What Do I Say to My Child's Korean Teacher?

Introduce yourself as your child's parent, ask two questions, and leave knowing one thing you can do at home. A school meeting is a short formal exchange with a fixed shape, not a conversation, so the Korean it needs is four sentences at the edges and two questions in the middle.

This is a different register from talking to family. It is polite, brief, and nobody is trying to get to know you.

Opening

Two things happen at once here: you greet, and you establish who you are in relation to the child. Korean does the second with the child's name.

Swap in your own child's name. A father says 아버지 in place of 어머니. 선생님 is the title and it is used on its own, in place of a name, throughout the meeting.

The two questions that do the work

You do not need to steer the meeting. The teacher has things to tell you. These two open it and then hand it back.

The second is the useful one. It moves the meeting from assessment to action and it is the question teachers are most ready to answer.

Saying where your Korean is

Worth doing once, early, and then not again. It changes the speed of everything that follows.

Ending with 서요 leaves the sentence open rather than closing it, which is how this is normally said. It reads as explaining, not apologising, and that is the tone you want.

Closing

Short, and it is the same pair every time.

안녕히 계세요 is the one you use when they stay and you go, which is always the case at a school.

What not to bring

• A prepared paragraph. The teacher leads. A script you cannot get through makes the meeting longer for both of you.
• Family-register Korean. The forms you use at your in-laws' house are warmer than this room wants. This is an institutional exchange and plain polite Korean is exactly right.
• An interpreter you did not clear. Some schools will arrange support if asked in advance. Asking beforehand is normal; arriving with somebody unannounced is not.

The step people skip

Asking is the easy half. The answer is what you actually came for, so have one line ready for catching it and one for checking what it means you should do.

The second one turns whatever you heard into something you can confirm. Teachers answer it in one word, which is the kind of answer you can catch.

The short version

Four sentences at the edges, two questions in the middle, and a teacher who is going to do most of the talking. That is the whole shape, and it is shorter than the version you are dreading.

Read next

• Foreign Daughter-in-Law: What Do I Actually Say Every Day?
• Meeting Your Korean Partner's Parents: What Do I Say?