Goodbye, Phillip Teacher

On the taxi ride from my apartment to the bus stop today, I suddenly realized: Oh no! I left Curious George lying on the bed.

For a moment, I wanted to tell the taxi driver to turn around. Maybe if there hadn’t been a language barrier, I would have. In my mind, I could see George lying there on the bed, and I just couldn’t let it go.

My Curious George had embarked on this journey with me from the United States. He was my little travel buddy—one familiar face in an unfamiliar country. How could I possibly have forgotten him?

By the time I was sitting on a bench at the bus station, I knew there wasn’t enough time to go back. I ran through the possibilities anyway, until I finally reached the conclusion I didn’t want to reach: I was just going to have to leave George behind.

And that was the moment the tears finally came.

Through blurry, tear-filled eyes, I wrote a text message to the next teacher who would live in my apartment, asking him to please take George to Edmonton, my KG6 class, where I knew he would be loved.

It was a stuffed monkey. But sitting there crying at the bus station, I knew I wasn’t just crying about George.

Two days earlier, I had finished my last day at Maple Bear after one of the longest goodbyes of my life. When I resigned sixty days earlier, I was so done with that place. I was exhausted by a management culture that often seemed disconnected from what was actually happening in the classrooms and by an environment where questions intended to clarify expectations could somehow be interpreted as challenges to authority.

Then I had to keep working there for another sixty days.

Coming from the United States, where I was accustomed to the idea of giving an employer two weeks’ notice, sixty days was a mental mind fork. I had made the decision to leave, but every morning I still had to get up and go back. Eventually, though, something changed. I learned which problems required my attention and which ones I could simply let pass. I learned how to navigate the environment without absorbing quite so much of it.

Maple Bear hadn’t changed. I had.

And as the frustration became less consuming, I could see more clearly that something much more important had been happening inside my classroom. Not only were my kids speaking English, but we had built a loving, safe community where our joy had developed naturally and effortlessly. They loved me, and I loved them. There wasn’t a technique behind it or a deliberate attempt to create some special classroom relationship. We simply enjoyed being together.

I have taught different ages and different subjects, but being around six-year-olds brings out something in me that had been dormant for a very long time. I could be playful and silly. I could be patient and affectionate. I could enter their world without feeling as though I was performing a role.

A part of my soul that had been quiet for years finally had a chance to shine through again.

Other people could see it too. Both Korean and foreign teachers noticed how naturally I connected with the children. And somewhere along the way, I understood something that perhaps I should have understood years ago: being good with children isn’t separate from being a good teacher. Pedagogy, subject knowledge, planning, and classroom management all matter, but so does genuinely enjoying the human beings you’re teaching.

With Edmonton, that part was effortless.

Despite the utopian Edmonton environment, the adults maintained the dystopian school environment.

Even on my final day, I was provided with a few reminders of why I had resigned. About an hour before I left, the director approached me with a student’s workbook, paging through it and asking, “Is there a reason you didn’t mark this page, or this one, or this one?” I provided an empty answer to an absurd, last-minute question, turned my back, and escorted Edmonton back to the classroom.

Maple Bear remained Maple Bear right to the finish line.

But that isn’t what I want to remember about my last day.

When I returned to the classroom, Edmonton surprised me with a goodbye cake and a handmade farewell book. One of my other classes, Winnipeg, had made one too.

My relationship with my co-teacher, Joy, was complex. Over six months, we went from dysfunctional to harmonious. We had finally learned how to work together, just when it was time to say goodbye.

Joy surprised me with a small gift, but she surprised me even more with a goodbye hug. It wasn’t an awkward co-worker hug, but an “I’m going to miss you” hug. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

Somewhere in those final days, I also realized that Korea had changed something surprisingly small about how I see myself as a teacher. I want to be Phillip Teacher, not Mr. Patrick.

At first, “Phillip Teacher” was simply what the children called me. I heard it all day, every day. But when I opened those farewell books, there it was again and again in their own handwriting:

Phillip Teacher.

By then, those two words meant something different to me.

Phillip Teacher was the person who walked into Edmonton and was genuinely happy to see the children. He was playful, patient, affectionate, and occasionally ridiculous. He taught them, but they also gave him a place to rediscover something about himself that he hadn’t realized how much he missed.

I don’t want Maple Bear back. I don’t regret resigning. What I want is the chance to take Phillip Teacher somewhere healthier—to find a school where I can continue working with children this age without having to pay for the joy of the classroom with the toxicity surrounding it.

Which brings me back to George.

By the time I sat down at that bus station today, the big goodbye had already happened. I had taught my final lesson. I had received the books from my classes. I had hugged each one of my Edmonton students, my Winnipeg students, and my co-teacher too. I had walked out of Maple Bear for the last time. I had closed my apartment door knowing I would never open it again.

I had held myself together through all of it.

Then I pictured Curious George lying alone on my bed and realized that I had to leave him there.

Maybe that silly little stuffed monkey simply found the crack where all of the emotion I had been carrying could finally escape.

Later, my friend Nozi offered me another way to think about it. Maybe George was meant to stay behind because the next person might need him.

Later this week, Curious George will make one last trip through Daejeon, from my old apartment to Edmonton. I know the children there will love him. And I hope that someday, when I think about the little travel buddy I accidentally left behind in Korea, I can picture him there.

As for me, I’m headed in the other direction.

I don’t know yet where Phillip Teacher will end up.

But I’m very glad I found him.