A Visit from the Dentist's Office

About a week ago, our branch manager sent out an email to all the teachers at our branch, alerting us that he had offered our English speaking capabilities to the dentist’s office on the fourth floor of our building. If one of us desired, we could teach the staff of the dentist’s office twice a week during their lunch break. The consummate entrepreneur, I wasn’t sure what he would do if we all declined – but the offer seemed good enough for me: $50 a week to teach two forty-minute classes every Tuesday and Thursday.

Before coming to Korea, I read a lot about “privates” – private English tutoring sessions where you could name your price and parents, desperate for their kids to get ahead, would pay. Everyone agreed this is where the money was. Trouble is, when you enter the country on a visa to teach at a private school, as I had, taking on these side jobs is illegal and this is strictly enforced. The more kids you teach on the side, the less kids are going to the English academies and their profits are the ones that take the hit. Therefore, it’s usually these private schools, or hagwons, that do most of the policing, reporting offenders to immigration – which usually results in deportation.

Despite the risks, the money is apparently too great to resist and I’ve met countless foreigners who teach on the side – in some cases making upwards of $50 an hour. And by “hour,” I mean going out for (a free) lunch or dinner with a kid and conversing about soccer. Or the food. Or their day at school. When compared with the rigid classroom structure I’ve been grappling with for the past two weeks, I’d love to sit back, eat some soup and talk about the state of the world in broken English. And get paid.

So, when our director presented this offer, I had to think twice. Obviously, this was a great way to make a little extra money on the side, and although the pay was nowhere near what I could make illegally on my own time, it was sanctioned by the school, so I didn’t have to worry about getting deported. On the flip side, it would (cough) really screw up my schedule of (cough) you know, not working until 4:30 in the afternoon. Clearly, this was a tough decision.

In the end, I came down on the side of dental hygiene.

My first day was Tuesday, and it was definitely just like going to the dentist. Except they came to me. Still dressed in their scrubs and armed with walkie-talkies in their ears (think Secret Service), eight staff members politely filed in my classroom. Now, I have no idea why they were wearing earpieces, and when I tried to ask, I was suddenly confronted with their English level, which was well under all of my students and just above my current level of Korean (i.e. nonsensical consonants and random phrases).

        Me: What is this (pointing to ear piece) for?
        Dentist #1: (fully confident) Phone!
        Dentist #2: (looking quizzically at Dentist #1) Phone?
        Dentist #1: (less confident) Phone…
        Dentist #2: (looking quizzically at me) Phone?
        Me: It’s your phone?
        Entire Class: (thinking this is the start of the lesson) IT’S YOUR PHONE?

It was going to be a long forty minutes. I realized two things in the first thirty seconds:

1.) Adults language classes will repeat everything. Whereas children will ask questions and shout out random answers, these adults seemed to mimic every intonation of every syllable I said, hurriedly writing in Korean and then mouthing each word over to themselves at their desks. It’s your PHONE? It’s YOUR phone. IT’S your phone.

2.) Animation for adults does not go over like it does in front of my kids. If anyone had my nighttime classes on camera, it would look like a schizophrenic had escaped and was holding a classroom of children hostage. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not afraid to tap-dance. Or break into song. Or bang my head against a desk. Most of the time this is to engage the kids – but sometimes it’s purely for my own entertainment. However, after the first exaggerated eyebrow movement in front of the eight dentists, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Not only did they not look amused (a look which I’m pretty sure was invented in Korea), but they stopped paying attention to whatever I was saying and were suddenly talking amongst themselves in Korean, most likely to figuring out the quickest way to get their money back.
 

Our first class involved the different vocabulary words needed for a basic introduction – a simple enough task. However, no one in the class except for one woman wanted an English name. I’m bad enough when it comes to remembering a class full of Mary’s and Matthew’s, but faced with a Hung Chee Sun and Hyun Zee Lin, I’m pretty sure I offended everyone (and their ancestors) for forty minutes straight. The name the one, kind woman chose? Angel. I wanted to hug her.
 
In the end, I think it went well. Despite one woman (sadly, Angel, who when I said “see you on Thursday” replied “NO! I BUSY!”) I think everyone is coming back for our second class, which is on jobs. Maybe then I’ll get a little closer to figuring out what those earpieces are for.