Touched
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
As my time at the elementary school edges towards its conclusion, I begin to truly understand the feelings of the young students towards me . . .
Leaving any employer has always been a strange experience. For many years, it was rather like leaving school – I always found my secondary school a depressing place that I was glad to leave in the end; successive employers felt the same – eventually, the mismatches between my own desires and intentions and theirs would lead to increasing irritation, until I would lose it completely and "fire my boss". This wasn't the only reason why most of my jobs – mainly in chemical analysis – tended to be rather short, as many of them were in fact just moderately well-paid temporary or contract jobs.
However, I was always nauseated by the fact that despite graduating in biosciences ("Cell and Molecular Science", if you must ask), I kept being "shunted sideways" into what was usually pure chemistry. The reason for this was simply that when I returned to education, I re-sat my biology and chemistry A-levels and went to do a Higher Diploma course in Applied Biology at what was then the South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales (the old "Llandaff Tech"). This was a "thick sandwich" course, meaning that in its three years of duration, the middle year was given over mainly to work placement sessions, and unfortunately (in some respects, though not all), the first was at the Analytical Laboratories of the Texaco Refinery in Milford Haven in the west of Wales.
Now, don't get me wrong: I loved Pembrokeshire, I loved the labs, I loved the pubs, in fact the only thing I didn't really love was the rather mean salary – at that time, Texaco would only give temporary student employees ninety-five pounds a week. But I had a knackered old MZ125 motorbike to ride around on, the weather was not always bad and things were generally okay.
However, what I didn't understand at the time was the knock-on effect this would have when I would later present my CV to potential employers. Despite the fact that the second work experience period was at a biochemical laboratory run by a world-famous researcher with endless strings of publications to his name (and he very graciously refereed my application to join the old Institute of Biology in London, recently renamed the Society of Biology), all they would ever see was this thing about Texaco. This is essentially why I have found myself out in East Asia teaching English to children – reasoning that I had become something of an expert in an increasingly redundant field, which was electroplating and anodising solution chemistry, I could see no point in continuing. I was getting older, jobs were getting thinner on the ground (like my hair) and I hated it in any case.
I myself have never had children and never had any desire to have them. The main reason being that the economic situation (and therefore also the unemployment situation) in the UK was so dodgy for such a contemptibly long time that I could never see how my life would be stable enough in financial terms to permit me to settle down anywhere. Too often I would end up boomeranging back to a small existence in my parents' back bedroom, and what kind of a future is that when you are approaching forty at an alarming speed?
So it was with somewhat mixed feelings that I came out here and discovered the unique experience of being with many of them. And for each school that I have worked in, the result has always been the same: I became attached to them, they liked me, and in the end our ways had to part. And each time, I would spend my days largely not thinking about them, until some memory would resurface and I would find myself wondering about them; you see, because I had lost contact with them, I would never know how they had grown up, whether good fortune had smiled upon them, or even if the worst had befallen them. This feeling is deeply sad; I cannot describe it.
And so we amble now towards the end of my time as a public elementary school English teacher, which turned out to be disappointing in some ways, although not entirely bad. This Tuesday afternoon, I went into my final lesson with Grade 4 Class 3, and they all gave me goodbye cards. Actually, this was quite unexpected and as I felt somewhat preoccupied with getting ready for the final lesson (which involved reviewing the previous three to complete the unit), didn't think about it too much at the time. But now the feeling returns to haunt me, at a time when in fact, I still haven't arranged a new job to replace this one, a happenstance I find rather worrying, as I have always been big on planning and I like things to be scheduled, orderly and on time.
So I am sitting here now, looking at all the goodbye cards in the full realisation that history has repeated itself yet again; we are saying goodbye and I am heading towards uncertainty – a most unsettling feeling. And again, I will lose contact with them and never know how they fared after we said goodbye.
And this feeling is deeply sad and touching.
Andrew.
Tags: education, elementary, elementary school, English, foreigner, hagwon, Korea, Miryang, public school, school, South Korea, teaching, TEFL, TESOL
