Yesterday, my student Yeongu kept pulling out his smartphone and doing something on it. I know some teachers take the phones away from students, but I have never been a fan of that style. I prefer to try to motivate in the direction of moderating their own impulsive behavior.
I commented to him, "I think you're addicted. What are you doing? Chatting?"
He just smiled and put the phone away, but minutes later it was out again. This went on for a while, and twice more I said, "can you please not pull out your phone like that during class, unless you're using the dictionary" – I allow students to use the dictionaries on their smartphones given my own poor ability to provide clear definitions for difficult vocabulary sometimes, given we are often trying to prepare debates about complex topics. Ironically, today's topic was "self-esteem" and "self-control."
I asked him again what he was doing.
Finally he relented and said, "Teacher, this is important."
"Why, what's important?" I asked.
"I'm buying a new bike," he said – he held up his phone showing the screen of a popular Korean online shopping site (like amazon), with an image of a bike.
Oddly, suddenly, I didn't feel upset at all.
"That's cool," I marvelled, quite sincerely. I guess it hit me, in that moment, that that was a very "futuristic" thing, this idea that a student could be sitting in class and shopping at the same time. "I never could shop while sitting in some boring class, when I was young. You're very lucky."
[daily log: walking, 6 km]