Jennifer was fortunate enough to have worked and lived abroad in South Korea. She first worked through EPIK (English Program in Korea), a government program much like Japan's JET Program where native English speakers are contracted to teach through the public school system for a year. Jennifer was stationed in Gangwon-do (or Gangwon Province, the location of the Winter Olympics in 2018), which is famed for its natural beauty (many well-known K-dramas have been filmed there). Jennifer was sent to Samcheok (population of about 80,000 people located on the southeastern corner of the province), where she ended up living for three years. She taught at Jangho Elementary School (the tiniest school she has ever seen since there was a total of about 30 students from preschool to 6th grade--Jangho is a fishing village) for a year and four months, Samil Middle School (all boys school) for a year, and Samcheok Boys High School for two years. Samcheok has many beautiful beaches, so Jennifer spent many weekends swimming to her heart's content. It was through living in Samcheok that she discovered she loves to swim.
She wanted to try teaching university students, so she found a job as a visiting professor in Gangneung (population about 213,000), a coastal town two hours north of Samcheok. Although she enjoyed the experience immensely, she became burnt out and did not want to teach in classroom settings anymore. Along with lesson planning and teaching students from beginner to advanced, she also had to create and teach month-long English camps during the winter and summer. She also has experience advising the students on one-on-one sessions and preparing them for the TOEIC speaking test. She has also taught them one-hour lessons on multimedia and current events, and assisted with special events such as sport's activities, scavenger hunts and Halloween parties.
After living for five years in Gangwon Province, she wanted to convert to an office job in a corporate setting and moved to Seoul to start a new job as a curriculum developer for the R&D team of a large English education company. She was in charge of the curriculum for the intermediate to advanced level students of a young learner's program. Jennifer regularly made lesson plans for the academy-style classes, suggested workbooks and other materials for new classes, and also made supplementary materials. She particularly enjoyed using InDesign to design and determine content for workbooks, particularly those that supplemented novels that were being taught. She regularly monitored classrooms to see the effectiveness of the curriculum, and has also been the MC for the speech festival held yearly for its successful Pre-School Academy.
Now that she is back in the States, she has worked for tutoring institutions that often has her teaching at a 1:3 ratio, which she enjoys. Jennifer loves to be around students and likes to mentor and advise them. Tutoring helps satisfy this part of her.