Three countries. Three classrooms. Three different consequences for getting it wrong.
I have taught English in three countries and the lesson is the same in all three: The cat is sitting on the mat. What changes is what happens when you get it wrong.
My classroom in Changwon, South Korea was about a hundred square meters of organized, neat, and absolutely sans personality.
Large windows to the left. Large whiteboard behind me. One wooden desk per student — no sharing, no clusters, nothing that might suggest chaos was possible here. A pulpit to my left where Yoonyeon stood on the days she actually showed up. Two large doors at the back. And a quiet that surprised me every single time, because nothing about the building outside that room suggested quiet was an option.
Korean elementary schools, I learned, are not quiet places. Except in class. In class: silence, attention, the specific stillness of children who have been taught that a classroom is not for them — it is for the teacher, who is not for them either, but for the performance.
On open class day, I told my students what was coming.
People were coming to watch. If they ever wanted to see me again, they had to behave. Or I’d be gone. Poof.
One boy went military serious. “Ok teacher . . .” His whole body language shifted — ready to save the class single-handedly if necessary.
They sat like the students every teacher wishes she had. Yoonyeon stood at her pulpit. I stood at the whiteboard. We were both performing before the judges even walked in.
. . .
I loved the way her eyes crinkled when she was amused. And her full laugh. But in that moment, I only remember her magnificent bob cutting like a sword through her face.
. . .
The school board observers came in, sat down, and watched.
We smiled. We taught. We translated. We modelled participation. My students raised their hands with the precision of people who had rehearsed. Which they had. Which I had asked them to.
If we had tails they would have been wagging as we whimpered.
The judges left.
Yoonyeon’s smile dropped to the floor. She shook her head.
“What a f@king lie.”
She said it so quietly. I had never heard her swear before. It was the most honest thing she had said to me in nearly two years.
Here is what I didn’t say: I know.
Because I did know. I had been being shaped by the same system since the bus rolled to a stop on my first day and Sunny told me, very kindly, that foreigners were not allowed to eat in the school cafeteria.
(RACISM! . . . I was still wondering why.)
The director gave me videos and worksheets to help me *”learn how to teach English.”* I had a degree. I had a classroom. I had the worksheets anyway.
(Ach offended for what? All knowledge is good knowledge.)
My co-teacher Yoo Aram — a different one, on a different day — gave me a look after a chaotic class. A queen’s look. Control your class, Ella.
After my best class of the week, she told me I was expected to clean the room. I had not made the mess.
I felt my heart drop in that way a stone clatters off a mountain for no reason, but has no choice in where it’s going, driven by a force it cannot control.
I have taught English in three countries and the lesson is the same in all three:
The cat is sitting on the mat.
What changes is what happens when you get it wrong.
In South Africa . . . or at least in the era my father remembers, which may have operated under slightly different rules about acceptable educational violence — you got it wrong by speaking the wrong language. Afrikaans in an English class got you a sign. The sign said, with remarkable precision: I am a stupid ass. If you were also a boy, you got the plank.
You learned by suffering a consequence you could still feel two days later. Language as survival.
Korea taught something different. Korea taught silence.
My students could read Shakespeare. They parsed the grammar of a sonnet with more accuracy than most adults I have ever met. What they could not do was order a coffee without three weeks of prior rehearsal, because a mistake in Korea is not just wrong . . . it is a social event. It lands on everyone in the room. The safest choice, always, is to say nothing until you are certain you can say it perfectly.
Certainty in a second language arrives slowly.
Russia was a third thing entirely.
In Russia: say it wrong, say it loud, say it again.
“How are you?”
“Normal.” Not good. Not thriving. Not blessed, thank you for asking. Normal. A complete and honest answer that somehow does not exist in English, and which I have wanted to use every single day since.
Three countries. Three classrooms. Three different consequences for getting it wrong.
South Africa hits you. Korea shames you. Russia doesn’t care.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, Yoonyeon and I finished our class and the students filed out and we did what you do when the system is too big to name.
It just looked like the EPIK classes should’ve been. Excited teachers. Good students. Lots of dialogue.
The real thing happened after the show.
Yoonyeon, if you’re reading this: I agreed with you completely. It was a f@king lie. The kids were wonderful.
→ The version of this story I couldn’t fit into five minutes is in this week’s video — including what that open class actually sounded like from inside (just kidding).