Caveat: Cough

Cough cough cough  cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough.

Cough.

I guess something I ate (or rather, the manner in which I ate something), going down the wrong way. It's been several weeks or a month since I had that particular problem.

Cough.

And as commentary, I offer:

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Actually, before that coughing thing, I had a pretty good day.

Good night.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: Puppets Dreamed

Last night I dreamed I was wandering around the Seoul subway – which is maybe realistic given I've been taking the subway a lot more, recently, due to my many visitors, than in my usual lifestyle.

The subway was full of people from previous periods of my life – from my work in Burbank or Long Beach, from grad school at Penn in Philadelphia, from the US Army, from my undergraduate years at Macalaster and the University of Minnesota. I found a group of people that included some Burbank coworkers along with some acquaintances from my undergraduate years in a long pedestrian passage of the subway, where they were apparently staging a talent show.

I was invited to join in, but I said I had no talent. So I sat down on the floor to watch. There were several children performing a puppet show, but the stage-window apparatus fell down, so they were just sitting on the floor holding the puppets up. All through this, regular subway patrons kept walking past, oblivious.

Many of the people present were discussing the puppet show, saying how badly the children were doing. One girl had on a frilly dress and was weilding a dragon puppet and was having trouble disentangling the long tendrils attached to the dragon-puppet's head from the ruffles on her dress. You could see she was on the verge of tears with frustration. A boy had a puppet of a hunter or soldier, but he wasn't holding it up above his head, so he was blocking the view of it with his head and other arm. I felt compelled to defend the children's efforts against the criticisms of the audience, but I was being ignored. Finally, I gave up and wandered off through the subway again.

I awoke and it was 4 am. My apartment had become quite chilly – the weather station on my phone said it was 5 degrees (C) out.  I know my mother – staying with me currently – doesn't like cold, so I closed my window. I lay awake for a long time – for some reason the fragment of dream stayed vividly with me.

Caveat: Money No Object

I don't have much to post this morning, after a gloomy evening last night. So here is something "inspirational" I saw circulating on the interwebs a while back and set aside for a moment such as this when I had nothing much to post. I want to show it to my students, maybe, if I can get subtitles or script for it.

Alan Watts, "What if money were no object?"

Caveat: Catching Up

I said I'd post some more photos from the Sokcho trip. Here are few from my camera (i.e. phone) – somewhat out of order but from 낙산사 and 속초.

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Mostly, I wasn't taking pictures because my battery was running down too fast and I'd forgotten my charger. So I have "borrowed" some pictures from Jacob – who is the person who should be credited for the excellent photography, not me. Here are some of his from 낙산사 and 진전사.

Jacob 329

Jacob 326

Jacob 332

Jacob 348

Jacob 358

Jacob 361

Jacob 366

Jacob 367

Jacob 377


At work today things went OK, but the atmosphere was a bit tense and I ended up feeling pretty gloomy about it. I wish there was a way for me to help solve the problems of those around me, but basically I'm helpless. My efforts and work are not good for much, and furthermore I'm a bit handicapped at the moment, by my pain and the limitations of my own capacity for teaching and working. Helplessness is a hard feeling to struggle with.

[daily log: walking, 6 km]

caveat: monday morning return

since the direct bus from sokcho to goyang is only three hours, and since i work afternoons, there is no problem coming back today, monday morning, instead of having to do it sunday night. i guess thats the compensation for working saturday mornings. so here i sit on the bus, a-bloggin.

yesterday, after naksan temple, we took a taxi to another temple that i had essentially identified at random on a map, named 진전사 [jinjeon temple]. the taxi ride through the rural gangwon countyside was quite beautiful and scenic, and the temple up in the mountain was much less crowded than down on the coast. in fact, the temple was utterly deserted, and appeared to be in the very early stages of a major restoration, such that most of the buildings on the site map didnt actually exist.

one other tourist showed up while we were there, and i chatted with him in my rudimentary way – he was a middle-aged korean guy who knew zero english.

later, when ann, jacob and i had made our way down the long steep driveway to the one-lane country road that led up the valley to the temple, i was contemplating calling a taxi for our return to sokcho (i had taken a business card from the taxista on the way up so i had a number). we stopped to examine another stele/pagoda at the roadside, and that same tourist guy from earlier was there. much to our gratitude, he said he lived in sokcho and was happy to drive us back into town.

he worked in a bank, but was currently out on leave for surgery. lo and behold, he had recently had back surgery but had in fact had cancer some years back. we sorted all this out entirely in korean, and i conveyed some part of my story too. he very kindly dropped us right at the bus terminal, near our hotel. anyway, i have his kakao (korean instant messaging app) so i will try to stay in touch.

later, jacob and i walked in a big circle around sokcho harbor and found a store selling a charging cord for my phone – i stupidly had left my charger at home. we also saw a very amateurish "multicultural" parade in downtown sokcho, as part of some fall festival. there was a troupe of amazingly convincing zombies, some ghanian drummers, and a stunningly large delegation of colombians for some unfathomable reason.

after jacob and i got back to the hotel, we went to dinner at what was possibly the most disorganized restaurant in south korea – the food they were willing to serve wasnt what was on the menu, and what we thought we ordered wasnt quite what we got, and it all took a very long time. despite that, i got some pasta in a cream-seafood sauce that ended up being really easy for me to eat given my current handicap. my mothers sandwich was "surprising" but she said it was ok.

that was our sunday. i got my phone charged overnight. i will post some pictures later.

caveat: fingernails and food – discuss

we decided that after i got off work today, we would have a weekend adventure. my mom encouraged me: "lets go somewhere fun for you too," she said. i asked if she was ok with an overnight trip. she was. i knew jacob would be game for an immersive adventure of any kind.

so now, having packed and raced to the goyang bus terminal after i got home from work at three, we are on a bus to sokcho, on south koreas northeast coast. the three hour trip is almost over. ever since andrew and hollye had come over here while i was being radiationed, ive been jealous. its one corner of korea i havent yet visited.

my mother and jacob have been talking continuously for the last hour – which is good since after teaching and talking too much, my mouth is sore. the topic of the conversation is fingernails and food – not the two topics together, but rather alternating.

i wonder if some of the koreans around us on the mostly full bus understand. if so, what do they make of it? – i cant help but imagine playing a recording of such an extended yet largely unintellectual conversation to my students. what kinds of comprehension questions might i write?

Caveat: Not Going to Xinjiang Anytime Soon

Xinjiang_in_China_(de-facto).svgI'm actually really tired tonight. I took Ann and Jacob into Seoul earlier today, then came home and tried to eat lunch (which didn't go well) and then raced off to work. I got home around ten. I'll work in the morning tomorrow, and then I will take my guests on an adventure of some kind.

I spent about 30 minutes just now surfing google earth, looking at pictures of Western China (ie. Xinjiang). Why does that part of the world interest me? I have no intention of traveling there, unless I were to acquire a traveling companion who wanted to go there – I am utterly finished with the idea of traveling alone. But undeniably there is a kind of draw that the region exerts for me, along with central Siberia and Mongolia.

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

Caveat: Calhoun

CalhounOK, so sometimes I just read history, fairly randomly. Not only books, but online, too – reading wikipedia articles. The other day I was surfing around articles on 19th century US history.

I was reading an article about John C. Calhoun, the senator and slavery-defender. I observed that in the picture in the wikipedia article, he is a scary-looking dude. So I went to see if there were more flattering images of him, and instead I found this (at left) – which made me laugh.

Caveat: Dragging More People Up a Mountain to a Temple

I dragged Ann and Jacob up Gobong mountain to 영천사 [yeongcheon temple]. I felt guilty about it afterward because I always like tromping along the trails more than most people I know and care about, but my mother felt it was a positive experience and Jacob said it was interesting too. I was glad she could see the little temple there – I find it very peaceful there.

Ann and Jacob are watching a cute chipmunk that was leaping around the kimchi pots on the hillside.

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2013-10-10 10.10.09

Later, I went to work but I didn't have to teach any classes. I had a few pleasant conversations with coworkers and talked for far too many hours with Ann this evening. I really enjoy the conversations I can have with my mother more than most any other conversations I have – she and I, for obvious reasons, have a lot of common interests talk about and similar ways of talking about things even if we don't always agree. But… well, the only but is that my mouth isn't in the right condition for so much talking. So the end result of so much talking was that I felt like I should have shut up hours ago – it aggravates the post-radiation sores in my mouth to flap my tongue so much.

Harrumph. And so I whine at the internet and call it a night.

[daily log: walking, 7 km]

Caveat: you’re in America now

This anecdote was circulating on teh interwebs. I doubt its actual veracity, but I nevertheless found it compellingly funny.

(I'm waiting in line behind a woman speaking on her cellphone in another language. Ahead of me is a white man. After the woman hangs up, he speaks up.)
Man: "I didn't want to say anything while you were on the phone, but you're in America now. You need to speak English."
Woman: "Excuse me?"
Man: *very slow* "If you want to speak Mexican, go back to Mexico. In America, we speak English."
Woman: "Sir, I was speaking Navajo. If you want to speak English, go back to England."

Caveat: More and more guests

I met my mom at the airport this morning. Per our previous discussion, she brought with her the son of a next-door neighbor who is named Jacob – a 15 year old Australian. She lives out in the middle of nowhere, so neighbors are close there – like family. So she interacts with him and his family a lot. It's kind of a chance repay some kindnesses from her neighbors, and also to allow him to "see the world" or at least one part of it – it's the first time he's been out of the country. This kind of generous gesture is hardly uncommon from my mom, so in fact when she suggested it earlier when we'd been planning her trip to visit I was in no way surprised, but I guess I wasn't sure it would really happen so I held off announcing it to blog-land.

So in fact I have two guests. Jacob is of course wide-eyed and interested in Korea, though a bit worn down currently from the long flight and I think a bit culture-shocked, as is to be expected. After taking my mom to the HomePlus store this morning, we had lunch at the Soupy restaurant that I discovered with Mary and Wendy a few weeks ago, and then when my mom lay down for a nap, I took Jacob on an extended walking tour of Ilsan – we saw Jeongbal Hill, my cancer hospital, the Madu neighborhood, the WesternDom mall, and part of Lake Park. We covered 8 km. Now he's exhausted. That's good. I didn't take any pictures, because it was all pretty familiar territory I guess. Today was a holiday – the newly minted "Hangeul Day" which was long ago a holiday but was out of fashion for several decades and only last year re-instated. So everywhere was crowded – especially the park. I like being a tour guide, but I ended up talking too much, which is an actual risk with my mouth in its current state – at least a risk for more discomfort.


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[daily log: walking, 9.5 km]

Caveat: Heaven having no part


220px-Herman_MelvilleGold in the Mountain

Gold in the mountain,
And gold in the glen,
And greed in the heart,
Heaven having no part,
And unsatisfied men.
– Herman Melville (American writer, 1819-1891)

Caveat: Abandoned by Ambition

I had a sort of off day, today. I was feeling pretty good yesterday, after taking Wendy to the airport, then going to the doctor (which ended up taking several hours because I had to wait several times, first to see him then to get my prescription and get it paid for), then to work, where I had three classes. I felt like my health was finally improving.

But I was tired, and when I awoke this morning, my ambition had utterly abandoned me. My mouth felt really terrible when I ate (tried to eat) my breakfast. My mouth really isn't ready to be a conduit for solid food. I gave up on a plan to do some cleaning and shopping today. Whem my mom arrives tomorrow, she'll just have to deal with things as-is.

I actually had the day off today – because on my current part-time schedule I teach Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday. So Tuesdays are off. Maybe I felt lousy because it was finally a time when I could slow down a little bit and allow myself to feel lousy – it's been a busy couple of days.

I kept getting spam phone calls today – sales people selling things on the phone. Normally when I don't recognize the phone number calling (or rather, when my phone doesn't recognize it), I simply don't answer. But with my mom traveling, I figured I should try to answer in case it was her routing some need-to-get-in-touch-with-me call from some airport. The salespeople were very persistent, even though they could tell my Korean was terrible and I had no idea what they were selling. Finally, I got pissed off and turned off the ringer on my phone. I have to go to bed early tonight, because I have to leave for the airport tomorrow at 5 am to pick up my mom.

More later, then.

Caveat: Yay TSA

I saw this article in the "Strib," and it helps one realize how pointless our "security theater" is with respect to airline travel: a 9-year-old boy snuck onto a flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas. It's kind of funny that it wasn't even an accident – the boy did it entirely intentionally: he planned his actions and then did them, over at least two days. Having spent time in the supremely disorganized Minneapolis-St Paul airport, this hardly surprises me that he got away with it so easily.

Speaking of airports, I'm going to Incheon this morning to send Wendy back home to the US. See you later.

Caveat: KFV

Today my friend Helen (a current coworker) invited Wendy and me to go to a "Korean Folk Village," located in Yongin, which is on the southeast perimeter of the megalopolis (whereas I live in the northwestern part). Another friend, Kelly (a former coworker) with her son who is 8, came along too. So the five of us drove down there and spent about 6 hours being tourists. It was fun.

Here is a whole bunch of pictures. I won't caption all of them, but provide comment on a few.

Wendy and I posing in front of some jangseung near the entrance.

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Some little ceramic statues of peasant people.

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Two Chinese tourist kids held rapt by a Korean potter demonstrating his art.

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Some dancing / samulnori performers, marching out.

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A giant pile o' people, spinning around impressively, to excellent rhythms – the medieval Korean breakdancing tradition.

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Kelly with her son jumping rope.

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A very pleasant looking reading room in a "mansion."

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A kitchen with a lot of garlic.

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We all ate lunch. Pictured are Kelly's son, Kelly, Helen and Wendy.

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A really calm, beautiful courtyard in a structure.

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Some ducks in the lake.

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A run-down looking pavilion highlighted by the afternoon sun.

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The lake, held back by a small damn across the stream along which the KFV is built.

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A group portrait.

Kfv_group

It was a good day.

[daily log: walking, 4 km]

Caveat: 훌륭한 학생이라 믿어주면 그들은 그것을 증명해준다

This aphorism was on posted on the wall of the staff room, not far from my desk. I decided to figure it out.
훌륭한                  학생이라        믿어주면
be-brilliant-PASTPART student-be-[?] believe-give-COND
그들은         그것을          증명해준다
that-PL-TOPIC that-thing-OBJ confirm-give-PRES
When you believe your students are brilliant they comfirm it.
I have no idea how the -이라 ending on the first clause’s be-verb (copula) works, but I’ve always had the impression the copula forms with -ㄹ- are a sort of residual subjunctive that doesn’t appear in any other forms, in which case it makes sense. I’m sure it has some specific grammatical name, but I don’t know what it is.
Anyway it’s a pretty good aphorism to see on the wall of a school staff room.
[daily log: walking, 6.5 km]

Caveat: What does the fox say?

Apparently this is a thing, right now.

It was circulating on the facebook this morning, when I looked inside. I'd heard a reference to it yesterday, somewhere, too, and wondered what it was about. Now I know.

What I'm listening to right now.

Ylvis, "The Fox."

My very first thought when I watched it was this: I have got to show this to my students – it's the perfect blend of ironic pop sensibilities and kindergarten English. I especially like the grandfather reading the storybook, in the video.

Lyrics:

Dog goes woof, cat goes meow.
Bird goes tweet, and mouse goes squeek.
Cow goes moo. Frog goes croak, and the elephant goes toot.
Ducks say quack and fish go blub, and the seal goes ow ow ow.
But there's one sound that no one knows…

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!
Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!
Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!
Joff-tchoff-tchoff-tchoffo-tchoffo-tchoff!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?

Big blue eyes, pointy nose, chasing mice, and digging holes.
Tiny paws, up the hill, suddenly you're standing still.
Your fur is red, so beautiful, like an angel in disguise.

But if you meet a friendly horse,
will you communicate by mo-o-o-o-orse,
mo-o-o-o-orse, mo-o-o-o-orse?
How will you speak to that h-o-o-o-orse,
h-o-o-o-orse, h-o-o-o-orse?

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?!
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!
Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!
A-hee-ahee ha-hee!

WHAT THE FOX SAY?
A-oo-oo-oo-ooo!
A-oo-oo-oo-ooo!

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?!

The secret of the fox, ancient mystery.
Somewhere deep in the woods, I know you're hiding.
What is your sound? Will we ever know?
Will always be a mystery; what do you say?

You're my guardian angel hiding in the woods.
What is your sound?
Will we ever know?
I want to, I want to, I want to know!

Fox_html_45faa178

 

Caveat: Three Months Cancer-Free

Well… as far as we know, anyway, I'm cancer-free. How can we really know?

I think this a good thing – there are things in the world I still have left to do.

But… lately, as a part of the radiation therapy aftermath, I'm experiencing a discomfort level a bit worse than my last months before the surgery that removed my tumor, 3 months ago today. So from a quality-of-life standpoint, there's room for improvement. Sigh.

Work today went OK. I had two classes. It's so hard to talk, and I worry the kids are just being polite and can't understand a word I'm saying – though the possibility that a group of 2nd grade boys are being polite is actually pretty slim, on further reflection.

What I'm listening to right now.

PfmmPsychedelic Furs, "Alice's House."

[Update, 2013-10-05 8 am: My friend Jeannine had this comment on this blog entry on facebook, this morning, and I decided it must be included here, along with my answer:

Jeannine: Cancer-free…strange words. I'm sure you know much much more than I, but my rudimentary understanding of cancer is that cell replication goes haywire quite often – but usually our immune system gets rid of them before they proliferate into a tumor. So are any of us every cancer-free? All we can do, it seems, is nurture the ecosystem of our body and help it do its job for as long as we are given.

Jared: Jeannine is right – I know that very well. Though I doubt I know more than Jeannine (biologist!). All those cells are all just swimming around , and the immune system is swimming around playing "enforcer" and we hope everyone remains a team player. Point taken. The term "cancer-free" is essentially a misnomer based on a misunderstanding of the disease. That said, I'll play along with the misunderstanding because it's a manner of positive thinking: I'll believe I'm cancer-free, and hope the immune system is listening and stays with the program.]

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

Caveat: IIRTHW Intermission – A Change of Approach

Back before I got my cancer diagnosis, I had been working – on alternate Fridays or something like that – on a little project I was calling IIRTHW (If I Ran the Hagwon). I published [broken link! FIXME] two [broken link! FIXME] parts, but my work on the promised third part was interrupted by the cancer.

In recent weeks, as I've been returning to making some effort at polishing up what was to be the third part of this essay series, I have also decided that I have another, very big problem with continuing the exploration of the chosen theme, in its current style: I keep changing my mind. This is a very grave problem, indeed, but a I suppose it is a common enough bugbear for writers who want to retain their integrity and convey their ideas with sincerity.

My third part was supposed to be either a complete or partial listing of those elements that, in my humble opinion, would constitute "My Ideal Hagwon." Yet each time I would stop working on the list of items and then return to that list later (after some break of a month, or two weeks, or whatever) I keep finding that I don't agree with one or more of the items in my list, or that I want to make some change to the details of one or more items.

This, therefore, calls for a change of strategy in terms of style of presentation. I will not post my Part III here as a blog post, but make it what my blog-host calls a "page." It's exactly like a blog post, except that it's undated – which means that I can unself-consciously return and update it and alter it to my heart's content.

There will therefore be a major caveat attached to the essay: it is and will remain, indefinitely, a "work-in-progress." One major advantage of a blog is that it allows for a sort of "snapshot-in-time" effect with respect to my state-of-mind at any given moment. But with respect to this "Ideal Hagwon" concept, I precisely don't want that effect: I want it to show my current thinking, even as that thinking is evolving (often quite radically) over time.

I'm going to post it this morning, in its current clearly rough-draft state, and then let it refine and evolve over time. Thus, without further fanfare, here is the link to that page-in-progress: [broken link! FIXME] IIRTH Part III.


In the process of returning to working on this above-mentioned project, I ran across a rather remarkable blog the other day.

It's called wangjangnim.com – essentially, it is a post-a-week about what it's like to run a hagwon, from the perspective of a foreigner (ie. non-Korean) who has a background in business (not education – and that's very noticeable and fascinating).

I'm sure there are, in fact, a large number of blogs and other online materials about what it's like to run an English hagwon, online, but, in my limited efforts to find them, they are 100% in Korean, which makes it pretty rough going for me and my limited Korean competency to wade through. What abound, instead, are blogs by foreigners and gyopos (foreign-educated Koreans) working at hagwon as NETs (native English-speaking teachers). Without exception, these blogs (no doubt including my own! – I'm not elevating myself above the pack, here) are not only rather myopic (not to say downright ignorant) about education theory and language-acquisition research, but also they are in utter denial about the business side realities of the capitalist-based free-for-all that is the Korean private education system, with all its successes and failures.

My IIRTHW posts, above, are an effort to address these shortcomings, at least with respect to my own blogular reality.

I have some minor complaints about wangjangnim.com, but the only one I will comment on at all, here, is the bizarre romanazation of the Korean Language that is implicit in the blog's title: in what phonological universe does 원장님 [wonjangnim = hagwon director] become wangjangnim? But really that's just the trained linguist in me, quibbling unnecessarily. I have a no-doubt annoying punctilliousness with respect to issues of Korean romanization which is probably incomprehensible to most people. [Update 2013-10-04 3:30 pm: the author of wangjangnim.com left a comment (below) letting me know why he chose the name wangjangnim. He said "Wangjangnim = Wongjangnim + Wangja (prince) FYI 🙂 It's a play on words." This makes perfect sense and I feel stupid for not having considered this possibility. So consider my quibble retracted!]

Setting such minor (not to say irrelevant) complaints aside, I will say that from my personal perspective, this is the best blog I have ever seen by a foreigner working in the EFL environment in Korea. It's realisitc, it has a certain subtle, self-deprecating humor, it's informed and careful, and the author clearly has a nuanced perspective both on Korean EFL and on Korean culture. I'm deeply impressed. It may be the first time I've read every single entry of a blog back to its beginning.

Even if I disagree with some of his ideas about what makes a great hagwon, I cannot recommend that blog highly enough. It's deeply thought provoking and has induced a great deal of thought on my part vis-a-vis my own IIRTHW project.

Caveat: IIRTHW Part III – My Ideal Hagwon

In the form of various unstructured entries with fairly random thoughts, I’ve been working on this project for several years, and it’s come to have the name “If I Ran The Hagwon” (abbreviated as IIRTHW). This topic seems to be evolving into my first effort at something resembling long-form journalism on my blog. Here is Part III. I posted Parts I and II several months ago. Unlike Parts I and II, this Part III is intended to be an evolving document, because, as I observed in a blog-post dated October 4th, 2013, I keep changing my mind. So… this article is permanently UNFINISHED – please bear that in mind as you read it.
UPDATE: On October 11th, 2013, a hagwon owner who blogs under the name wangjangnim wrote an extended “response” to this list of ideas (appearing simultaneously on his blog and at koreabridge.net). I think overall his response is fair, and I understand his counterpoints and criticisms. Please note, however, that if you are linking to this page from that article, that this is intended to be an evolving document (as pointed out above). Therefore I may introduce edits which alter or revise the points below in such a way as to make wangjangnim’s criticisms incoherent – indeed, I have already begun to revise some of the points to better clarify them in light of his thoughts.
[Part I]
[Part II]
Part III – My Ideal Hagwon
Now that I have established, in the previous two parts, the business context for running an English hagwon in South Korea in this day and age, I want to try to answer the question, what would make a great hagwon?
I have frequently had these “If I Ran The Hagwon” fantasies. I’ll admit, too, that I have been more than a little bit disappointed in the putative “curriculum development” aspect of my current job description – both due to my own failings and and due to the lack of genuine opportunities offered to do so. The constraints on what I can do about the curriculum in my current position at KarmaPlus Academy are even more constrained than under pre-merger Karma Academy, too.
Everything following is strictly based on my own opinions – they’re the things I would do in my hagwon. It is not my intention to exclude other, even contradictory approaches to running a hagwon. I believe very strongly that in a fragmented market, there is room for multiple products.
What comes below, then, is a list of strategies or “ways of business” that I’d like to try. This list began with the previous list I was making on my blog (entries here and here) – the individual ideas have morphed and developed but I have made an effort to retain the numbering of those earlier ideas (1-12), with new ideas added as higher numbers (13+).
Idea 1. (HR.) Weekly English Class for Korean Teachers.
The English language hagwon business has a core mission: teaching English to Korean students. Therefore language competency is at the core of the business. Because of this, I suggest that there should be a program encouraging a constant improvement of language skills on the part of all staff. The non-native-speaking English teachers (Koreans) should improve their English. Korean teachers should have some amount of time set aside each week to study their English, and this should be a compensated additional duty of the English native-speaking teachers to provide instruction.
As a point of observation: this was an actual duty of mine at my public school teaching job. Every week, I had to teach an English lesson to my fellow teachers. Frankly, I believe it’s even more important in a hagwon environment, where quality-of-instruction is paramount. It could be argued that it takes away from time teachers could be teaching or prepping for class, and thus represents an “overhead cost” that has no impact on the bottom line. I think it’s important to differentiate short-term thinking from longer-term thinking, here: are we trying to build an institution with loyal and well-qualified employees, or just trying to pay next month’s bills? I know the fiscal position of a typical Korean hagwon is perilous – but please note the use of the word “Ideal” in the title to this article.
Idea 2. (HR.) Weekly Korean Class for English Teachers.
For the same reason as Idea 1, above, vice versa, non-Korean-speaking teachers (i.e. foreign teachers) should have some amount of time set aside each week to learn Korean, and this should be a compensated additional duty of the Korean-speaking teachers. This functions as a perk for the foreign teachers and a way to get the Korean and foreign teachers interacting, too.  It can also provide some awareness of cultural-differences to both sides.
Koreans’ lack of trust and failure to include foreign teachers in team building and decision making ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, over time the foreign teachers cease trying to be team members and become unreliable.
Idea 3. (HR.) Full Social Engagement Between Management and Co-Workers.
Management should provide opportunities for colleagues to interact socially and provide incentives for them to do so – foremost, that means being willing to subsidize social events of various kinds. This might seem extravagant, but the “pay off” in team cohesion is significant. Managers should feel obligated to attend certain types of social events of their employees, and should encourage other employees to attend too. Things like weddings, children’s first birthdays, etc., are very important in Korean culture, and by attending these sorts of functions, they’re showing interest in their employees lives. I suspect managers and coworkers avoid these sorts of things (when they do) because of the cost (since small financial contributions are essentially obligatory).  For this reason, there should be a discreet gift fund set up to make this possible for managers and employees who want to attend but can’t afford to.
Although one could protest that this kind of thing is “excess” and unnecessary to the core business of a hagwon, in fact half of the hagwon that I have worked at have operated this way. It definitely improves staff morale. Some employees resent contributing to a gift fund, but I have never felt that way, as it all “comes around” anyway.
Idea 4. (HR.) Regular Business Lunches and Dinners and/or Catered Meetings.
For the same reason as Idea 3 (above), group meals should be a regular event, and should be an integral part of the schedule. I really enjoyed eating meals with my bosses and coworkers, when I was working at the first hagwon I worked at in Korea, where we did that several times a week. Although it’s true that business conditions for hagwon were much better in 2007 than more recently, nevertheless I think that the owner’s generosity with staff at that first hagwon I worked at contribed greatly to the fact that it was also, arguably, the most successful hagwon I’ve worked at. I also remember learning a lot about my coworkers and my job when I would eat lunch in the cafeteria at Moorestown (NJ), when I was teaching (high school Spanish) there.
In both cases, above, it comes down to building your staff into a community.
For large hagwon, this could operate on a once-a-week “team lunch” type concept, rotating between different teams of teachers.  It can be on-site or off-site (although I prefer on-site, and I think it’s cheaper, too).  You will get strong participation if you make the “free meal” part of the perk package, and pay for it out of the hagwon’s operating expenses. This doesn’t need to be expensive food, either.
Idea 5. (Administration / Curriculum.) Month-to-Month Curriculum and Enrollment.
The Korean hagwon market is almost entirely “month-to-month.” Parents are billed month-to-month, and make decisions about enrollment / re-enrollment / cancellation on monthly boundaries. So why do hagwon create complicated multiple-month academic calendars, only to have kids dropping out and in at the most inopportune times (vis-a-vis that same complicated schedule)?  There should be monthly progress evaluations. Grades and enrollments should be closed out monthly.
There can be “continuing” curricula, but there should be logical breaking points built on the calendar-month boundaries so that “drop-ins” don’t struggle. Preferentially, however, I’d like to move toward a curriculum system that “closes” each month – that is, no books or materials cross month boundaries. This is because parental investment in curricular materials inevitably makes them reluctant when one wants to accelerate (or more rarely “demote”) students. This is because they want to get their “money’s worth” out materials. Alternately, though, moving toward a strictly in-house production model for curricular materials solves this problem, as materials are then essentially provide gratis.
Idea 6. (Curriculum.) Adopt an Individualized Learning Model
The Negotiated Classroom Environment
Contracts and Empowerment
I still have vivid memories of the novel and unique “contract-based” learning that was used at the Moore Avenue school I attended as a child (grades 1-3). I think that the concept of written contracts with children is exceptional as a means of motivating and making expectations clear, and I’d love to try to develop and apply something like that in a hagwon environment, where it seems even more appropriate (given it’s both a private business and a specialty “after-school” educational institution).  It would allow for the hagwon to market itself as highly individualized while not over-taxing teachers with extensive “counselling” duties.  Contracts could be based on quantity-of-work metrics (projects completed, workbooks filled out, etc.) and on relative score increases on standardized or specialized level tests (such as the widely used TOSEL tests in Korea, and special interview tests – see below). The whole could be managed with an interactive website.
Clear Expectations (Detailed Syllabus)
Learning as Edifice
Make “project folders” or “portfolios” for students that are kept at hagwon. This is useful with younger ages that have a hard time keeping track of their materials. They should have a “homework kit” and an “at school kit” and the “at school kit” can stay at school, checked out to students as required. This meshes well with Idea 12 (below) on the topic of teachers keeping fixed classrooms.
Do counselling about choosing “best work” for once-a-month selections. There can be derived amazing value from having negotiated class content: setting goals about a) test scores, b) material completion or progress or projects
Idea 7. (HR.) Monthly Teacher and Course Evaluations.
There should be regular objective and subjective teacher and course evaluations, which should not be subsequently ignored by the management.  Teachers and courses can also be evaluated on the basis of progress in student scores on standardized and placement tests, which should be administered monthly. Korean parents love objective measures, and hagwon should work hard to generate genuinely meaningful objective measures of both student progress and teacher and course effectiveness (see also curriculum and testing, below). Using free online survey tools is one way to do this cheaply and effectively without eating into classroom time, too.
Idea 8. (Administration.) Simplified Daily/Weekly Schedule, and Consolidated Homeroom and Study Hall for Each Cohort.
Why are hagwon schedules so complicated? I feel as if the typical 200-student hagwon in Korea has a more complex schedule that the average American university. Is this necessary? There seems to be a mindset in Korea that schedules should be complicated, constantly varying and constantly adaptable. This is not entirely alien to US schools either, but the contrast seems to be one of just how important the integrity and constancy of the schedule is. In the US, schedules are changed because of “major events.” In Korea, schedules – even public school schedules – seem to change as a matter of routine. I don’t think it is necessary, nor do I feel it creates an atmosphere conducive to learning.
If I ran a hagwon, I would create a “master schedule” and perhaps one or two “special event schedules” (for parties, informational sessions, special tests, etc.). Then those would be considered inviolable vis-a-vis the other priorities at the hagwon.
There should be a Korean-speaking, consolidated homeroom/”study hall” at the beginning or end of each day’s schedule for each cohort of student.  This would be a place to check homework, attendance, pass out memos and other administrative stuff… It would help to keep it separate from classroom face-time for instructors, and provide a chance to check each student’s individual progress in a way that minimizes time wasted in the teaching classroom. Also, it would not necessarily have to employ teachers with a high level of English competency. This would mean that teachers could be hired with other strengths (administrative skills and compassion for students would be notable requirements), probably at a cost savings to the hagwon management.
 
Idea 9. (Curriculum.) Integrated / Immersive Curriculum, When Possible.
I think it would be more fun for teachers and students to have integrated curriculum (all “four skills” [reading / writing / listening / speaking] combined) with topic-based courses rather than skill-based courses. For example, history class, literature class, debate / discussion class, science class, etc.  As well as intensive “clinics” in particular skill areas, prep courses for standardized tests. There could be different, varied  and interesting different offerings for each monthly cycle. All offerings could be evaluated for their ability to draw students’ interest and their ability to improve scores on test metrics.
“Kid College” (The “Chinese Menu”)
Idea 10. (Testing.) Testing! Lots of Reliable Testing.
Learn to love the test. I wrote about this quite a while ago, and if anything, over time I’ve become more and more of a believer in this. Rather than follow my US-based, alternative-education background and instincts, which would impel me to reject so much testing, I think instead we should embrace South Koreans’ obsession with testing and leverage it to create a more responsive hagwon system that earns customer loyalty.
Frequent Testing
I have been becoming more and more convinced that the reason English education in Korea focuses so much on teaching grammar and memorizing lists of vocabulary is not, in fact, because they believe that it’s the most effective way but rather that the educators are just simply so desperate for quantifiable results, and they don’t really know how to consistently and reliably quantify other aspects of the language acquisition process. So they stick to those things – prescriptive grammar rules and vocabulary – because that’s what they can easily test and quantify. In light of this, the key to changing method in hagwon instruction is to show that there’s a better way, where you can still get measurable, quantifiable results. That’s why I’m a fan of lots of testing, and not because I believe testing is, in and of itself, a smart thing or the best methodology. But if we are going to improve English education by changing the core subject areas that are taught, we have to prove that there are ways to quantify the other aspects of language knowledge: the pragmatics of speaking, conversation, listening, etc.
Well-Designed Tests and “Teaching to the Test”
Don’t just use standard ABCD multiple choice test formats. There should be something I have been thinking of as a “graded dialogic evaluation” – roleplay-based “situation cards” that students would have to respond to with trained testers, where the situations that needed to be played could be controlled for vocabulary and concept content (e.g. “let’s talk about what you did last year” would be testing things like past tense and vocabulary about activities).  They would be graded in difficulty, and in sufficient number that there was a basically random selection (although in free-form [judged] speaking tests, repeated material is not necessarily problematic, since pre -memorization / cheating is nearly impossible).  Each month students would take these tests, and scores would be based on “highest level of card” completed along with simple judge-scoring (cf. how TOEFL speaking is scored, 4 point scale).  Staff doing the testing would not be the same staff that teaches the students (computers make this kind of administrative task fairly easy).  This IS labor-intensive, but I think the value should be immediately apparent.  I basically envision dedicated testing days, say two each month, with special schedules.
Make a giant test question database for level testing. Keep track of which questions which students have completed. Keep scores, averages, results, correlates (e.g. offline test scores). For issues surrounding the technical implementation of this idea, see Idea 11 (below).
Idea 11. (Infrastructure.) Leverage free and low-cost technology effectively.
Technology to Support Administration
Technology and the internet doesn’t need to be expensive. Technology can be and should be better leveraged than what I’ve so far seen. Internet Cafes (as Koreans call web forums) can be created for classes. Grades and teacher and course evaluations can be interactive. Writing assignments can be mediated using FREE! tools like Google Apps, rather than crappy ActiveX-based Korea-specific fee-based websites.  The web is swarming with fairly effective (and often free or nearly free) software-as-a-service that can keep in-house technology cost and know-how requirements to a minimum.
Technology for Instruction
Technology for Testing
Technology for Marketing
This is, in fact, the only aspect of technology that I view as obligatory as opposed to optional. Technology for instruction, for testing, and even for administration – these are all things that can be leveraged if-and-only-if you can afford to do so. But in Korea’s smartphone-obsessed, internet-driven culture, technology for marketing is a must-have.
Idea 12. (Infrastructure.) Make Your Hagwon A Home.
Overall Environment
“Broken Windows” Policing
Cleanliness and graffiti: there has been a problem with this in every hagwon I have worked at, while at the same time most public schools I have been in have essentially zero problem with this. There are different systems in place. In public schools, students form work details and clean their environment themselves, regularly, with teacher supervision. In hagwon, students are not responsible for cleaning and if they were, parents would complain, since they’re paying “good money” for a privately maintained learning environment. So the hagwon is responsible for their own cleaning maintenance, but there aren’t the same kind of incentives to keep it pristine. I would like to espouse the “broken windows” philosophy, and suggest that learning environments be kept pristine. I’d put the staff to work on periodic cleanup detail, and over time they’d have incentives to better police classroom behavior.
Fixed Classrooms for Teachers
Teachers should have fixed classrooms. In every hagwon I’ve worked at, except the first one under some circumstances, the student cohorts have fixed classrooms and the teachers pass from classroom to classroom. This is perhaps convenient in some ways, administratively, and there’s less confusion and bustle from the problematic of having the students change classes between teaching periods. However, I think it has a lot of disadvantages. One of the foremost is that the teachers don’t have any incentive to personalize their classrooms, and very little impetus or motivation to keep their classrooms clean and well-maintained, etc. The kids write graffiti, things get broken, etc. This doesn’t happen in public schools where teachers “own” their classrooms. Besides, I’d so very much love to have a space I could call my own, to decorate, to personalize. You can put posters, bulletin boards, maps… anything you need or want for teaching.
A question to meditate on: who is the staff room for?  How does this fit into the priorities of a hagwon?
Invest in Classroom Comfort
It would be nice, too, if there was sound proofing / spacing and volume in classrooms
Arrangeable desks are best: arcs, circles, facing rows, groups… (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_table)
Idea 13. (HR.) Non-stop Teacher Training.
Pedagogical and Methodological Training
Businesses should not be afraid to dedicate resources and time to staff improvement.  Teachers working at Korean hagwon often have many years of teaching experience, but they rarely if ever have any formal background in pedagogy or teaching methodology. I think this can make for significant mistakes in curriculum design and development, not to mention implementation and classroom management issues. There should be opportunities within the work environment allowing teachers to learn about child psychology, pedagogy, and education theory, methodology and practice.
Language Training specifically is covered under Ideas 1 and 2, above.
Idea 14. (Curriculum.) Curriculum Design.
Put Testing at the Center
Pedagogically, this is controversial, but in the Korean cultural and educational context, inevitable. So rather than fight it, embrace it. The key, if you’re going to be teaching to the tests, is to have impeccably designed and administered tests.
Parallel Tracks (Athens vs Sparta)
A hagwon could be very successful if it had “Parallel tracks” which you might term “traditional/academic” versus “creative/immersive.” I’ve been thinking, especially, about what might be characterized as the “fun vs work” dichotomy in parental expectations.
Some parents send their kids to hagwon with the primary intention that it be mostly “fun” or that it be educational but not, per se, stressful or hard work. I’m speaking, here, mostly about elementary-age students. At middle school and high school levels, the situation is substantially different, at least here in Korea. It’s mostly about raising test scores, at those levels. But at elementary levels, it’s definitely the case that many parents aren’t looking for an academically rigorous experience so much as a kind of enriched after-school day care.
But then there are the parents already looking for the hagwon to inculcate discipline and hard work habits and raise test scores, even at the lower grades. They get angry and feel they’re not getting their money’s worth when their kids don’t have a lot of homework, for example.
This creates a dilemma in managing the hagwon, because you have kids from both groups side-by-side in your classroom, and you have to be aware of that. I have exactly this, every day: Kid A and Kid B didn’t do their homework. Sometimes, when kids haven’t done their homework, we have a custom of making  the kids “stay late” (after the end of their particular schedule of classes) to finish their homework or do some kind of extra work to make up for  the missed homework. And the problem becomes manifest when Kid A’s mom complains that we’re not making her stay often enough, while Kid B’s mom complains that we’re making her stay at all. You can see the conflict, right? It creates inequalities in how we treat different students in the classroom, that eventually the students themselves become aware of. And that leads to complaints of unfairness and classroom management issues, too. Eventually, there comes a moment when  Kid A is asking me why I’m not making Kid B stay. I can’t really come out and say, “well, her mom complains when I make her stay, but your mom complains when I don’t make you stay.”
Here’s how I think it should be solved.
The hagwon should have two parallel “tracks” – a “fun” English and an “un-fun” English. Tentatively, because it’s marketing gold, I would call these “Athens” track and “Sparta” track.
The Sparta track would be about what we have now: lots of grammar, daily vocabulary tests, long, boring listening dictation work, etc.  The Athens track would be my “dream curriculum” with arts, crafts, cultural content, karaoke, etc. There would be some shared or “crossover” classes, like maybe a debate program for the advanced kids or a speech program for the lower-ability ones, to ensure everyone gets some speaking practice.
The advantage of these two parallel tracks is that kids could be placed into either track based on parental preference. Further, parents could move their kids back and forth between them, depending on changing goals or needs. And lastly, the kids themselves would be aware of the dichotomy, and there could be substantial incentives related to the possibility of being able to be “promoted” to the fun track or “demoted” to the un-fun track. It would require careful design, but I think it could be a strong selling point when parents come in to learn about the hagwon. That we have not one system, but two, enabling a more individualized style of English instruction.
On-Going Roleplay Environments.
Have large on-going roleplay environments: “town” / “stock market” / “country”
I did this very successfully during my summer camps at my public school teaching job in 2010. Very rarely, since, have I had students more actively engaged in their own learning process. They were learning English painlessly, because it was interesting and fun.
Idea 15. (Administration.) Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
In business contexts (at least in the US, where I have experience) there is a broad field or discipline – generally embedded in the sales and marketing departments of large corporations – called “Customer Relationship Management” or CRM for short. This is about channeling, controlling and focusing all interactions with customers to maximize customer satisfaction.
To be clear, when I refer here to CRM I am not referring to a technology but to a practice – CRM is a “way of doing business” which is often enabled by technology in large businesses, but is just as doable using index cards or a large spreadsheet in a small business, even doable entirely in the mind of the business-owner in an owner-operated business such as a “mom and pop” hagwon, as was the phenomenal case of the first hagwon I worked at, where the owners knew by name every single parent, and interacted them with on a weekly basis.
As a specific example, I was sharing with my boss an opinion: given that a lot of parents are expressing distrust of the merger between Karma and Woongjin, he should call them all, personally. That’s always been one my “if I ran the hagwon” ideas, anyway – the owner or on-site manage should be intimately involved in building and maintaining relationships with ALL the parents, since they are, after all, the paying customers. The students, for better or worse, are essentially just products. This is not to depreciate them in any way – they are the thing I like about my job, and they are why I do it. But applying the lessons I learned from a decade of working in real-world business settings, you can’t ever forget your customers. My boss has been stressed, lately, though. In response to my suggestion, he just said in a kind of a lighthearted way, “개소리” [gae-so-ri = “bullshit” (literally, it means “dog-noise”)]. It was kind meant as, “yeah, right, like I’m going to find time to do that.” I laughed it off. And my feelings were in no way hurt. But I nevertheless felt (and feel) that he’s making a mistake in this matter, maybe.
Some Customers Aren’t Worth It.
“Fire” the parents that don’t “fit.” Hagwon parents are so hard to please, of course. One parent complains of not enough homework, and another complains of too much. How can one respond? Often what happens is that you give lots of homework, and there will be a kind behind-the-scenes understanding that not all the kids are being held to the same standard, as driven by parental expectations or requirements. The conversation essentially goes like this: “Oh, that kid … his mom doesn’t want him doing so much homework, so don’t worry if he doesn’t pass the quiz, just let it go.” This grates against my egalitarian impulses, on one level, and on another, despite being sympathetic to it, I end up deeply annoyed with how it gets implemented on the day-to-day basis: due to poor communication among staff, no one ever tells me these things until some parent gets mad because I never got told, previously, about the special case that their kid represents.  In the longest run, of course, in the hagwon biz, one must never forget who the paying customers are – it’s the parents.  And for each parent that is pleased that their kid is coming home and saying “hagwon was fun today,” there’s another that takes that exact same report from her or his kid as a strong indicator that someone at the hagwon isn’t doing his or her job.  So it boils down to this:  happy hagwon students don’t necessarily mean happy hagwon customers.  As a teacher, you’re always walking a tightrope: which kids are supposed to be happy, and which are supposed to be miserable? Don’t lose track – it’s critical to the success of the business.
Example of a problem: a student is caught cheating. So the student is challenged by the teacher and corrected, but then the student complains to his or her parents that the hagwon is too stressful and wants to quit, and the parent pulls the student. That’s lost revenue. That really happens. Does that mean a hagwon shouldn’t correct students caught cheating? Or does it mean that there is a certain quality or type of student (and / or parent) that is learning at a level that the hagwon shouldn’t pursue as a customer?
Idea 16. (Administration / Finance / HR.) Experiment with Empowering All Stakeholders (Owners, Staff, Customers, Students.
One thing that I have always wondered about as a possible solution to the way that capitalism distorts the hagwon business in Korea is to introduce a kind of cooperative or mutualist or profit sharing model, like some companies in the U.S. What if customers received some profit-sharing refund at the end of year, pro-rated against what they had paid? I can imagine that would lead to improved loyalty as well, especially if there were vesting. That kind of thing could be even more motivating for staff.
Idea 17. (Administration / Curriculum.) Predictable Costs for Customers (i.e. flat rate supporting materials charges).
The main idea here is that the hagwon pays for whatever specific materials (books, notebooks, CDs / mp3 files, etc., that are needed for the curriculum. If they want to encapsulate that in a fixed-fee materials-support charge of some kind, that might be possible, but overall I think the market might welcome a more reliable flat-rate system where per-hour-of-instruction charges were slightly higher but additional materials were all “included.”
I have heard that it is no longer “legal” for hagwon to charge for books or supplementary materials, but I also know from personal work experience at multiple hagwon that it is still almost universal practice, at least in my area. I think this is one area where government regulation is pushing hagwon in a direction I consider appropriate.
Idea 18. (Administration / Curriculum.) No “Staying Late” Beyond Study Hall or Homeroom (see Idea 8 above).
It’s common in hagwon to make kids stay late, either as punishment or as catch-up on undone homework or failed quizzes. I think this a poor practice for one key reason – it ends up not being fair. Some kids’ parents don’t want them to stay late. Some kids have other obligations. Sometimes, if the students are in the last “shift” of the day, they can’t stay late because schedule of regular classes runs right up against the deadline when hagwon must close by law. It’s better to never make kids stay late.
I have heard that it is “illegal” to do this, now, under current government regulations, but I know too that many hagwon still engage in this practice quite extensively, and it ends up being a burdon not just for students but also for parents and especially teachers, since this out-of-classroom “detention” time ends up being essentially uncompensated teaching.
The end to “stay late” practices could be presented to parents along with an explicit commitment to parents to instead provide additional tutorial or academic support on a per half-hour charge basis of some kind. This could provide an additional income stream to the hagwon but will be met with some resistance by parents, many of whom still seem to insist that the extra tutorial effort be “included” in the tuition price. This resistance could be overcome through measures such as greater transparency or profit-sharing (see Idea 16) as well as the fact that other costs are better controlled (e.g. textbook and class materials, see Idea 17, preceding).

Caveat: A Day in the Park

Today was a holiday – October 3rd is called "Foundation Day" in English, properly 개천절 [gaecheonjeol] in Korean. So since my friend Mary was visiting we went to Ilsan's Lake Park, a few blocks away from my apartment, despite my not feeling so well.

The park was pretty busy. The sky was cloudless and azure. I tried to take a few pictures.

Found 016

Found 029

Found 013

Found 001

Found 004

Later I was thinking of trying to eat a meal of actual solid food and thought to try some more jeon (Korean onion pancake, sorta), which I'd eaten successfully last week one time. But the jeon joint that I frequent that is nearest to my house wasn't open at lunch time.

Stumped, we wandered around and then I decided to try a "soup" restaurant (European/Western style food, not Korean) that I walk by frequently since moving to this new apartment. That place was pretty good. I had potato soup, and ate a lot of salmon from Mary's salmon salad (which she wasn't eating), by slicing it up into tiny pieces and swallowing them like pills. Not much flavor, but it gets me some protein.

After lunch, we walked back over to the Jeongbalsan plaza and there were zillions of families – they were having a children's day type thing with booths and a sort of kids' flea market. I saw a bunch of jangseung lined up. I like these things.

2013-10-03 14.38.30

Later, I took a nap after my friend Mary had departed to return to Seoul, and then this evening Wendy and I walked over to try the jeon joint again. This time it was open, and I accomplished a new Korean language milestone. The menu at the jeon joint only had jeon where things were added that would have made it too difficult for me to eat: they had jeon with kimchi or peppers (too spicy), with seafood (too hard to chew), etc. Nothing that was relatively plain. So I did a new thing. Bravely, I made a special order, in Korean – I went "off menu." And lo and behold, it worked – I got a jeon with only green onions. It was OK. It's hard to eat, but if I chop it up tiny pieces and "steer to the left" in my mouth (the numb side, with the chopped nerves), I can manage it.

2013-10-03 20.34.13


What I'm listening to right now.

Talking Heads, "Heaven."

Lyrics:

Everyone is trying to get to the bar
The name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven
The band in Heaven that plays my favorite song
Play it one more time, play it all night long

Heaven, Heaven is a place, place where
nothing, nothing ever happens
Heaven, Heaven is a place, place where
nothing, nothing ever happens

There is a party, everyone is there
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time
When this party's over, it will start again
But not be any different, it'll be exactly the same

Heaven, Heaven is a place, place where
nothing, nothing ever happens
Heaven, Heaven is a place, a place where
nothing, nothing ever happens

When this kiss is over, it will start again
It will not be any different, it'll be exactly the same
It's hard to imagine that nothing at all
Could be so exciting, could be this much fun

Heaven, Heaven is a place, a place where
nothing, nothing ever happens
Heaven, Heaven is a place, a place where
nothing, nothing ever happens

[daily log: walking, 4 km]

Caveat: 글씨 못쓰는 놈 붓 고른다

Here is a proverb from my book-o-proverbs.
글씨        못쓰는                놈   붓    고른다.
geul·ssi    mot·sseu·neun        nom but   go·reun·da
handwriting can’t-write-PRESPART guy brush fix-upon-PRES
A guy who can’t do handwriting fixes upon his brushes.

붓“A bad carpenter quarrels with his tools” might be an equivalent proverb in English. The meaning is that people who are bad at their jobs frequent complain about the conditions.

This makes me think of the typical English teacher working in Korea, for some strange reason. I’ve been spending more time than usual (and thus too much time) surveying the blogs and neverending pessimistic commentary of EFL teachers, lately, I suppose.

Caveat: Fukushima-Style Suntan

Lacking motivation to post something extensive, here is a picture of my neck. You might not like to see this – so be forewarned.

2013-10-02 14.34.01

I call it my Fukushima-style suntan. It's all radiation burn, and in fact since I ended the radiation treatments last Thursday, it's been getting noticeably worse. It itches, it burns, it's sore, and of course all these same symptoms are manifest throughout the inside of my mouth and neck tissues, too. But it all makes sense if you follow what's going on with it vis-a-vis the immune system, I guess.

[daily log: walking, 5 km]

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