The English Academy - Part Two

If you read the first part of
The English Academy,
you’ll know that I’ve promised you a whole new host of characters in the second act.

Here they are.

Rita, the horrible one.

Freya, the fake one.

Evie, the helpless one

Sunny, my angel

….and Monica. You’ll always have Monica.

It’s important to say beforehand that I don’t begrudge anybody for the way
things went at The Academy.
However, I haven’t forgotten the people who made my school life miserable.
If you’re keen to teach in Korea,
don’t be too nervous -
enjoy the read and learn from my experience.

I had moved into my shabby 반지하 and suppressed any negative feelings I had about the whole situation. All I needed to do was keep my head down, save money and plan my next steps towards whatever I wanted to do. The Academy was just a stepping stone. I reminded myself daily, swallowing the lump in my throat that threatened to choke me every time I looked around my dark, sunken home.

I woke early to get ready for my first day, anxious to be on time and to make a good first impression. Dressed in a black skirt with a fitted polka dot shirt (business casual yet approachable for the kids, I thought), I enjoyed the pleasant September walk from my complex to the school. Taking the stairs to the third floor, I felt a growing anticipation at meeting my new students and fellow teachers. The front door was still locked when I reached the landing, and so I waited, peering through the glass to look at what I could of The Academy. It was a pleasant place, all decorated with colorfully painted plants and animals. Everything was friendly and bright. It screamed ‘we love children!’ A receptionist desk sat in the middle of the room with hallways on either side leading to classrooms, restrooms and a small gym. My first impression of the Academy was that it was cute and neat. I imagined myself happily spending a year here.

A somewhat frumpy and frazzled-looking woman came around the corner and jumped slightly when saw me. She rushed over to open the door, bobbing her head and blinking rapidly. As I came inside, she said in a high-pitched, baby-ish voice that didn’t match her face, “Hello! I’m Monica. Are you new?”

Monica was assistant to the school director, Hattie. Her smile was what stood out first. It was the kind of smile that you quickly learn to slap across your face when you meet the parents of hagwon students. It’s the sugary sweet smile that masks annoyance and frustration. These kinds of smiles are joyless and usually accompanied with a sycophantic laugh. This is the special Academy Smile, and Monica was a master of it.

She ushered me inside as if we hadn’t a moment to lose and showed me to my personal corner. The teacher’s lounge was a classroom with four, tiny tables placed around the room, one for each foreign teacher. Each table was granted minimal privacy by facing the wall. Only my table was clear; the rest were piled high with papers, name tags, tape and colored pencils, the marks of a harried teacher who had left their work halfway done.

“I have to go pick up students,” Monica told me apologetically (‘apologetic’ was Monica’s second nature). “Head teacher will explain everything soon.”

Left to myself, I decided to glance around the classrooms before anyone arrived. Each room was decorated with photos of the students; Korean children aged six and seven dancing, running, playing - looking for all the world like happy, clever, little children. I was walking around one classroom and admiring the decorations when I heard the door open with an accompanying gruff, “who are you?”

I turned to see who had spoken and was met with an aggressive stare.

This was Rita. She had been a teacher at The Academy for four years and seemed to hate it more than anything in the whole world while simultaneously threatening death and destruction to any who dared offer any help. Rita was a short, dark-haired woman with heavy brows, a strong jaw and a severely cropped haircut. She walked everywhere with a scowl on her face and barked orders at her class of seven year olds like a drill sergeant. Rita was bull-headed in how she ran her classes. Nobody crossed her, not even Hattie, because everyone was afraid of Rita’s wrath. Where Monica hid her true feelings behind a fake smile, Rita wore hers like a menacing, black cloud over her head.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Becky.”

“Get out of my room,” Rita said.

She slammed her binder on the desk at the front of the classroom and pointed at the door. Bewildered, I edged my way out and returned to the teacher’s lounge to find another teacher had arrived. She was a big, Polynesian-looking woman with black glasses and curly hair piled high on her head. She turned to me and said, “Hello. You must be new.”

“Hi,” I said, “today’s my first day and I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Oh,” the woman said, “that’s fine. I’m the head teacher. My name’s Freya. I’ll show you everything.”

The Academy had been steadily getting noisier as children filed in the front door, throwing their backpacks and jackets onto hooks in the hallway and switching their shoes out for slippers. Monica rushed hither and thither, cooing over the children and greeting parents with her signature smile plastered over her face. Hattie passed the teachers lounge and saw me standing with Freya.

“Teacher meeting,” she said to Freya. She jerked her head towards me and said, “show her,” before vanishing out the door.

Freya seemed unbothered by the chaos and Hattie’s brusque orders. “I’ll just show you your classroom first,” she said, leading me into the hallway that was swarming with children. They shouted, “Freya Teacher! Freya Teacher!” when they saw her. I could hear the children speaking in an jumbled mix of Korean and English as they raced to their respective classrooms.

I soon found out that none of the foreign teachers spoke Korean and were each paired with a Korean teacher who assisted them. The Academy preferred teachers who were as far from Korean as possible, in looks and in language, and paraded them in front of the parents whenever given the chance. The parents were all wealthy and loved knowing that they paid a premium to have their kids taught by real, English-speaking foreigners. They especially loved if the teacher was blond and blue-eyed, which was probably why they were all so disappointed when they found out I was taking over for Logan.

When we entered the classroom which was to be mine, I saw a tall, Prince Charming-esque man listlessly directing a boisterous class of six year olds. This was Logan and he apparently couldn’t leave the school fast enough.

“Hello Logan,” Freya said pleasantly as we entered. Logan barely acknowledged her as he passed out papers to the six year olds who stared at me with undisguised interest. Freya pointed out where things were, leading me around the small room without giving Logan a second glance. Logan returned the favor, standing at the front of the classroom with his arms folded as he watched the students trace letters. At the time, I viewed Logan as a failed teacher and smugly thought about how much better I was going to be. I know now that Logan had probably been sucked lifeless by The Academy and the cruel whims of Hattie that I had not yet experienced.

After we left Logan to wearily rally his class, Freya and I made our way to the gym, where a handful of teachers had gathered. Rita and Monica were already present, as well as one other foreign teacher, who was named Evie. The few Korean teachers stood separately in a group against the wall. Whether this segregation was by choice or design, I never really found out, but I was never accepted by either group during my time at The Academy. This was a manipulation specially manufactured by Hattie just for me.

Hattie came into the gym and immediately began running through the week’s agenda. She spoke to the Korean teachers first, rattling off an exhaustive list of things to get done right away, then dismissed them in the same, quick manner that she did all things. One of the Korean teachers looked back over her shoulder as she left and gave me a tiny wave. I smiled and she flashed me a big grin. She wore a blouse with enormous puffed sleeves and an ankle length skirt that she swished playfully around her as she walked. Her fashion was overly bright, overly feminine and threatened to envelop you with ruffles if you got too close. This was Sunny, as she insisted we call her, and she would end up being the best part of working at The Academy.

Now Hattie addressed the remaining foreign teachers in English. The meeting was brief and just before she wrapped up, Hattie introduced me to the rest of the group.

“This is Becky Teacher,” she said, “she’s taking Logan’s class. Help her get comfortable.” I smiled at Rita, Freya and Evie. Evie smiled politely back.

Then Hattie spoke in Korean directly to me, “If might be difficult getting used to the school at first. They’re not very friendly. Especially her,” she casually pointed at Rita.

“What did you say?” Rita demanded. Freya and Evie exchanged glances.

Hattie ignored her and said in English to me, “if you need anything, you can always come and find me.” She threw one of her disingenuous smiles at the whole group and left the room.

I was disconcerted by Hattie’s remarks. It felt like she had drawn an invisible line between me and the foreign teachers. This is Becky and compared to the rest of you, she seemed to have said, she’s Korean. I don’t know if my experience would have been different if Hattie had not done that. All I know is that whenever the foreign teachers went out for drinks or weekend trips together, I was never invited.

Over the first few weeks, I quickly learned the distinct personalities of my three, fellow teachers. They had worked at the school for years and outlasted many others who had come and gone. They were resilient and had decided as a trio how to handle Korean school politics and parents. Their non-Korean-ness granted them special immunity from the pressure that the Korean teachers bore, an immunity that I was somehow denied. I never was free from expectations like the foreign teachers but I was also never included with the Korean teachers. It felt like I didn’t fall neatly into either of the categories.

Hattie didn’t help matters. She seemed to have chosen me as her special pet - she gave me little gifts or special compliments in front of the others. She would talk loudly about how the children loved me because ‘kids love pretty teachers.’ She’d offer to me out for lunch while the other teachers ate the food made at the school, sitting hunched at their too-small tables. Hattie was grooming me into taking over her new elite Academy she was opening and didn’t bother to hide the fact. All of this just alienated me further from the other teachers. Between the stressful work environment, typical hagwon problems, unfair demands made by Hattie and the animosity from my co-workers, altogether my time at The Academy was pretty wretched.

“You’re her favorite,” Monica would say with a painfully false smile whenever Hattie asked me to help her with something, “좋겠네요! You’re lucky.”

Poor, overlooked Monica, who did everything Hattie commanded but reaped neither respect nor reward.

I quickly discovered that Freya never had problems lying to me. After a while, I simply stopped believing anything she told me. She kept the peace by pretending problems didn’t exist and brushed over discrepancies with a toothy grin, daring you to push back on her lies.

Evie was evasive. She didn’t like hiding things and would get uncomfortable if I ever asked her something too direct. Rita would simply grunt and ignore me. I was left wondering what had happened, all over again.

At the same time, the Korean teachers were pleasant and helpful, but the wall between me and them was quite obvious. When the work day was over, they gathered all of their things and exited in a huddle, chuckling and chatting with each other, while the foreign teachers left precisely on the dot. I oftentimes remained behind, waiting until the school was mostly empty before I picked up my bag and left alone. If anyone was lonelier than me, it was Monica. Though I was Hattie’s unwilling pet, Monica was her servant and spy, and nobody liked that.

As the months went by, I found myself increasingly more and more isolated at work. Besides yelling at me if I ‘touched her stuff’ or ‘talked to her students unnecessarily,’ Rita marched past me in the hallways as if I didn’t exist. The Korean teachers were sympathetic.

“She’s only nice to her students,” they’d whisper to me after witnessing Rita’s inexplicable rage at my presence. “Don’t take it too hard.” Hattie seemed not to care.

To take my mind off of work and the fact that the Ex-Boyfriend was soon to join the military, I started taking Chinese classes in the neighborhood nearby. I discovered that being left to my own thoughts made me extremely single-minded; I quickly achieved basic conversational skills in Mandarin Chinese and listened to vocabulary lessons over and over in my earphones while desk-warming between classes.

During those nine months at The Academy, I explored all over Suwon, visiting the places where my mom told me she and my dad used to go on dates many years ago. I wandered around late at night, counting down the months until I could give my notice to Hattie and leave. I discovered the red light district near Suwon station and walked through once, watching the men who stared hungrily through the glass at the long-haired women who waved half-heartedly. The ahjumma who ran one of the booths beckoned at me but I ignored her and walked on.

Amidst the depressing, frustrating, muddled mess that The Academy revealed itself to be, the Korean teacher Sunny was, true to her name, a bright, bold spot of joy. She swept into the front doors every morning with a piercing, “good morning!” that made Freya wince. She wore a floral perfume that trailed behind her, leaving a lovely scent wherever she went. Her outfits were wonderfully dramatic; pants that ballooned around her legs, flower-patterned shirts that had ribbons dangling from her shoulders, matronly dresses with glittery teddy bears splashed on the front and an endless array of gauzy scarves that she threw around her neck. She zipped around the school like a super-charged electric bolt and the children threw themselves into her open arms with unabashed affection. She was motherhood personified, wrapped in an enormous bow. The foreign teachers found her irritating. Monica resented her. I loved her.

Sunny was the PR and face of The Academy. She took complaints from the parents and turned them into laughing sessions over cookies and coffee in the office. Mothers who stormed into the school looking for someone to blame were disarmed by Sunny’s over-the-top jokes. Her weapon was positivity and I had never seen anyone wield it so artfully before. Without her, Hattie was just a calculating, hard-faced woman who pretended to like children in exchange for money. With her, Hattie ran a successful business full of happy children and satisfied parents. The days at The Academy were usually frenzied and stressful from the moment we entered to the moment the last child left, and Sunny rarely had a moment to do anything between putting out fires and cleaning up after Hattie. But she’d grab my hand if we passed in the hallway and squeeze it encouragingly.

Nine months had passed since I started working at The Academy. My contract was up in a few months and I was wrestling with when to let Hattie know that I was going to move on after finishing the year.

It was late on Friday and I was staying behind to finish some work Hattie had requested before running out the door. Rita, Freya and Evie had left all at the same time, passing by me without a word, which meant they were going somewhere together. In the quiet room, as I robotically stapled papers together, I felt an overwhelming urge to just call Hattie and get it over with. Why not now? It was three months early and she had been hinting at writing up a new contract.

“You’re going to be the head teacher at St. Helen’s,” she kept saying, as if it were an established fact, “your contract should reflect that.”

Monica poked her head into the room and saw me seated on the floor with the stacks of papers surrounding me.

“Too busy?” She grimaced on my behalf, “Can you lock the door when you leave?”

”Okay,” I said.

Monica thanked me profusely with an apologetic smile and I soon heard the front door click shut behind her. Better now than never, I thought to myself, and resolutely picked up my phone and called Hattie. She answered after two rings with a brisk, “여보세요?”

The call was over in a few minutes. I told Hattie that I was planning on finishing up my contract and then moving on. She laughed and said the kids loved me, how could you go? Then she pleaded, offered me higher pay and shorter hours. I was resolute and thanked her but said I was sure someone else would be better suited for the new position. Her voice changed suddenly and she said, “Fine. If you’re going to end your contract then you might as well leave now. You can work one more week,” and ended the phone call as rudely and abruptly as if she had slammed a door in my face.

My heart was pounding as I lowered the phone. I had been fired for the first time in my life.

Part 3 Coming Soon.

*All names have been changed