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Grassroots OER

Let me put this out there: I didn't originally head to South Korea because I always wanted to become an English Teacher. I wanted to travel, see the world, and mainly just get out of Arizona and try to figure out my life a little bit. The best way to do all of those things was through teaching ESL. I was far from the only person adventuring, and over the years, I met all sorts of people from different countries who were teaching ESL for some such reason. These people, for the most part, weren't career educators. I know I wasn't; All I had was a degree in Journalism. But for some reason, we were allowed in the country to teach, and that is what we all did, to varying degrees of success.

Since a few expats teaching ESL in South Korea had an educational background, we often drew a blank on what to teach (assuming we weren't being supplied with lessons by our schools). This led to the natural formation of Facebook groups and email chains where expats would share lessons and shared Google Drive folders where successful lessons were available for anyone to download. This was our community's grassroots OER! The instructional content was rarely flashy (see the image for proof of that), but it was functional, fun, and easy to implement. This was a game-changer for the community, and the content evolved with every new upload from newer expats who wanted to contribute.

This was a long time ago, and yet I still have some lessons from that time floating around my Google Drive. With this being the tail end of my MS degree path, I've read up on MERLOT and OER Commons before, and each time it brings back fond memories of my old community. 


Comments

  1. StephenJune 12, 2025 at 10:48 PM

    I started teaching in South Korea in 2010. The resource all my expat coworkers in South Korea used was Waygook.org. The name 'waygook' is short for waygookin, essentially means 'foreigner' 외 (wae) = outside, 국 (guk) = country 인 (in) = person. At the time there was only one textbook for every public elementary school English teacher, so it was easy to share materials. As a new teacher this was a total godsend to me. I had an entire week-long summer camp planned in about one day because people openly shared their materials on Waygook. Apparently, there were dedicated teachers who spent all their mandatory deskwarming time (sitting at a desk at school with no teaching responsibilities) during the holidays creating lesson materials. I heard later on that the site owner implemented some policies that forced teachers to share materials before they could download. Then there was a subscription fee that led to its eventual downfall. Last I heard, Waygook is down for good, which is a little sad for me because it was such a wonderful resource as a new, isolated public school English teacher.

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    Replies
    1. AyaJune 13, 2025 at 9:27 PM

      I taught in South Korea in 2013. Waygook was a lifesaver! I just graduated with a degree in psychology and had no formal training as a teacher. On top of that all of the teaching materials in the room assigned to me were locked away, so I had to come up with lessons from scratch. It was such a great resource. It's sad to hear it's not available anymore.

      Delete
  2. --Adam C.June 14, 2025 at 3:22 PM

    Ahhhh yes. Waygook certainly saved me more times than I can count. It makes me curious if something new has sprung up to fill the void it left.

    ReplyDelete

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