Won Jang

Blogger, Educator/Teacher, Idea generator, Performer, Public servant, Student

I'm an English teacher in South Korea and have been teaching English, mostly reading and writing, in highschools since 2011. I studied English education in Gyeongsang National University and passed Teachers Exam in 2011. As a means of improving my English skills I stayed in the UK for about a year and got language training and did my CELTA(Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) and got the certificate. As a teacher working in a quite competitive highschool, I have been helping students read challenging texts and solve questions for them to get good grades in Korean SAT. I love musicals and other stage performances and have translated English subtitles of several stage shows and episodes of TV shows. I got to know TED OTP group in 2014 and started translating several short videos, TED-Ed mainly, to use them in activating background knowledge about English texts which students should study during my classes. Recognizing some students were interested in translating work, I started students' translating groups with them. I monthly assigned groups of four or five students a task and monitored and helped them translate and improve their English. I have been running similar club activities and classes since then. I am so excited when I see them start to get motivated and take steps being a translator themselves.

I love musicals. Though I am not knowledeable about music, I love the emotion that I feel when music and acting get together. That is why the very first translation work of mine was to translate 3 hours video clips of the muscial Les miserables into Korean. I was eager to spread the feeling and emotion that I felt to others who don't know English and couldn't watch the video. Though I don't translate musicals or shows anymore still a big fan of musicals. Recently I got a training of producing musicals and joined teachers musical group to enrich my life. Apart from musicals, I am also interested in astronomy and love taking pictures of startrails.

Being an English teacher, I feel I need to have vast knowledge and experience about different things about the world as I need to cover different English texts about different things everyday and good stories motivate my students. Fortunately, I have quite many stories to tell my students, including some personal of mine. When I was a 6 years old, I was diagnosed leukemia which literally devastated my family. After 2 years of chemotheraphy I got over. But, the illness recurred when I was 10 years old. I got bone marrow trans plant surgery. And the bone marrow was from my father. Since his bone marrow wasn't totally match mine, the chance of me surviging was not sure at all. But I got over and became a teacher 15 years after the surgery. Nobody in my family including me expected that I would survive and live a normal life. I here I am teaching my students and living a wonderful life. Most students who see me first never imagine my past because I am one of the most active and looking happy teacher they have ever seen. When my students are tired or seem demotivated I tell them a detailed story of mine and they look me differently and start to think differently. I love the way I survived and I love the way my life goes.

I got to know TED in 2014 in a teachers’ training course in the UK. I used TED-Ed videos for warming up my reading classes and happend to know the neccesity of translating some videos into Korean. After participating as a translator, I recognized that students are interested in translation. Since then I started running translation club activities and lessons in my school and have been training young translators.

I'm not excellent at a particular thing. But I am interested in most anything. I think myself as a jack of all trades - master of some :-)