A Note To My Fellow Teachers

I love so many things about teaching. I love that moment when a light bulb comes on for a student and you can see them understand a new concept. I love reading the notes that they write to me and hearing their stories. I love the opportunity to build relationships with people, and hopefully influence them in positive ways as they prepare for this crazy thing called life.

Yes, there are times I wish I didn't have quite so many lessons to plan, or quite so many essays to grade. Sometimes I think I'm going to be buried with a red ink pen firmly in my hand. I have problems with my school administration (which I understand goes with the job) and that sometimes interferes with my relationship with my students. But it's still worth it, because I love teaching.

All of the relational aspects of this job make teaching one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. But from time to time, something comes along and it just knocks the air out of me and leaves me unsure how to proceed. One of those things happened yesterday.

During the course of the day, a young woman came to my office. She seemed a little more shy than normal, but she came over to my desk and we started talking a little bit. After a few minutes, she told me that she was so excited, because over the weekend, she had made friends with a foreigner. She was so happy that this foreigner wanted to talk to her, even though her English is only middle level.

Of course, I think it is wonderful when students actually work to use English outside of the classroom, and I was happy for her. I started asking her questions about her new friend, and that's when I started to get that terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This foreigner had found the young woman on facebook and tried to be friends with her. He then found her on a popular messenger service and started talking to her on there. She was having trouble understanding some of the messages, so she asked me to read them. This man was calling the young woman things like "dear", "cutie", and "honey". He was asking about her friends, and if she could introduce him to her friends. He wanted her to send pictures of herself and her friends. He was constantly asking her to call him so he could hear her voice. He was trying to get her to come to his apartment so he could cook her food from his home country. She came to me on a Tuesday, and he found her on facebook on Sunday.

I tried my best to explain to her why it was inappropriate for him to be calling her pet names, ask for pictures and introductions, and invite her to his apartment. I told her that she shouldn't talk to him anymore. I told her to come back and talk to me if he wouldn't leave her alone, and I would talk to him and make him understand. I told her that I would be happy to introduce her to other foreigners if she wanted to have some foreign friends. She seemed to understand everything I said, and she said that she wouldn't talk to him again.

This situation is so difficult. It seems like the culture between Korea and America is so different on this point. In America, I don't give my phone number to everyone I meet. I don't text people I don't know well. If someone friends me on facebook and I don't know them, I immediately ignore their request. It seems like people more readily give out their phone number and engage in relationships with people in Korea. It is normal for professors to put their cell phone number on the top of the syllabus. None of my students have ever abused that, but they do send me texts and call me when they have questions or need clarification. Maybe it has to do with individualism vs. collectivism, but I certainly don't understand any of that well enough to comment on it. What I do know for sure is that this was a terrible spot for this young woman to be put in, because she had absolutely no way of knowing that this man was trying to take advantage of her.

It is easy to complain about all of the strange things that happen to us as foreigners in Korea. I get really tired of the stares, the assumptions that I can't use chopsticks or I don't like spicy food. I often feel like I'm some sort of freak side show, rather than a real person with real thoughts and feelings. It's annoying and sometimes inconvenient for me. But there's a much more dangerous underside to this fetishization of the foreigner.

So many young people in Korea have grown up watching Western movies and TV shows. They see Western models on the subway ads. They listen to Western pop music. They get some very strange ideas about what Western culture is, and how it is supposed to work. They don't really understand how Western culture should work, which in normal circumstances would be more than ok. The vast majority of Westerners (myself included) don't really understand how Korean culture works. But every once in awhile, some creep comes along and preys on that cultural misunderstanding to try to  manipulate a situation to get what they want.

I know that lots of English teachers in Korea feel like they aren't "real" teachers. They feel like walking tape recorders, or a magician who is expected to conjure up games which a) entertain the kids, b) please the parents, and c) magically imbue English fluency. As we all know, every school in Korea is different. All of those things may be true for you. What I do know is, regardless of our lesson plan restrictions, we do have the opportunity to educate our students about other things.

Korea is rapidly becoming more multi-cultural. Yeah, it probably doesn't look like New York, London, Toronto or Sydney's multiculturalism. But it's coming. We have the opportunity to teach our students about our culture. About our interactions. About what is and isn't ok to read in text messages from a random businessman you've never met. We can equip our students with something more powerful than perfect English grammar. We can give them the tools to know when something isn't quite right with their interactions with a foreigner, and hopefully, we can help them realize that foreigners aren't all movie stars and don't all act like movie stars. Maybe, just maybe, we can teach our students to see past our small heads, big eyes and funny colored skin and see that we - the foreigners -- are no different from the Koreans. We are good and bad, selfish and selfless, and we need to be evaluated as people rather than a Hollywoodized phenomenon.

To my fellow teachers in Korea -- what do you think about all of this? How can we help our students learn the boundaries of culture so they can have some form of radar to detect creeps like this guy?