Day: October 31, 2013

Mostly today at work I was hosting Halloween parties for groups of elementary students. I guess it ends up being the most important "holiday" event at our hagwon – which makes sense: Halloween is essentially the U.S.'s "children's day."

But also today, I found out that several of my longest-term students in my most advanced middle-school class are leaving our hagwon. I was quite sad to hear this – I've been out of touch with the Tuesday-Thursday cohorts because of my post-cancer part-time status, so I haven't been following events as closely as I normally try to do.

Walking home from work, I was quite moody and sad, thinking about how I've known two of these departing students for the entire time I've been teaching at Karma – since May of 2011. It's hard to see them moving on, but, of course, that's what students do.

Unlike public school teaching, there's not really any such thing as a "yearbook" for hagwon students. I began to daydream and speculate as to how a hagwon yearbook might be done – it can't be based on fixed enrollment periods, since students are constantly coming and going. It would have to be monthly. With some appropriate technology (e.g. social networking of some kind) I think it wouldn't be hard to make a hagwon "yearbook," however. It would be more like a "monthbook." I should discuss this with my boss.

[daily log: walking, 3 km]