preface

Look at me

01 Thoughts on why you do that
02 The innate nature of a teacher
03 Lonely Growth
04 A classroom with tolerance and consideration
05 Love is something you can only give after receiving it
06 Reasons to endure even when things are difficult
07 Today
08 Dignified attitude toward parents
09 Apron
10 Reasons Why Teachers Need Character
11 The kind of talent the world wants these days
12 Where it should be
13 Partnerships are needed
14. Treat your emotions with respect
15 Study is necessary
16 Comenius
17 Kindergartens and daycare centers
18 Ways to Be Patriotic

See a child

19 children
20 Heart Vessels
21 Generosity
22 Cursive script
23 small seeds
24 The knots and knots of the tree
25 Things You Get for Free
26 Commonalities Between Letters and Mathematics
27 A child absorbed in play
28 Weather
29 year old habits
Miracle in Cell No. 30
31. The Blue Fish
32 Fair Favoritism
33 Introverted Child
34 A child who does not listen
35 years old
36 understand

Face to face

37 The Power of Empathy
38 mirrors
39 Waiting
40 ZPD: The Subtle Boundary of Interaction
41 A and B
42 Teacher-like words
43 Without missing a single day
44 Yes, yes, teacher
45 Wise Discipline
46 Small Promises
47 Love in Progress
48 What to ask
49 Love that covers mistakes
50 Pretend not to see
51 Predictability
52 The Dilemma of Praise
53 The Power of a Smile

divide

54 Creating something new
55 Bucket List
56 The Connection Between Language and Thought
57 Areas of Interest
58 Listening Practice
Introduction of 59 activities
60 Romantic Places
61 Reasons for Telling Fairy Tales
62 The Taste of Fairy Tales
63 The Taste of the East Pole
64 Cheerful, refreshing, and exhilarating
65 Give equal opportunity to answer
66 What's more important is being together
67. A time to share joy at school.
68 Time to organize and be considerate
69 Nap, a time like medicine
70 Classrooms with Plants
71 Warm Table
72 Camp Bindung Bindung
73 How to eat well and live well
74 You can tell a relationship between two people by looking at them.
75 Communicate warmly with parents
76 Moments when patriotism is demonstrated
77 Oh, let's not do this

Conclusion

As a teacher of early childhood education, I want to share a story with you who wants to live a better life as a human being.

I have been working in early childhood education for a long time.
I was a kindergarten teacher for over 10 years, and my son was once a child in my class who 'couldn't call his mother 'mother'.
Having run an institution that teaches English to young children for several years, I have often wondered about the development of their native language and critical thinking skills.
I have met daycare teachers and helped out at daycare centers for a long time, and I am currently working at a university to train daycare teachers.
In my previous work, “I Want to Communicate with Children,” I talked a lot about the interaction between teachers and children.
Over the past two years, while working on character and ethics education for early childhood teachers, I have come to define what it means to be a teacher.
I believe that being a teacher means achieving harmony between one's life as a teacher and one's life as a human being.
I thought that living like a teacher was the same as living according to human nature.
You cannot become a good teacher by just knowing 'how to teach well'.
You have to know 'how to live well' to become a good teacher.

Infancy and early childhood are the most dramatic periods of development in life.
It is the time when we finally learn to walk after falling down hundreds of times, and when crying develops into fluent language.
When we grow up, we don't remember that great learning.
That's why teaching and caring for young children is difficult.
Teaching young children is always awkward because we don't remember 'I learned to talk like this when I was three,' or 'I learned to play with my friends like this when I was four.'
It's a past that we've all been through, but most of us don't remember it.
Therefore, those who teach young children need to study.
A teacher of infants and toddlers is someone who encounters their own past that they had completely forgotten and finally understands it, and comforts and embraces them.


Teachers should be like teachers.
Among countless relationships, the relationship between teacher and student is special.
A teacher is someone who is allowed to influence the lives of others.
Especially teachers of young children are responsible for how their children's lives will unfold.
A teacher believes that small words and actions can change a child's life.
It's like an angle, it may seem a little wide at first, but it widens infinitely depending on the direction of the angle.


Being a teacher involves knowing and doing.
'Knowing' means constantly studying the basic ethics, responsibilities, professional duties, and academic theories of the job of a teacher.
Applying and practicing what you know in practice both inside and outside the classroom is 'doing'.
Only when these two things are accomplished can the teacher be complete.
It is of no use if you do not act on what you know or do not look back on what you have done.
Just as a teacher is someone who guides people's growth, it is the nature of a teacher to never stop growing.


My father's cursive writing became the starting point for this writing.
The cursive writing is a record of my father's exemplary writings, written while he was immersed in reading and contemplation throughout his life.
My father carefully copied down famous passages from ancient texts and books, such as the Analects of Confucius, Mencius, Tao Te Ching, and Doctrine of the Mean.
One day, when he was seriously ill, he was so moved that he passed down his cursive script to me.
The small notebook was filled with a mixture of Chinese characters, Korean, and English.
Each letter was powerful and straight, like the countless stars in the night sky.
As I read my father's handwriting, I realized that life wisdom and teaching ability are one and the same.
Confucius's benevolence is the way to overcome oneself and treat others with courtesy, which is the same as the heart of a teacher.
The Doctrine of the Mean is to find the center of one's mind according to the situation, and this is also the proper way for a teacher.
There is a passage in Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" that says, "Governing a country is like grilling a small fish."
If you turn small fish over frequently when grilling, the flesh will fall apart, and if you don't turn it over at the right time, it will burn and become inedible.
Even when a monarch governs a great country, he must watch, wait, and know the right time, just as he would when grilling a fish.
The wisdom of living with children is no different.
The fact that Confucius and Mencius are mixed in here and there in the text is because they were copied from my father's cursive script.
It is an effort to learn the new by studying the old, so it is different from plagiarism.
The occasional appearance of Piaget and Vygotsky is an insertion of my shallow knowledge.
We have mobilized knowledge from the East and the West, past and present, to comfort and encourage teachers who are struggling, distressed and conflicted in the classroom.
I woven what I know and what I think crosswise and vertically, like weaving.


I divided the story into four main parts.
In 'Look at Me', we have included articles necessary for the process of looking back on oneself and gaining the wisdom of becoming a teacher.
'Seeing a Child' contains the necessary texts to understand, empathize with, and accept infants and toddlers.
'Facing' contains the methods needed for teachers and children to communicate and interact, and 'Sharing' contains various aspects of teachers' lives centered around real-life stories that occur in teaching practice.


I hope that all prospective early childhood teachers, beginning teachers just starting out, and all early childhood teachers who aspire to further their careers will find strength in reading this article.
Although this book is very lacking, I hope that it will serve as a mirror for current teachers to look back on, and as a good starting point for prospective teachers.
Just as a pill that is good for the body but bitter and difficult to swallow is coated with sugar, a heavy story is written in a light manner, so you can swallow it with a happy heart.
I hope that through this book, you will no longer feel guilty about your mistakes.
Because teachers are not complete beings who have already grown, but rather constantly growing organisms.
And I hope you will encounter this writing as if you were talking to a person who dedicates himself to writing, imagining the early childhood teachers of this land as his only readers.

Finally, I close this article by thanking my father.
This writing began with my father, who taught me that life is about learning the harmonious rhythm of inhalation and exhalation, telling me not to grow tall but to spread my branches wide and grow slowly.
Although he always felt sorry for not doing anything for me, my father's warm intellect remains in my thoughts.
In this way, he gave us the wisdom that one person's sincere life will live forever in the lives of others.
I want to share that wisdom with you, the one reading this.


Summer 2016
Author Choi Myeong-hee