EPIK Orientation

This Orientation is one of the main reasons we chose EPIK (English Program in Korea), rather than a private school (hagwon) or another public school system. For those who don’t know, EPIK is a Korean government-run program, so we are essentially Korean government employees, working for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the National Institute for International Education.

Anyway, I couldn’t imagine being thrown into a culture like this, and more so into teaching, without this Orientation. I was honestly kind of dreading this part, wanting to get settled into our apartment and start the job, but we’re learning a lot, and we’ve already made some good friends. From what we’ve been told, EPIK is the only one that offers anything like this.

The Orientation focuses not only on good teaching techniques and games you can play with the students to keep them interested, but we’re learning about the Korean culture and language as well. (We have Korean lessons in about 30 minutes.) We’re getting tips on Korean mindsets and lesson planning and which games work and which games don’t.

After dreading the Orientation for so long, I’ll be kind of sad to see it end this week, although Beth and I are very excited to meet our co-teachers and find out exactly where in Incheon we’ll be placed. Then there’s a three-day weekend, and we start teaching a week from today.

So that’s an overview of the whole thing. I’ll get to specifics in later posts, and you can read all about our dorm room and the opening ceremonies and the food and the hell that was the medical checkup in time.