Our blog question is why did I choose to do student teaching in Korea and not in the U.S.?  There are plenty of easy answers: Love of travel, chance to live abroad and work with the people of that country, a desire to see South Korea itself had been talked about between a friend and me for a while, to step outside my realm of comfort and see what I'm made of, etc.  To be honest, I am actually still surprised I am here.  I always have grand aspirations and many times they do not become anything more than aspirations.  This is a chance to really stand out from my teacher certification-peers, to do something different that I am proud of, and because I have not really done much according to plan in the past so why start now?

The travel and experience was the initial reason for coming.  After I could think beyond those two reasons, I did realize what a valuable tool it would be to have a different cultural perspective for my work.
Teachers need this.  Teachers need travel, need experience compromising, being confused, asking for help, seeing things from a foreigners eyes, because we may have students who are the same. For the social studies teacher, we need cultural experiences so that we may bring a well rounded curriculum into the classroom that has innately different perspectives for students to learn.  This is a globally interconnected world through our sharing of culture through the media.  And teaching with different cultural perspectives and experiences will help make the class less one dimensional which, in turn, will help the students learn more and be interested.  This trip will help me to stay more connected to that globalization and I feel I will be less likely to trap myself as a one
dimensional teacher.