My father, J. McRee "Mac" Elrod, died last summer at age 84. I have always been in awe of the fact that he and my mother spent five years in Korea soon after the end of the Korean war, as very young teaching missionaries. They came with a red-headed baby boy--my brother Mark--and added two more kids while there -- me and my sister Cara. 

When my dad reported for work at Yonsei University on the outskirts of Seoul 60 years ago, the small collection of library books was protected from theft behind a barrier of chicken-wire. The card catalogue, I recall father saying, was ravaged by soldiers taking the cards to line their shoes. In the winter, the ink froze in the inkwells.​
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​My father pioneered the adaptation of Western cataloguing methods for Asian library materials, while still in his early twenties. In fact he was the first Western-trained professional librarian in Korea. He did away with the chicken wire and during his time, the library collection grew from 3,000 to 30,000 volumes...

   I wrote my "teaching philosophy" a few years ago and stand by it today. Competence in English can only be attained by students who acquire some cultural literacy,* therefore we should not be afraid of introducing Western culture into the classroom.

   Now it's time for me to add a big caveat. I have read blog posts and articles by teachers who say, in effect, "hell yeah, I indoctrinate my students with my opinions." That really concerns me.
  These same people would probably have very disparaging things to say about the Christian missionaries who went to China in days gone by, sincerely believing that they were saving heathen souls from damnation. But if you are forcing your worldview on your students, what makes you any different from a missionary? The 'fact' that your opinions are right and theirs were wrong?...

[First published Sep. 14, 2014] A year has gone by since I started a second career as an ESL teacher. After a gap of um.... lemme see..... about 35 years, I went back to school and enrolled in the Continuing Studies "Teaching English as a Second Language" certificate course at Okanagan College. 

A year ago I had no idea what would happen next.

Now, a year later, I'm a "foreign expert" living and working in China and beginning my second semester teaching at a vocational institute in Zibo, Shandong Province.

Although I had taught office skills and business English a vocational instructor, I had never really described myself as a teacher. In the months before leaving for China, I was getting up at four in the morning to teach online English lessons to adult learners in China. I was serious about improving my credentials.

First published Sept. 29, 2014] One of the dilemmas when looking for ESL work overseas is the question, "do I use a recruitment agency, and if so, which one?" The more you look around the 'net, the more confusing it becomes. There's usually at least one dissatisfied or disgruntled teacher slagging every agency out there. And a few hours of reading about people's unhappy experiences, especially in private schools, in China and South Korea can be very off-putting. But this coin has two sides, as the Chinese say -- the Koreans and the Chinese have had to put up with teachers who were immature, naive, parochial, eccentric, unreliable or who were otherwise not the greatest representatives of their home countries.

So folks, obey the visa rules of the country that you're travelling to. If you go abroad with a tourist visa and look for some "under the table" work you will have no recourse if the school stiffs you. In fact, it's a smart idea to obey the laws of the country that you're in. For me, that means honoring my contract and not mounting one-woman protests about aspects of China that I disagree with. For others, that might mean not smoking weed.  For some unknown reason, a 24-year-old ESL teacher recently traveled from South to North Korea, ripped up his visa and asked for asylum. He's now begging to get out as he begins a six year sentence at hard labor. Whatever this young man thought he knew about North Korea, it's clear he didn't know enough.