Teaching is tough but enormously gratifying: Part 2

By Yi Woo-won

I taught my first Korean language course, Elementary Korean 111, at Camp Carroll Education Center in Waegwan in the fall of 1965. I was exhilarated and proud to teach a college course for a fully accredited university in the United States. I had about 20 students enrolled in my first class, 2 military officers, 1 DAC person and the rest being enlisted men and women. Except for a few students who wanted to learn the language of their host country out of curiosity, the rest were taking the course for their university or college degrees. They all seemed to be keenly obsessed in learning the fabulous Korean language “Hangeul.”

Then in the mid-1970s, I taught Korean Life and Culture (KORN 198 and 398), in addition to Intermediate Korean Language (KORN 112 and 114). I was busy teaching four nights a week including the classes in Daegu. For those advanced courses in Korean Life and Culture, I devoted all my energy trying to prepare fully for my classes. And everything seemed to be going well and smoothly until around the end of the 1970s, when I encountered a problem that I had never anticipated. It was about the new policy for the academic degree of all Asian language faculties, requiring them now to have the minimum of a master's degree. I was stupefied and disheartened by the sudden news. But I wasn't ready to give up the great privilege of teaching the college programs that I had been enjoying for over a decade.

I went to my alma mater, Kyungpook National University where I had studied for my B.A. 23 years before and enrolled hastily for the graduate course on English education. It was spring in 1980 and I was 49 years old. It was rather tough and laborious to return to school at that age, plus feeling embarrassed about being with young classmates whose average age was in the twenties. And yet, I always came to school earlier than others and took my seat in front of the podium where I could see better the writing on the board. So, by virtue of ferocious diligence, I earned three scholarships during the four-term period. Additionally and importantly, I was genuinely delighted when I was offered to teach conversational English to freshmen at my alma mater on completion of the degree.

After teaching my first class of conversational English, I continued to teach other courses such as College English, English Composition, AV (audiovisual) English and Current English. Among them, I really loved teaching Current English, because I chose the current edition of my favorite “Reader's Digest” for its textbook. I was thrilled to see so many students, close to 200, who packed the largest classroom on campus, some of them standing against the walls or sitting on the floor, trying to make the most of my lecture. When I was leaving after class, I was always followed by half a dozen industrious and assiduous students, all of them with some questions or doubts in the textbook to be clarified. I had taught both at my alma mater and for the University of Maryland until 1994. But I still continued teaching irregularly at several different universities and colleges until I was close to 80 years old.

Teaching is rigorous and demanding to a degree. However, when you are fully committed to it professionally, you'll realize in the long run that teaching is incredibly intriguing, gratifying and rewarding. Teaching, most of all, is a mission ― the responsibility to make a positive impact on your students' lives by inspiring, motivating and influencing them to shape their future and destinies. Another important thing is the technology for effective teaching, requiring teachers to have qualities such as patience, skills, dedication and passion. Teachers must be constant learners, creators or even strivers who develop and expand their knowledge. Looking back over more than 50 years of teaching at so many different schools, I acknowledged now that I had learned more for myself to teach than what I had actually taught my students.

Yi Woo-won (yiwoowon1988@gmail.com) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, and has been writing since 1986.