It is no secret that when it comes to education, especially math and science, American students continue to fall below rising East Asian nations. While the United States spends more money per student over the course of their education, other nations such as South Korea are crushing the Western world in terms of testing scores. This has even led President Obama to specifically mention South Korea in numerous speeches, including his 2010 State of the Union address. South Korea’s educational system is a great symbol of its country’s desire to rebuild after the Korean War and become a leader in the global world. Since 1953, the Korean government and people have made education their top priority and it is paying off, big time. For all of these reasons, I was anxiously awaiting my moment to teach a lesson with Korean high school students. It was a moment that I will always remember, to say it was rewarding is an understatement; it was life-changing.
When I applied for the Korea Society fellowship, I knew that one of the requirements was to teach a mini-lesson to local Korean students. This was the one thing that both scared and excited me at the same time. During our fellowship video orientation about a month before the trip, we were informed of our requirement to teach a 25 minutes lesson to 50 students at the Goyang Foreign Language School in Seoul. Our lesson was supposed to be on something either our city/state was known for or something about American culture. The guidelines were to assume that there would be no technology equipment (wait, no LCD projector?! There goes my PowerPoint idea) and to bring all materials and copies from the States. We were also to bring 50 small gifts for our new students; suggestions included school pencils, mascot stickers, etc. While preparing my Hanover students for their SOL test, packing up my classroom and averaging final grades, I was stressing out over what topic I was going to teach in Korea.
I immediately thought about what Mechanicsville, Virginia is known for….hmm, tomatoes. Even President Obama during a recent trip to my hometown stopped and bought some Hanover grown tomatoes. But, I realized that the chance of me transporting tomatoes to Korea was going to be daunting (and illegal…customs doesn’t allow you to bring over agricultural items). My next idea was to do a lesson on the Civil War, after all Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. My main concern about this topic was the fact that the Korean War was in essence a civil war and I didn’t know how the students would respond, considering their country is still technically divided. Finally, I had settled on a game of American Presidents from Virginia, we do have the nickname “Mother of Presidents”. After doing some research, I was worried that John Tyler might put the students to sleep. So here I am, one week left of school, two weeks before I leave the country, and I have no idea what I’m going to teach these kids. Thankfully, an impromptu brainstorming session with a math teacher (shout out to Karl Lippa) led me to develop a lesson based around multi-national businesses and their logos. Recently, one of the top iPhone/iPad apps was the logo game. Kids would guess what logo matched up with what business. I used that idea as the basis for the game I would play with the students, but with more of a focus on American businesses and what states they started in. I knew I wanted to tie it into an American geography lesson. I wanted to see if Korean students not only knew about certain American businesses but could locate specific American states on a map.
With a clear goal, I was able to start putting all the pieces together. I threw in some Korean businesses (Samsung, LG, and Hyundai) along with others from around the world (Puma, Fiat, Honda, Mercedes, DeBeers, Sony, Nestle, Nutella, Nintendo, Red Bull, Louis Vitton and Airbus). The American companies I chose were McDonalds (duh), Nike, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Apple, Ford, Starbucks, Dell, Walmart, Ghiradelli, Hershey, Ben & Jerry’s, Walt Disney, XBOX, and Coach handbags. Can you name what cities/states these companies are headquartered in? After I found all of the logos/names online (thank you, Google Images), I printed them out on beautiful colored paper and then headed down to the library to laminate them, where I proceeded to them break and jam the laminator (sorry to the librarians, Kim and Judith). After going back and printing the logos again, the wonderful librarians laminated the logos and now I was on to my next phase of the lesson, make the handouts for the students. So I knew I wanted to have them guess what country each logo/business was in, and then if it was an American company, to guess where it was headquartered and label it on a blank map. So on one side of my handout was a blank map and on the other side was “Virginia At-A-Glance”, basically important symbols, historical events, the Presidents from VA, and a brief background on the famous VA tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers” (this will be explained shortly). Somewhat confident with my lesson, it was now time to figure out what to bring the students as gifts.
After stressing out for about 24 hours, luckily, my amazing Lead Teacher Specialist (thanks Nora Wheeler!) had a great idea to bring Virginia/Richmond postcards to the students in Korea. I thought that would be perfect and decided to have my students write them a message with their email so that they could possibly correspond with one another. Once I had all of the postcards, the kids eagerly wrote their messages to the Korean kids, mostly about Mechanicsville, what Hanover HS was like, what they did in their spare time, favorite bands and/or movies, etc. I was so proud of my students they really did a great job. I wanted to bring the Korean kids something else but just couldn’t figure out what to bring them. It all came together perfectly when I went down to the Bell Tower next to our State Capital to get some more varieties of postcards. The lovely women behind the desk were asking me what I was looking for and I began to tell them about how I was going to Korea and teaching a lesson, etc. They immediately asked if I would like some free bumper stickers and light-up pins with our tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers”! (On the pins, the heart lit up, it was pretty cool). I was so excited about these gifts I was just worried about what the Korean kids would think about our slogan. The final thing I needed to finalize my lesson was a large American states map to take over and point out where all of these businesses were and something nice enough that I could leave with the teacher. I found the perfect illustrated children’s map of the US at Barnes and Noble and packed all my lessons and gifts in the free Virginia tote those wonderful women at the Bell Tower gave me as well. Now, I just had to wait.
If you look at PISA (an educational test taken by multiple countries) scores from 15 year olds in 2009, South Korea ranks 1st in Reading and Math scores, while placing 3rd in Science. The United States ranked 14th in Reading, 25th in Math and 17th in Science. There is an obvious achievement gap between the United States and other countries, despite renewed efforts to close the gap in terms of Science and Math scores here in our country. So how is South Korea, a country that only 60 years ago was engaged in a brutal civil war with the North, able to catapult itself to the “head of the class”? Thanks to Kiyong BYUN, professor at Korea University, our fellowship group was able to gain insight into the Korean educational system, both their success and challenges. According to Ki-Bong Lee, following the devastation of the Korean War, the focus began to change, “Education is Our Hope, Human Resources are Our Future”. Many of the foundations for success were already in-directly built into the values of the Korean society due to Confucianism. The Confucian philosophy values wisdom and intelligence over other traits, as evident in the Civil Service Examinations that were used centuries ago. In order to procure a prestigious government job, men had to take an exam that measured their morals and ethics. This idea of progress through education is still strong in 2012. Education is the means to achieve success. Therefore, families focus on their children’s education even before grade school. The children’s success or lack thereof is a reflection on the family’s name. If a child fails or does poorly, it can tarnish the family’s name and could ruin their future prospects, not only in terms of jobs, but also marriage possibilities. These ancient Confucian traditions also reflect the esteemed position and regard of teachers.
As President Obama noted in his State of the Union address, South Koreans refer to their teachers as “nation-builders”. Just as Confucianism teaches respect for elders, there is also respect for teachers. This can best be seen in South Korean teacher salaries, which according to OECD, education at a glance, after 15 years of experience, teachers make 50,000 but have the opportunity to make up to 80,000 rather quickly. This graph from The Economist shows how teacher compensation ranks in regards to per capita GDP with other countries. Because of the salary and respect, many Korean students are entering the field of education but also due to the guarantee that they will receive a position as a state employee (which as American educators, we have unfortunately realized in these budget-slashing years, there are no guarantees). Besides Confucian values, investment in education as enabled South Korea to rise rapidly to the top.
The government invests heavily into education, only second to national security. But, it’s not only the government but the parents who almost contribute every cent into their children’s education. They believe that this investment will come back to them in their retirement; the children will financially support their parents, thus investing everything into their children leads to a heavy financial burden and to an even heavier personal burden onto those young students. There is a growing concern in Korea that the private tutoring costs are starting to allow certain socio-economic groups more of an advantage. Because of the long hours and growing tuition requirements for these tutoring programs, the government has attempted to place more regulations that have been deemed fairly ineffective. The goal for most families is that their children be accepted into prestigious high schools and later, the best colleges in Seoul or those in the United States.Because of these high expectations, most students spend their afternoons into night-time attending private tutoring classes and “cram” sessions. The skills that are taught usually focus around math and science. Also, students have become exam-oriented many Korean students have a tough transition when attending American colleges because schools such as Harvard are more essay-oriented. Another stark contrast with American higher-learning institutions is that when Korean students fail at local universities, it is seen as the university that fails rather than the student. Most professors that we spoke with admitted that the high-school level of learning is sometimes more rigorous than the actual college level. There are other challenges and setbacks of this Korean education model, most of which is at the social level. Many students are so busy studying, they don’t have time to socialize, date or even participate in sports and other after-school clubs and organizations. Whereas our American students excel in these socialization roles, Korean students seem to be on the one-way track of studying and testing.
Want more inforamtion? The Economist’s “Exams in South Korea: The one-shot society”
PBS NewsHour Video Clip: “South Korea’s Education Fever”
PowerPoint from KU Professor, Kiyong BYUN
After two weeks of visiting monuments, museums, cultural performances and lectures, we were excited and anxious to visit the high school and meet our Korean students. On July 9th (two days before our departure home) we all met in the hotel lobby, armed with our teaching materials. You could feel the excitement in the room, its as if everyone had immediately put on their teaching hat. I had woken up pretty early that morning, even though we had until noon to do our own thing. I headed to Starbucks with my teaching stuff and mentally reviewed what I was going to do, looked at all of my materials and even had some spare time to read my kids’ postcards. Was I nervous? Oh yes, I was sweating bullets. Not because I didn’t feel prepared or that I was going to fail horribly, but it is the same thing that makes every teacher anxious that first day of school (no matter how long you have been teaching), you want them to like you. Yes, we want respect and good behavior, but at the end of the day you want them to appreciate what you are teaching and the time and effort you put into it. Trust me, as a teacher, there are many days where your lesson can bomb, no matter how good it is. That is the worst feeling in the world…nothing hurts more than kids not caring about something you care about. Anyways, I’ve digressed. Ok, so I’m sitting in Starbucks with the nauseous yet excited feeling I have every school year on the first day. It’s the anxiety and build-up, I know that once I open my mouth in front of those kids, everything will fall into place. As we are all standing in the lobby waiting for the bus, you can tell everyone is feeling the same emotions. I think we were all concerned about the same thing, how good is their English going to be? Are they going to understand what I’m saying? Will they get what I’m teaching? We all had discussed our teaching lesson for the last two weeks either on the bus or at meals, so we had all devised a plan b…just in case. My plan b? Have the postcards be a talking point, or have them ask me questions about America. We loaded the bus with our materials and plan b in the back of our heads. I don’t even remember how long our bus ride was, that was how nervous and amped up I was.
We pull into the school, after the bus almost took out their front entrance gate. From the moment I got off the bus, it was a whirlwind. All of these students were standing outside and I finally figured out they were wearing nametags with our names too. Ok, I thought, must find my kid. I see a young boy, rather tall, with my name C. Bare on his name tag. I look at him and point, he starts saying Bare, Bare, Bare?! (Have I told anyone how much I hate my last name? Sorry Dad). I reply yes, yes! He shuttles me into the auditorium, I don’t even remember what I was asking him for those two minutes. He told me that his English name was Daniel and that he would be my guide. I breathed a sigh of relief, I could understand his English very well. I can’t even put into words how cute these kids were. They were so excited, they offered us tea and showed us wear to sit. Daniel, my guide, immediately grabbed my bag, not wanting me to carry anything my self. We are introduced to the assistant principal and some of the kids in charge of the presentation. We are shown a video that the students made, which I have tirelessly tried to find online and can’t. We then played a game where the students told us a fact and we were to either show an X (for false) or O (for true). It was so much fun, we did pretty well. After about 20 minutes, we split up and our guides walked us to our classroom for our teaching experience. Most teachers were put in pairs, each teaching 25 minutes while some were alone for 50 minutes.
I asked my guide what grade I was teaching, he said first year. There are only three levels in high school in Korea. Just like back at home, I was teaching the youngsters. As we finally made it to the classroom, they knocked on the door and the teacher said to wait five minutes. This was probably the oddest thing about our classroom visits, most of the other fellows noticed that the teachers were either not there at all to watch the lesson or in some cases, didn’t even stop teaching. This was shocking, I thought the teachers would be more welcoming, but they have to get through a lot each day and I thought maybe it put a damper on their lessons and I also think many of the teachers maybe didn’t feel confident about speaking English with us. This is all speculation, I’m not really sure why. Anyways, after waiting for five minutes, the teacher came out and left the room. Myself and Elisa Milkes (a teacher from the Bronx) came into the classroom and got set up. Elisa was going to teach first, she had a lesson about the NYC subway along with maps for all of the kids, where they had to locate all of the boroughs and then various parks. She went further into depth and had the kids try to figure out what was the best route for her to get to work, they did a great job and I even learned about the subway! She is an amazing teacher. Finally, it was my turn.
Honestly, I was so nervous that I don’t even really remember much. After a few minutes, it naturally came to me and I just got into the comfort of teaching and went through my lesson. The kids were excited to see the logos and some students even knew the headquarters of the businesses. Of course when I brought up LG and Samsung they all laughed and called out the answer. I was shocked by the quietness of the students. In America, if I have the kids calling out answers to a game, they usually are falling on top of each other to get the answer out first. But, this was a cultural difference as I later learned from Daniel. In Korea, it is seen as arrogance to call out answers. He told me that most kids knew the answers but didn’t want to shout out or raise their hands. Most kids don’t play games in their classroom and there is little to no cooperative activities. I found this shocking, but going back to the exam-oriented model, I’m not really surprised. As American educators, we are taught to promote team building, constructive discussions and participation. They did a great job labeling the map as we went through the activity. They of course knew McDonalds and Starbucks. They also knew about Disney World but when I told them about Hershey Park they got super excited. They knew most of the world businesses such as Red Bull and Fiat, which I’m not so sure my own students would get that right. After about 20 minutes, we wrapped it up. It was now time for the gifts. I told them the story about how my students were really excited about writing them postcards and that I really wanted them to write them and they nodded. When I handed them out, they were all so excited! I gave two to each of them, one student asked if he could trade one because he had two girl postcards and he wanted a boy. One young lady asked me how to say Mechanicsville, which was written in the postcard. I could have cried watching them read those postcards and their faces were all lit up. It was such a wonderful moment. Finally, I showed them the bumper stickers and light-up pins, they loved how they flashed red. Finally, we all took a class picture. I wish we could have spent more time with them, but we were on a pretty tight schedule. As they all waved goodbye, they immediately sat back down and looked at those postcards. It melted my heart.
Daniel, my guide and I then had about twenty minutes to stroll around campus, he gave me a great tour and more information about the school. I asked him what kind of music he liked, he immediately replied, Guns ‘n Roses. I was blown away, after all of this K-Pop talk I figured he would say one of those girl groups. Nope, he told me that he loved Slash. We joked about how much hair he has and what he might actually look like. We then discussed November Rain, one of my favorites, and he told me he watches the videos on YouTube. I told him that most of my students probably don’t listen to that group, he said to tell them he likes All American Rejects, which is a band that my kids listen to. Daniel is in his final year, he is applying to Berkley and his top choice is Carnegie Mellon where he wants to be a computer software major. I told him that I know a lot about Pittsburgh because that is where my parents live and I told him all about the campus and some things that Pittsburgh is known for. He asked me if it rains a lot there, I said no, it snows a lot. He seemed kind of shocked. He described his schedule 7am-11pm. He takes classes from 7-4pm, like us, but then goes to tutoring and study sessions until 11 at night! They aren’t allowed to use calculators even in AP courses, unless it is for graphing. He told me he took BC Calculus last year, which I don’t even really know what that is but it sounds hard. I asked him if he drove to school, he said no that they don’t get their drivers licences until 19. We spoke about how he loves the NBA, I think I impressed him with my basketball knowledge. I asked him if he watches any games, he laughed and said that he had no time due to studying. I asked him if he wanted to come back to Korea after graduating from college, he quickly said no. As our bus pulled up and we realized that it was time to go, I gave Daniel a hug, got another teacher to take our picture and then gave him my email address. I told him if he got into Carnegie Mellon that I would come visit him and show him around Pittsburgh, or get my Dad to do it (he loves giving tours of Pittsburgh). He smiled, I then gave him a Hanover Hawks hat and an extra one to give to his younger brother. I asked him if he wanted my Virginia is for Lovers tote bag, he said yes. He was the cutest kid ever, I almost cried when I said goodbye. As I climbed onto the bus, I watched him with the other kids showing them what I gave him. He then kept waving to me until we drove off. That might have been the best moment of the entire trip. I don’t think I will ever forget that scene.
As we traveled back to the Korea University for our closing ceremony, we all gushed about our experience and how hard those kids work. We also expressed sadness, it seemed to us that they are missing out on high school fun. No real dances or athletic events, it’s almost like they are already adults. Our kids would be shocked at how hard they work. Granted, this is one of the top high schools in Seoul, most students end up in one of the top universities and it is very hard to get selected into this high school. I still haven’t heard from Daniel, but I’m hoping he gets into Carnegie Mellon and we meet up in the future.
At our closing ceremony, the Korea University presented us each with a diploma and picture. It is absolutely beautiful. We then headed over to an amazing dinner where we watched a video that the Korea Society had shot over the last few days of us, it was funny and poignant. Even though we had one free day remaining, we knew this experience was coming to an end.
Note: More blog posts coming…keep checking back for updates!
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