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Today’s video and article is a special one, not only because it took a long time to edit, but because it’s a real, straight-up look at a day in the life teaching English in Korea is like.

I shot the video on a typical day at my Thursday school – Buhang Middle School. It shows you everything from me actually teaching, to hanging out with my students at lunch time, to studying Korean with my co-teacher.

So, here it is:

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A Day In The Life Teaching English In Korea

A few things to note about the video, and how it compares to other public schools in Korea:

1) It’s a small rural school

• This means that the class sizes are much smaller than what you will typically get when teaching at public schools, which is going to be more like 20 – 30 students or more.

• A lot of schools won’t be this laid back and relaxed

2) I teach at 4 different schools

• I work at a middle and high school on the same campus on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays; a third school on Tuesdays; and a fourth on Thursdays.

• You may be working at a number of different schools like this, especially if you get a job through EPIK.

• It’s more likely you will be at a single school

3) I work LESS hours because of this

• Teaching at 4 schools actually works out to teaching LESS than if you were at a single school, contrary to what most people think.

• I only teach about 12 hours a week, rather than the 22 I’m contracted to (shhh don’t tell anyone). This is basically because all my schools are small, relaxed and they just can’t find enough hours for me.

• This is just a matter of luck, and there’s no way you will have a situation like this or not

2) I have a lot more freedom of curriculum than most teachers

• As you saw, I can teach whatever I want in most of my classes, with the exception of one of my schools where I mostly follow the textbook

• Most schools, however, will require you to teach from a textbook which has both it’s pros and cons.

• The pros are you can be more creative and play around with interesting material that will engage the students more. The downside is that this can take a lot more prep time, than just doing lessons from the textbook.

• For both a more free curriculum and the textbook based route, there are great resources out there that can help you out with material, such as waygook.org.

So as you can see, the set up you end up with can be very different depending on what school you’re at. This is just the differences that can occur within public schools, let alone private academies.

As you can probably tell from the video, I lucked out with my job. It’s easy, fun, rewarding and I have great students.

However, there are downsides to the job I got too. I live in Gimcheon, a city with a population of 150 000, which, on a scale of Seoul-to-sucks scores far more on the “sucks” side of things. From what I’ve heard, the ajummas banded together to get any kind of bar or club in the city completely banned. Yeah, so, not the most exciting place.

The saving grace of Gimcheon is that it’s very central and only 45 minutes from Daegu, and a couple hours from Seoul. You can find out more about how easy it is to travel around Korea by clicking here.

I hope you enjoyed seeing what a day in the life teaching English in Korea is like, and please leave a comment if there’s anything you’d like to ask. I’m also offering Skype consultations about getting started with teaching here if that’s something you’re interested in: SKYPE SESSIONS

Teaching in Korea