No one tells you what the first week of teaching kindergarten ESL abroad is really like.
It involves confusion, tiny humans, unexpected hugs, and doing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” more times than should be medically advisable.
To say this week has been overwhelming would be an understatement.
Imagine this:
- You move to a foreign country.
- You start a brand-new job.
- You teach English as a foreign language for the first time.
- You teach kindergarten for the first time.
- You learn a schedule where you teach different levels of English at different times on different days.
And while all of this is happening, you are also:
- being bombarded with teaching resources
- receiving rapid-fire advice from multiple directions
- learning detailed hallway procedures for transporting a line of tiny humans
- discovering there is a very specific way certain parts of the curriculum must be taught
All without any actual training.
Most instructions are explained exactly once—quickly and during breaks when you’re preoccupied with what’s coming next—and you are expected to remember them forever, along with the other 97 things that were also explained that day.
Often the “correct” way to do something is revealed immediately after you have already done it the wrong way.
It’s a very efficient learning system.
Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, I did have a classic kindergarten moment: becoming a human jungle gym. It took me by surprise when I suddenly had four tiny creatures climbing all over me. At least I know I’m making some kind of connection with the kids!
By Friday, my brain felt like an overloaded computer with 47 tabs open, several frozen applications, and a fan spinning loudly in the background.
So today I did what any rational person would do after their first week teaching kindergarten ESL: retail therapy.
I also took the subway across town to visit one of Daejeon’s famous tourist attractions: Daejeon Skyroad.
The Skyroad is an enormous arched LED canopy stretching over the street, filled with massive multimedia displays. It’s best experienced at night, when the lights take over the entire area.
Ironically, I decided to visit during the day.
Street food smells drifted through the air. Arcade games chimed and flashed from every direction. Crowds wandered through the shopping district. But I had to imagine the extra dimension the canopy would add to the experience—I’ll just save that for another time.
For a while, I could simply be a tourist instead of “the new teacher who is still trying to figure out which class he is supposed to teach next.”
Tomorrow’s plan is to watch an unhealthy number of YouTube videos about teaching kindergarten ESL.
This will either make me a dramatically better teacher, increase my anxiety about Monday, or both.
But growth rarely comes from comfort.
If nothing else, by the end of this year I will either be:
- a much better teacher with a killer body from doing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with my students…
or
- someone who has watched every kindergarten ESL video on YouTube.
Oh yeah—asking for a friend—but how many times is too many times to do “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”?
Phillip N. Patrick 