Each Thursday there is a little staff meeting at work. It’s generally in Korean, so I don’t worry too much about paying attention, as I know that if some point or aspect is important and relevant to me in particular, someone will make sure I’ve understood. Not to mention the fact that the meeting always starts at around 3:30, which is when I actually have a class to go teach.
On the little meeting agendas that the boss makes and hands out, he is fond of putting these little pep-talks or aphorisms or proverbs. For some reason, I more-or-less understood the one on yesterday’s. It said: “가르친다는 것은 오직 희망만을 얘기하는 것이다.” Roughly, it means: “Teaching is nothing more than talking about [or encouraging] hope.” I thought it was a nice thought.
Yesterday was one of those days when I’m reminded of why I have decided that teaching is the right sort of job for me. It was one of those days when I start grumpy and end happy. It’s the only job I’ve ever had where it often (though, obviously, not always) works that way.
I was feeling really frustrated and down after yesterday, and after sleeping badly, and feeling unhealthy and all that, besides. Not to mention the fact that some charmless woman on the street accidentally wacked me in the face with her umbrella on the way to work.
But then I had 6 hours of good classes. All strung along in a row. Each different, but each positive or successful in some small way. Connecting with kids, or having fun, or joking around, or making a point and being taken seriously.
So by the end of the day, I still felt tired, but I felt positive about my work, anyway. My boss asked me if I agreed with his little aphorism, mentioned above. “Well, not completely,” I extemporized.
“You always have to argue,” he joked, shaking his head in false exasperation. It’s a bit of a running gag, I suppose. It’s one way in which I am utterly, characteristically un-Korean, this business of declaring my differing opinion to my coworkers or boss. Korean culture is full of agreement and (verbal) harmony and lip service and (feigned) consensus. The proper Korean answer to his question would be, “Yes, boss.”
A couple of the highlights from the students.
A girl named Eun-sol (who I don’t actually have for a class right now) saw me in the hall between classes and when I said “How are you?” she said, triumphantly, “I’m not hungry.” Normally, this would be a non-sequitur, but with Eun-sol, it made perfect sense, and was funny. Eun-sol is always hungry. And I joke with her about it. So she was reporting a major accomplishment, or life-milestone, in not being hungry. It seems small, but these are the “real communicative moments” that make language-teaching seem interesting, to me.
Later, in another lowish-level class, a we had read a passage about history. Some European war that is utterly contextless and meaningless to these Korean kids, who aren’t even exposed to non-Asian history or social studies in the public school curriculum until sometime in high school. So after talking about it a little bit, I asked what seemed a not-too-difficult question: when was the war? The date was right in the passage, on the page in front of them – one of them was bound to figure it out. But the silence was epic. And it lasted a long time, against further hintings and promptings. Finally a boy named Hyeong-uk tentatively raised his hand. Excitedly, I called on him, and repeated the question, “when was the war?”
“Past,” he answered, deadpan.
I had to laugh, of course. This was brilliant, both in being indisputeably correct and yet utterly devoid of useful information. I couldn’t stop chuckling about it, for the rest of the class, in fact. Sometimes when students say exceptionally clever, funny things, I will write them on the board, in a corner, so we can admire them. That’s what I did.
Working in an environment where everyone has a cellphone with a camera, it’s inevitable that students take pictures of you, I suppose. I got this picture (at right) attacthed to a text message the other day. It’s kind of small format – but it’s a montage of four candidish pictures of me taken with a cell phone, and the word “smile” in the middle.
What is this, an homage? Some kid killing time, I guess. I’m glad I make them think of smiling, right?