I have interviewed my mother, the most important person in my life who has always been by my side and the one I admire the most. She is 47 years old and her original name was Jung-Hee Yoo but she changed her name when she started studying abroad to Sena Yoo. She is currently a Mathematics coordinator teacher for a 1st year classroom at Hyundai Foreign primary school and also a Cambridge YLE Oral examiner. She started teaching in 1985 at the age of 23 meaning that she spent nearly half of her life in teaching.
She said "well... I was a teacher for whole my life except those 3 years that I spent raising you two...(me and my little brother)". I asked, "What made you to become a teacher?" so she started explaining from her childhood.
"My dad passed away when I was 10. That was very shocking to me at the time. My relatives used to tell me that if I do something wrong, then people would think that's because I don't have a dad and I would go wrong way. So I tried hard do be a good girl. I didn't like hearing from people that I was a bad girl due to my father's absence."
She told me that she started going church when she was 6 years old and that church was very close to her, so she spent most of her time growing up in church. She was a girl who prayed, sang hymns and tried everything what the bible, pastor and Sunday teacher said what she should do and don't. She was very quiet but very mature and serious.
She said "Well... simply I was very religious so I wanted to become a pastor. But, I failed to go to a theological university. Many people in the church said that I was very good with children and I should become a teacher. But since my father passed away, I grew in a very poor condition. None of my family or relatives thought I should go to university.
Also I never thought that I was able to continue getting higher education. So I started as a Sunday school teacher when I became a high school student and that has pulled the trigger of me going to Pai-Chai University studying to become a teacher".
After getting into the university and studying to become a teacher, that was not the final goal of her life. No way, that is not my mother. She dreamed of studying abroad becoming an international teacher but there was no chance since she got married. However for some reason she did not stop dreaming. She strongly believed that babies should be raised by their mother at least for the first couple of years as she learned from her childhood, she wanted to keep those important years. When I was 8 she started to enroll with her dream, she first went to Malaysia for a year and studied 3 years in total getting M/Ed. degree in England. After finishing her study she got a job at a primary school and started a new life in England. She always says to me "always pray to God, He is the life guider".
There are few things that she emphasizes, first is live by God, second is be a human, third is to challenge yourself (don't just look tomorrow, see the future) and try not to hate anyone in your life.
Jae-Chun Seo is currently a Woosong Student in the Globe Department
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