Nic Teacher Becomes Pupil Far From Home
Kim Mogen couldn’t speak or write or read. She couldn’t use the phone or say her address.
She knew only a word or two of Korean when she landed in Seoul last February and that was one reason she’d gone.
“I wanted to live through what my own students go through when they come here,” says Kim, who teaches English as a second language at North Idaho College. “Now I understand how disoriented they are.”
An ad in the faculty newsletter caught her eye last fall. NIC wanted to exchange a teacher for a semester with its sister school, Chung Cheong Junior College, in Ch’ong Ju. Kim was certain she was going.
Her husband and three teenage children encouraged her. Two of Kim’s good friends had died recently and left children. Kim needed to know her children could survive and thrive without her. She had complete confidence in her husband.
Kim had no qualms about leaving her safe existence in Coeur d’Alene for a world completely foreign to her. She studied the Korean alphabet and characters on the 12-hour flight. She had no idea what to expect when she left the plane.
What she saw amazed her. Idaho has 11 people per square mile; South Korea has 1,100 per square mile. They live on 30 percent of the land; mountains cover the rest. Nearly all Koreans live in high-rise concrete apartment buildings.
Teachers from Chung Cheong college escorted Kim from Seoul south to her third-floor apartment in Ch’ong Ju. There, she settled into the single life.
“At home, I’m in charge, an observer,” she says. “There, I was a participant. Each week, I’d force myself a little farther from my comfort zone.”
At school, people spoke some English. Outside the college, Kim was speechless for awhile.
“I realized what a verbal person I am,” she says, laughing. “But I couldn’t speak, so I wrote a lot. The words had to go somewhere.”
She learned the value of hand signs and pictures. She couldn’t read directions on boxes of food but she understood the pictures. Everyone wanted to help her.
She realized how important it is to know about real things such as money, shopping, telephones, etc., and decided to teach her foreign students in Coeur d’Alene more practical lessons.
Kim’s Korean students wanted to be tour guides and interpreters. They were accustomed to teachers who lecture from a podium. Kim played Jeopardy with them, quizzing them on Korean geography, history, landmarks. She learned with them.
She gave M&Ms to the winners.
In return, they taught her to cook rice and vegetables wrapped in seaweed and Korean fried rice. Students and teachers invited her into their families, shared their customs and toured Buddhist temples and ancient fortresses with her.
Kim’s heart has ached since she left Korea a few weeks ago. She returned home with pottery, calligraphy and coins bearing cranes in flight. But she left her friends behind.
Idaho’s beauty and her husband and children awaited her. For those things, she was grateful.
Her Korean experience will change how she teaches the Russian, Spanish and other foreign students at NIC.
“I tended to bring things into the classroom,” she says, deep in thought. “It would be better to take the students to things, put them in real situations.”
Her experience also taught her something about herself.
“I learned that I’m very Western and that came as a big surprise to me,” she says. “I thought I was more cosmopolitan, but now I feel much more at home in Western culture.”
Faraway friends
I ran into a friend in an Issaquah, Wash., restaurant last week. I didn’t know she’d moved. Where’s the most surprising place you’ve bumped into friends? Reveal those secret meetings to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo