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One day in November 2012, I came across an official note on the East Asian History Syllabus Contest organized by the Northeast Asian History Foundation. That's when I felt like demonstrating my efforts that went into the East Asian History class that I began to teach from the fall semester and how they had paid off, and looked back on the first day of teaching that class.

When I First Opened the "East Asian History Textbook"

From the fall semester of 2012, I was to teach East Asian History for the first time. I was no more familiar with this new subject than my students. When I first opened the textbook with little background information, I assumed that it would be a condensed version of the world history textbook which I had been teaching every year. I was wrong. It drove me to panic. The unfamiliarity of the course title aside, the textbook contained the two baffling elements. The first was 'the history of Vietnam' to which I had never been exposed before. The second was the 'topical approach' which would require exploring the histories of four countries all at once. To surmount them, I would have needed the kind of time and energy that I had invested in preparing my very first class. But I had neither of them, lost to all the administrative chores I had to do and all the supplementary classes I had to teach during the breaks. Time passed quickly and when the fall semester came around, I was hardly prepared to teach the East Asian history class.

Teaching six classes a week, I had a hard day every day. As history has been excluded from the curriculum relevant to the official college entrance exams, East Asian History is the only history course remaining in the new curriculum. When I started teaching the class, I felt a burden on my shoulders as though it would be my fault if this course also failed to survive. Fortunately, I had a fair amount of background knowledge in East Asian history compared with other history teachers, gained from teaching world history over the past few years. But I still found 'topical approach' challenging, until an idea crossed my mind: engage the students in the class. The idea was to give them the assignment of exploring the history, people, culture, and lifestyle of East Asian countries, and choosing a topic of their interest for presentation.

Fortunately, the results were satisfactory. As it turned out, our students were more creative, better at collecting information, and more full of ideas than us teachers, as if proving the old Korean saying about students being better than their teachers. For example, one student presented a self-created video featuring the religions of different countries. A soccer-loving student gave an expert-level presentation of the history of soccer by country. Another student, who was an aspiring producer, presented the stories of great men and women by country recast in the e-Channel documentary format. An aficionado of soap operas gave a comparative description of the characteristics of soap operas and their countries. Other additional topics were also covered, presented in various forms, including lifestyle and culture by country, the similarities and differences among the countries in light of the national founding myths.

The Benefits of the Students Topical Presentations

Here are the benefits of the topical presentations by the students. First of all, through the presentations, the subject of East Asian history naturally interested the students. They helped the students feel that East Asian history was not a boring course about dry facts but it was a subject alive and relevant to their life. Secondly, the students were allowed to find out themselves the similarities and differences among the East Asian countries surrounding Korea. While studying the topics of their choice for presentation, the students could naturally understand and accept the differences among the countries and feel closer to other countries through their similarities. Thirdly, the presentations increased the students' interest and participation in the class. Through active participation in the class, the students could review each of the topics together and share the knowledge. Fourthly, the presentations were also a good opportunity for me as a teacher to learn a lot from the students. Through the topical presentations by the students, I could collect a tremendous amount of materials within a short period of time, and slowly began to get a fairly good idea as to how I should approach the East Asian history course.

What the 'East Asian History Syllabus Contest' Left Me

The East Asian History Syllabus Contest, which took place when I was wrapping up the class after trial and error throughout the semester, allowed me to look back on myself, ask myself how I should conduct the class, and gave me a good chance to summarize my teaching materials used over the last semester. Though humble as they may be, I wanted to show the works of my students, and put myself up for evaluation. So I designed a syllabus for submission, but it was only based on one unit because my time was limited due to the reports and exams at the end of November, though I know that they are only excuses. I wish that the NAHF had announced the contest earlier in the semester so that the teachers could have more time for planning and collecting high-quality materials. Anyway, the contest gave me a great opportunity to present something of my class for the first time in 13 years of my career as a history teacher. Hopefully, my humble teaching syllabus will be of help, however little it may be, to someone. And this contest also gave me an opportunity to be provided with various teaching materials. As a history teacher, I hope that there will be more of this opportunity that allows fellow schoolteachers to look back on their class and share a variety of information. As an additional note, the East Asian History Teachers Training, in which I finally had the luck to participate after three failed attempts, was definitely worth my trip all the way from Busan.

This training allowed me to share my worries as a history teacher with others, and it also became a turning point for me in finding my path ahead as a history teacher. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Northeast Asian History Foundation for providing various opportunities for history teachers. I hope that the NAHF will continue to provide various programs that will enhance the morale of history teachers, allow them to share information, and advance history education. In particular, if the NAHF offered special lectures by experts during breaks, I am more than willing to travel all the way from Busan at any time to attend them.

Editor's Note: Last November, the NAHF organized a contest for middle school and high school history teachers who are teaching, or interested in teaching, the East Asian History class, inviting them to design and submit a syllabus of the East Asian History course. Here is an essay by one of the contestants, Ms. Kim Jung-mi, who received the Excellence Award.