Teaching in Korea: Kids

There are many teaching opportunities in South Korea. Some are only for short summer or winter camps, while others are year-long teaching contracts at public and private schools. Beyond that, there are six teaching levels:

1) Kindergarten
2) Elementary School
3) Middle School
4) High School
5) University Level
6) Business/Corporate Training

The latter two divisions are specialized areas and usually require that the teacher have multiple years of ESL teaching experience and advanced degrees and/or certificates. Therefore, most coming to Korea will be teaching in the kindergarten through highschool arena. This means that you’ll be teaching kids.

It is an important thing to recognize, since for up to a year, you’ll be in that environment, so the hard question must be asked, “Do I like working with children?”

If the answer is, “No,” then ESL teaching in Korea probably isn’t for you since the most prevalent jobs require working in that environment. A more common answer is ,”I like working with kids aged X-Z.” This means that you enjoy working with children of a specific age range.

I count myself in that group. I love working with kids and can work in any environment, but I hit my educational groove when working with elementary aged children to adults. As a result, I steer myself away from prospective positions that require me to teach kindergarten. I can do it, but I wouldn’t enjoy it.

I cannot stress how important it is to take the time to look inside at yourself to see what age groups you’d like to teach, because some people get here not realizing that they don’t like working with kids and find themselves miserable. They even try blaming the school, when in fact, the blame falls on them.