a bit too short to fill the whole school year, so I work carefully with several different English co-teachers to plan out the lessons for the year months in advance. The plan is constantly changing to adapt to different things that come up along the way, and planning for my winter and summer English camps is an entirely separate and even more complicated matter. Often I rarely finish a day on Friday without thinking about exactly what I have to accomplish first thing on Monday in order for a Wednesday next month to run smoothly, or something like that.

      Teachers really get all types of fatigue.

      Decision fatigue, performance fatigue, social fatigue, compassion fatigue, burnout, everything. I had a fellow teacher once tell me she feels like a clown. Every day is a performance, and just like in show business, the audience doesn’t care if you’re tired. You cannot have a low productivity day. The kids show up to class every day, government mandated.

      Compassion fatigue is one I learned about recently. It’s commonly experienced among caregivers, healthcare workers, therapists, and the like. Teachers deal with a lot of emotional labor every day: responding to student emotions and problems, reading emotions, listening intently, explaining and understanding, dealing with sudden crises. Capacity for empathy can literally run out. I’ve experienced this more as feeling emotionally numb after teaching for a while, especially if a lot happened that day. Kids fight in class (sometimes physically hitting each other), kids come to me crying, everyone needs me to explain something, everyone’s question needs individual attention, surprises come up like a mandatory training or meeting. Specifically as an EFL teacher, sometimes kids will rant to me about something while speaking entirely in Korean and I have to really lock in to catch onto what they’re saying, or sometimes I have to take over a class on my own with no co-teacher to help with translating complex instructions into Korean. That’s just the job I signed up for, but the emotional side effects have taken me by surprise at times.

      Although, when the kids are happy and excited, it does boost my mood a lot. The students’ moods and attitudes have a huge impact on my own, so good days are good, but children are so fickle, and that is also part of the emotional fatigue.

      Social pressures here do not help.

      I find it very hard to take a day off, even sick days, because of the social pressure not to, and because of the sense of responsibility to the students, and because the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Coordinator strongly advised us to never take days off during the school year and to consider the burden on other teachers when taking sick days. It seems to be a very complicated process to get substitute teachers here, so if someone is sick, other teachers often pick up the slack on top of their regular load.

      Another stress point I was not prepared for was the amount of pressure teachers feel from parents, in a way that I think is different from public schools in the U.S. Parents have a huge influence over schools and teachers, and even though I personally do not interact with parents, I still can feel their influence creeping into school policies and politics. This limits the way we can manage classrooms, and even classroom management strategies that seem super light and acceptable to me as an American feel more restricted.

      Now it seems like I have only complaints, but most of the time it’s not too bad, and as the native speaking English teacher on staff I have it way easier than my co-workers in many respects. I do feel that teaching is every bit as rewarding as they say. I’m just also saying that the teaching fatigue is on a different plane in a way I really didn’t expect. It’s like my life has reorganized more around recovery to keep me going just one more day. I realize that may sound similar to any 9-5 job, but I do think this is truly a different type of tired that is unique to teaching, hence the term “teacher tired.” Wish me luck this week.

      Love,

      B.

    1. How I Ended Up Teaching In Korea

      Hi friends,

      I can’t believe I’ve been teaching English at public school in Seoul, Korea for about ten months now!

      I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to come to Korea but wasn’t set on the means. I had studied in Seoul for a semester as an exchange student and have many treasured memories from that time, but it was during the tail end of COVID which limited the experience somewhat and the time felt far too short. I think I was a completely different person back then as well and am experiencing everything very differently this time around.

      Fresh out of graduation in 2024 with a design/media degree in New York City, I felt there weren’t many opportunities available to me. All of my friends had been struggling to land full time jobs for the past year, and I didn’t have much better luck, so I did what I could to pay my astronomically high rent in downtown Brooklyn. I continued my college part time job baking macarons at a bakery near Times Square, I picked up some freelance design and video editing gigs, and I worked part time doing teaching and design work for an educational nonprofit that helps neurodivergent students in the city develop creative technology and career skills.

      I can’t remember how I found out about EPIK (English Program In Korea). I think I must have googled something obvious like “working abroad in Korea.” It seemed like a great opportunity during a time when cost of living in NYC was climbing week by week. I could go teach English at a public school in Korea, and EPIK, a program within the Korean Ministry of Education, would provide support with housing and airfare, discounted national health insurance, visa sponsorship, and training.

      I decided in summer of 2024 that I would apply, but the next application window at the time opened in February 2025. I felt that this was shockingly late because if I applied in February and was hired, I would have to move to Korea within 6 months to start the program in August 2025, but if I wasn’t hired, I would’ve been waiting almost a full year just to end up with nothing. I felt confident that I would be able to go, however, and just continued maintaining my multiple sources of income and enjoying my time in NYC until I could apply.

      I applied 2 weeks after the application window opened. I knew the program had been getting more competitive in recent years and had it in mind to apply the very day it opened, but during “my year of rest and relaxation,” I had gotten complacent rather then anticipatory. Worried that taking 2 weeks to start had already set me too far behind, I completed the entire application in one sitting while I was waiting for a flight to California in JFK airport in New York.

      The application was quite long and detailed. I had to provide details on my school education dating back to my elementary school days, as well as a headshot, career background, 2 letters of recommendation following an incredibly specific format, any connections to Korea, and details on my recent travels and other international experiences. I also needed to upload a full sample lesson plan along with any supporting materials. After that, there were 6 essay questions to complete. I wrote them all in one go and barely took a second look at them before submitting. I had thought a lot about applying during the past year and knew what I wanted to say already, and I was eager to submit my application and be done with it. I had this feeling that once I stepped foot on my plane, I might not revisit the application for a long time. I clicked submit and boarded the plane. It was February 15th.

      I received a request for an interview on March 21st and scheduled it for April 2nd, over a week later. I wanted to use the week to prepare, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to prepare for this interview. I think I was working on some nonprofit and freelance projects at the time and didn’t actually spend much time prepping at all. The day before the interview, I looked up some common EPIK interview prep questions online and briefly read through the little I could find, then watched a couple videos of past EPIK teachers talking about their experience, but honestly, finding any in depth information on the interview process was difficult.

      I went in feeling unprepared but felt relatively confident about my answers. When asked about what region I preferred to placed in, I said I had no preference but chose Gyeonggi-do in my written application because it might be closer to my distant relatives in Seoul. I was one hundred percent convinced that there was no way I could possibly be placed in Seoul as it is incredibly competitive. I had spent the past six years of my life in a big city anyway and didn’t mind the chance at a quieter, slower lifestyle, so I didn’t even ask. As it turns out, I ended up in Seoul anyway!

      My least favorite part of the interview was when the interviewer gave me an age group and topic, and I had to teach a lesson on the spot for her. She gave me about 3-5 minutes to prepare, and then I had to pretend I was teaching a class of students but nobody was there, and the interviewer didn’t interact with me either. I was instructed to just imagine I was receiving answers to my questions.

      It was painfully awkward but didn’t last more than a few minutes. I think they wanted to evaluate my pronunciation and clarity of speech when speaking to children, which makes some sense, but I hated it. The interviewer also gives revision suggestions on your essays because EPIK sends your full application to each school, and the school has the ultimate say on who to hire. My interviewer had some light comments on my lesson plan but told me my essays were incredibly well written and she had no notes (super proud of that considering I wrote them all at once while sitting at an airport gate under a time crunch).

      I received the email that I had passed 5 days later and immediately got hit with a mountain of required documents and supplementary forms to fill out. Acquiring all the necessary documents and completing the forms took me nearly two months. I received several warnings about making sure the pages are in exactly the specified order when I mail them, do not use folders or staples, a binder clip may be permissible, etc, etc.

      To some extent placement is first come, first served depending on how quickly you can properly submit the proper documents, so I was often stressed out navigating bureaucratic red tape to get everything submitted as soon as possible. I was living in NYC and a lot of my government documents were mailed to my family address in California, so my poor father had the task of very meticulously organizing and compiling all the documents for me.

      I was told I should delay booking a flight until the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) coordinator reached out to confirm a date of arrival, so I continued waiting and waiting throughout the summer, watching the flight prices climb higher and higher. In hindsight, I should’ve just booked a flight early even if the date was wrong because I did know that I shouldn’t be later than August 19. The fear was that I’d arrive too early and scramble to find shelter in a foreign land. By the time I could confirm the flight date, the set airfare allowance provided by EPIK didn’t even cover the full cost of the flight.

      Anyway, clearly I made it to Korea eventually! I have heard almost all EPIK teachers in Seoul teach elementary and I am no different. I teach grades 3 through 6. Ten months in and I’m feeling very settled here. Although there are times I miss my friends, family, go-to eateries, driving, redwood forests, and salty snacks, I’m reluctant to return. The state of affairs back in the States doesn’t seem any better than when I left and the price of a meal in NYC is terrifying to think about after being gone so long.

      But to friends who may be reading, not to worry! I plan to visit toward the end of this year. And what lies beyond that, we shall see.

      In future posts, I can write more about on how I’ve spent my time here and my experiences teaching. I will also talk in more depth about EPIK and the application and training process for anyone who may be interested. There is plenty of information I wish was available to me when I was applying so I’ll have plenty to say. Stay tuned.

      Love,

      B.