Graduate explored her heritage while teaching in Korea

Amanda Stephens' love for imparting knowledge and learning about her own heritage recently took her halfway around the world.

The graduate of Siena College, Loudonville, has just returned from a year as an English teacher at the Yeon Sei Language School in Gumi City, South Korea. She taught preschoolers, kindergartners, teens and businessmen.

In a way, she was also going home: Her mother, who is from South Korea, met her father while he was in the military.

Eyes wrong

Ms. Stephens went to Siena with an interest in optometry, wishing to get involved in a career that would help "as many people as possible." But that career didn't fit, so she tried psychology, which wasn't quite right either.

She settled on teaching after joining a mentoring program for high schoolers. She tutored a teen from inner-city Albany who needed extra help to pass his Regents Earth Science exam. She knew her niche was teaching.

"Going over and over the subject, explaining, and then seeing the light bulb go on" in the minds of students inspired her, she said.

Korean connection

As a child, Ms. Stephens was never much interested in her Korean heritage. As she grew older, however, she grew more entranced with her mother's culture.

She contacted a recruiter looking for native English-speaking teachers in Korea and signed a contract to teach for a year.

Korean education is "intense," she said. Many children go to school during the day; on nights and weekends, they attend art, music, science, math and language academies to get ahead.

That is necessary in a culture where college admissions and jobs "are really, really competitive," she said. "Their periods of study are so intensive. They want to be the best, not only for their family, but for the whole of Korea."

Touring

Ms. Stephens experienced Korea during the World Cup, when entire businesses shut down and "men in three-piece suits with Korean soccer jerseys" were a common sight.

On off-days, she traveled to Seoul, and did quite a bit of sightseeing with friends, even visiting the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea with family members who still live in South Korea.

It was "emotional," she said. "People were crying."

Impressions

Living in a foreign country, Ms. Stephens said, is better if the traveler stays open-minded and adapts to new customs.

"In America, we take so many things for granted," she noted. "Going to a whole different country forces us to open our eyes and to see so many more things."

Ms. Stephens' faith helped during her first few months when she couldn't read Korean letters and found it difficult to phone or to distinguish laundry soap from dish soap.

"You just have to trust God and have faith that God has a plan for you," she declared.

Family

Those difficult first few months were a learning experience that brought her closer to her family, especially her mother and grandmother.

"Now I can speak to them in their own language," she explained. "My grandmother came here when I was seven, and now I know how she felt. I can empathize."

(Amanda Stephens grew up attending St. Mary of the Assumption mission church in Middleville and St. John the Baptist Church in Newport, where she took up the collection as a child, volunteered with other Catholic youth at church dinners and nursing homes, and taught faith formation classes for kindergartners. At Siena, Ms. Stephens recruited Biology Club members to expand a tutoring program at a charter school in Albany, coordinated the East Asian Students Association, served as a member of the Sister Thea Bowman Women's Center Advisory Committee, and participated in the Relay for Life, Habitat for Humanity and a multicultural book club.)

(8/23/07)