DUKE CENTER – Amy Connors, an English teacher at Otto-Eldred
Junior-Senior High School in Duke Center, will take a three-week
unpaid leave of absence between Jan. 4 and 27 to teach in South
Korea.

Connors will fly to the Asian country to teach English, where
it’s a mandated language from the second grade onward.

The students she will teach have already had several years of
English. She has been hired by Hankook Ilbo, the largest daily
newspaper in Korea, in conjunction with the Korean Field Trip
Foundation and the Association of English Teachers of Korea.

This will be Connors second trip to Korea. She said last year,
while completing her master’s degree in reading at Clarion
University, she was walking out of the library when she saw a flyer
to teach English in Korea over winter break.

“I ripped it off the wall and applied online for the position,”
Connors said.

A few weeks later, she was contacted by the president of
Teachers Council out of Annapolis, Md. After a brief phone
interview, she was invited to Korea with 11 other teachers, with
all expenses paid.

Last year, she was hired by SK, the fifth largest company in
Korea. SK is involved in telecommunications, clothing and oil. She
explained these companies pay large amounts of money to fly in
native English speakers to teach the children of employees.

Connors said all the instruction in the camps is in English and
Korean is forbidden to be spoken or written.

“I had two different groups of students for 12 days each,”
Connors said. “The camp had a curriculum for us to follow, complete
with textbooks and materials.”

While she taught the English language, the other teachers
handled the writing, speaking and listening. At the end of camp,
the 12 teachers went on a short trip to China, where they visited
the Great Wall and the pearl, silk and jade factories and
experienced the Chinese New Year.

Connors found the Koreans to be friendly to Americans.

“If they speak English they will address you in it and try to
help,” Connors said.

She also said it is extremely modern, and in some ways such as
technology, they are more advanced than the United States.

Connors said South Koreans are also very education-oriented.
They say if you sleep more than four hours a night, you will not go
to college and if you do not get into a college in America or
Seoul, you have not worked hard enough.

Connors noted that most countries around the world that hire
native English speakers to come to their country prefer the teacher
not know the language because they will try to instruct in it
instead of English.

She only knows a few words herself and can’t read the
language.

Connors said Korea’s school year runs from September through
December, with January and February as vacation months. Then it
goes again from March through July, with August as the vacation
month.

She also said their weather is much the same as ours.

The 24-year-old teacher from Clarion has her birthday as Jan. 5;
as she flies out to Korea on Jan. 4, her birthday will be
obliterated. She will be traveling into a different time zone.

While in Korea, Connors will be staying at the Kaplun University
campus, which is out in the country, but near Seoul, the capitol,
where there is an American community.