I was presenting a listening passage to my TEPS반 and I was trying to explain the meaning of the word “predecessor,” and I got a bit lazy and just wrote down the Korean (not that I knew – I was looking at the bottom of the page of my script of the question, where unfamiliar vocabulary is glossed into Korean). I wrote the meaning of the word in Korean on the board: 전임자 [jeon-im-ja].
I assumed, then, that that solved the issue. But later a student asked me, “who is Jeon-Imja?” He’d thought it was a person’s name (it has that familiar three-syllable format typical of Korean names). He didn’t know the Korean word. The other students found that entertaining, but it’s important to be reminded that in fact, these kids often are pushing the boundaries of English vocabulary such that its level of complexity exceeds that of their native vocabulary.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Category: Kids
Caveat: No Smart Phone = Smart Student
There is a student who goes by Lindsay, a mere fourth grader, who regularly out-performs the fifth and sixth grade students in my Tuesday/Thursday "Honors" class. Today only Lindsay and Sally showed up – a lot of kids are on trips with their parents because summer vacation has started in earnest, now.
So we were chatting about various things, having an easy class, and Sally, a sixth grader, was asking why Lindsay was so good. I didn't hear all the details of their conversation, which included a lot of Korean, but then Sally concluded, in English, by saying, "Ahh. She doesn't have a smart phone, so she studies very hard."
I had to laugh. Everyone in Korea, from 1st grade or even younger, has a smart phone. This is the land of the smart phone, now – Samsung.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: We Are Girls
Teacher, exasperatedly: "Why must you talk so much? You are talking all the time! I am teaching class, right now."
Fay: "Teacher. It is simple." She gave a dramatic pause, with a gesture of placing the palm of her hand at her collarbone. Enunciating clearly: "We are girls."
The other girls nod.
Ah. That explains it, then. Some things never change.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Mouse Torture
I have a stuffed toy mouse whose name is “Lunch” – because his job is to be eaten by the Alligator (who in his current incarnation is named “David”).
Lunch sometimes comes to my elementary classes because the kids like to play with him. Yesterday, my Betelgeuse반 kids (first and second graders) started torturing Lunch. The placed him on the floor under the end of a chair-leg. I caught them and took a picture with my phone. They were proud of their mistreatment of the mouse – as kids can be cruel.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: 카사노바
Some 6th grade girls in my Newton1-T반 were explaining the concept of 카사노바 (kasanoba i.e. the Casanova type of man). They did so in a way that struck me as algebraic: I guess “A” is Mr Casanova, while B, C, D and E are his various romantic interests.
Here is a picture.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: listening to people’s talking , scribbling on my notebook, and looking at the sky.
My student Hyo-geun had me make corrections to a speech she is composing for a competition of some kind. There are some fairly minor stylistic or grammatical issues, but thematically the work is excellent. I think she may very well become the writer she says she wants to be.
Here is a reproduction of the pre-corrected speech she wrote.
Introducing my unique hobbies
Hello, my name is hwang, hyo-geun. Today, I want to introduce about my unique hobbies. To begin with, I will tell you about my simple profiles. I live in Ilsan, Goyang, and I am third grader at Deogi Middle School. Because I am in the third grade, I usually concered about entering high school. So, I relax my body and soul by my hobbies; listening to people's talking , scribbling on my notebook, and looking at the sky.
Firstly, listening to people's talking is my new habit since I moved to this new apartment. Now, I live in fourth floor so I can hear many different sounds which a variety of people are making. When I came home after school, I could hear kids yelling adn laughing each other. Their laughs were full of enjoyment and made me look back over my youth. Not only after school but also at night, especially in summer, many people come outside and talk with their families and friends. Sometimes when I can not sleep, I listen carefully to the outside. Then, I can hear people murmuring. When I am lucky, I can even hear what they're talking about. I like to listen carefully outside in my quiet bed room because it makes me comfortable.
Moreover, my another favorite hobby is scribbling on my notebook or writing down some novels. It is not bad to write down some stuffs in my study room, but I prefer lying down on my bed and scribble to writing in my study room. Anyway, writing is a good activity to get rid of stress or to kill time when I am bored. When I write some novels, I can feel the hundreds of feelings. I usually make these feelings get calm naturally. On the whole, I want to feel many feelings in the world so that I can easily sympathize with a person. When it become easy to appeal to someone's emotion, I want to be a writer.
Lastly, I really love to look at the sky in my bed. Especially, in autumn, the sky is blue and high, so I think it is so beautiful. Thus, when I lay in my bed, listen to my favorite music, I can feel my mind become peaceful. If I had more time, I would take a nap under the sunlight. the sky is beautiful at night too. Even though other apartments block the sight, I can still see the moon and the shining stars.
So to speak, I introduced about my unique hobbies. To outline the main points, I love looking at the people who are talking, scribbling or writing novels, and looking at the sky in my bed. These hobbies make me calm and peaceful, so I love them. I wish it could be a useful information for you to understand about me. Thank you for listening.
[daily log: walking, 1 km]
Caveat: 방귀쟁이 며느리
There is a Korean folktale called The Farting Lady (방귀쟁이 며느리). It’s pretty well-known, apparently, though I hadn’t heard of it before. There are some English discussions of it here and here.
The series of “roleplay” books we’re using for our Stars-level (younger elementary) students, called A*List, includes a lot of interesting stories, and our recent talent show (“verbal contest”) last Friday included pretty-well-done musical adaptations of Simba and the Tigers, The Wedding Mice, and this Korean folktale, The Farting Lady.
Frankly, I cannot imagine a better topic for a musical performance for first and second graders than a folktale about a farting lady. The kids thought it was fun, although their too-serious demeanor during the performance in the video below somewhat belies that – that’s the pressure of the final show, I guess.
I think it’s interesting that the likelihood of such a drama being performed in a US institution seems to me rather low – unless I’m misjudging my own culture – given the peculiar puritanism in US education that might be wary of frankly addressing the topic of a farting lady.
Preparing for the performance was a little bit difficult, because my Betelgeuse class has been shrinking and currently only has 2 students. So with seven roles in the story, we had to be creative and not really do it as a full-fledged dramatic performance, making it instead more of a dramatized reading with singing. I think they did an excellent job at the talent show, and the judges (some parents) did too – they got 3rd prize.
Here is the video of their performance, with Ken and me as MCs beforehand.
Here are some sample pages from the materials provided by the publisher of the roleplays, called A-List. It is one the best ESL curriculum publishers in Korea my personal opinion – their product is high quality and pedagogically sound.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: every where is Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun and Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die
I have a student named Clara – a third grade elementary student. She's quite smart and charming and has a better focus than most 3rd graders when she wants to. But she also is a bit morbid and strange sometimes – a kind of proto-goth-girl, personality-wise.
She will say these unexpectedly morbid things, sometimes. I was going through some drawings we did in class last month, cleaning out a folder on my desk, and found this picture. It seems innocent enough, until you study the caption ("every where is Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun and Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die Die") and try to puzzle out any kind of meaning at all to the sequence of symbols at the bottom. It strikes me as a kind of accidental surrealism, and I was compelled to an outburst of [broken link! FIXME] apophenia in reaction, as is intended in surrealism, I suppose.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: 2098년 지구 멸망
My student Sunny, who has a characteristically sunny disposition to match her English nickname, ran into my classroom and, using a red marker, wrote on the whiteboard the phrase shown in the picture below.
2098년 지구 멸망
2098: end of the world
Her writing that wasn’t intended to be a reaction to the phrase Sally had written earlier (as part of an effort to give herself prompts for a speech she was working on), “When you get all that new homework,” but the conjunction proved humorous.
I’m not at all sure why Sunny thinks the world will end in 2098 – it’s some local pop culture reference, clearly – a movie or TV show or webtoon that the kids are all soaking up. She took the time to explain that it didn’t matter to her personally, because she would be dead by then. I asked her if she really thought so, and she said confidently that she would only live to age 83 – which, given her birthyear is 2003, puts her demise a decade and a half before the deadline.
Caveat: Decorative Excesses
On Thursday I had to run out of my Newton2-반 classroom for a few minutes to fetch some materials from the staff room, and when I returned I found the whiteboard thoroughly decorated. I took a picture of the three girls guilty of decorative excess. I really like that class. They are smart, engaged, spirited, and interested.
Note that some of the drawings are by me – I decorate the board as a class progresses. But others are imitations (some quite good) of my “style.” And all the names and hearts are, of course, solely the work of the girls in question.
Meanwhile, spring has sprung. Sproing.
I guess the trees, too, have their own version of decorative excess. I took this picture walking to work this morning. It was a blustery, windy but clearly springlike day.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Zoos
We drew some zoos in Copernicus반 yesterday. I love having students students do artwork. It’s such a great way to get their full engagement to learning.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: 지옥행
My student, Clara, age 7, created this narrative involving me, a policeman chasing me, my eventual death by drowning, and subsequent descent to hell (where she writes 지옥행 [bound for hell] in Korean at the end). Should I be worried or flattered?
It reminds me of a repeating nightmare I used to have while in highschool.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: The Monstrous Truth
By Andy, age 7.
Caveat: New Elementary Debate Classes
This past week I started a new, exhausting schedule – as if my previous schedule didn't already feel exhausting.
One advantage of it, though, is that I get to teach debate to elementary kids again – after a very long hiatus where my only debate work with elementary kids was through my Saturday 특강 or my own surreptitious, off-curriculum efforts.
Here are two debates we had on Thursday.
[daily log: walking, 1 km]
Caveat: creazy
My first-grade elementary student delivered this note to me quite secretively today. She came to where I was at my desk and put it face down on my desk and ran away.
It said: "Jread [my name: Jared] creazy but handsom but creazy"
I guess that's flattering.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Rudolph
Last Friday, it was a late Christmas for my Stars "Betelgeuse"-반 kids, who role-played a memorized musical "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for their month-end speech. They didn't do perfectly, but they actually did much better than practice sessions would have led me to expect. Ah… the power of the pressure to perform.
Merry very belated Christmas. I'm very tired.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Alienating Debate
We did a completely unrehearsed debate today. On some slips of paper, I wrote some rather silly debate propositions about the family of aliens that I drew on the whiteboard (see picture, above). Then the students drew the propositions and whether they would be PRO or CON, randomly, and had 5 minutes to prepare their speeches. The three propositions were:
"Bob the alien is weird."
"For aliens, uniforms are wonderful."
"For aliens, playing is most important."
I wrote the propositions originally for a younger group, but these three older (7th grade), more advanced kids did really well with it and had fun too.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: A 12 year old explains jeong unintentionally
He just wanted to tell a funny made-up story about his friends. But he wrote – using the most atrocious grammar conceivable – a fine description of how jeong emerges in Korean male-male relationships. The experience of "shared adversity" and emergent sentimental companionship.
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]
Caveat: 21 century temple-stay
Three boys were sitting in room 405 with no teacher. They were supposed to be studying, but lacking supervision, their efforts were desultory and they were mostly just goofing around.
I put my head in the door, and asked Jeongyeol, the inevitable ring-leader of such goofings, what they were doing. Without missing a beat, he explained, "It's called academy-stay. It's like 21 century temple-stay."
Academy here is the standard Korean translation-into-English of the term hagwon, which I personally consider untranslatable and always just use the Korean term. "Temple-stay" is the konglishism Koreans use these days to refer to the immemorial custom of lay people going to stay at Buddhist temples for some period of time, as I did in 2010.
I found it quite funny. Jeongyeol is a much better comedian than he is a student. I've long thought that he has a future in stand-up.
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Aliens vs Monsters
In a final end-of-year debate experiment, before the cohort is split up and new classes start on the 2nd of January, I gave los crazy boys a final propositon to debate: "Aliens are better than monsters." We drew some aliens and monsters first, to be clear of the difference.
This class has a lot of the things going on in it that I consider most crucial to successful elementary-age-level foreign-language learning: engaged imaginations, peer-teaching (note that James and Mario are helping their less proficient teammates extensively), task negotiation (the students and I had an extensive, 10-minute conversation about what, exactly our topic would be).
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Also… Shit
My student Collin often gets on my nerves. He doesn't like to be prepared for class, and he manages to have a foul mouth in two languages. I realize that posting this is kind of contrary to my normal approach to simply ignore such behavior, but I just laughed so hard at this.
Normally I don't put up videos of individual students doing one of the simple 45 or 60 second unplanned practice speeches for the iBT (internet-based TOEFL), but Collin's conclusion was humorous. They're supposed to "talk to the clock" because the speech has a fixed time limit, but clearly he lost track of the time.
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Santa is a criminal
Los crazy boys had a debate on whether Santa is a criminal, yesterday. They were being quite rambunctious – this video represents the trail end of a rather stern effort on my part to get them to not dance on the desks when not expounding their positions for the debate, so they are feeling a bit resentful. They still do passably well on each side of the proposition, if somewhat hard to understand at moments.
It was fun. Here’s a group of aliens I drew on a whiteboard, climbing a holly tree (is there such a thing?) and contemplating a Christmas present.
Anyway, happy Solstice.
Caveat: Who Is the Ugliest Alien?
There has been an on-going debate about debate, at work.
I hold the position that it is possible, given the right sort of material, to teach debate at ALL levels – even the most elementary. Further, I feel it can generate a lot of great enthusiasm and interest in the students. My colleagues, for the most part, argue that teaching debate is something to be reserved for only the most advanced students, and that debate isn't appropriate for lower levels.
I suppose that's partly due to slightly varying interpretations of the word "debate" – are we talking public policy debate, as I teach to my TOEFL students? – then yes, debate belongs only with the most advanced students. But if by "debate" we can mean any kind of spirited dialog about opinion, then it can work at any level.
The last few weeks I have been putting together some lesson plans to teach debate to my lowest-level elementary class, a group of 3rd/4th grade boys whom I've mentioned before as "los crazy boys." This week, I put my plan into action, without really seeking approval (but we're at the end our curriculum, which will be renewed / changed in January, so I felt free to finish the assigned book a few weeks early in order to do this).
Yesterday, I drew some "aliens" on the white board. I gave them names, and genders (see picture at right). Then I asked the boys which alien was ugliest. This lesson is focused on two patterns, both of which are quite difficult for Korean learners of English: 1) gendered pronouns (he/she/it), since Korean doesn't have grammatical gender of any kind; 2) superlatives in "-est" (superlatives work very differently in Korean).
Los crazy boys did absolutely spectacularly. After only one practice run, we put the thing on video and I only had to cut two interruptions of maniacal laughter after mistakes.
[daily log (1130 pm): walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Do you like this world?
My student Jason wrote this speech, it's a first draft for a contest he plans to participate in. I'm going to help clean it up, but sometimes I like to post student writing as-is. It's a high-minded theme, and although there are a lot of mistakes, he does pretty well considering he sat and wrote it without much use of a dictionary and without much hesitation.
Do you like this world?
Are you satisfied with your family, friends, neighbor, government or your country?
I believe that everyone does not perfectly feel satisfaction to this world.
I think that both you and I would have the world that we are dreaming of.
These days, there are so lots of problems such as social problems, environmental problems or the war around us.
Many people are having difficulties because of these.
So, from now on, I will tell you that the world that I dreaming of.
First, I think that perfect world should have any violence, includes discrimination.
There are so many wars around us.
In Africa, there are many conflicts with a tribe.
We are living on the same place, the Earth.
We are all same person.
We should be all treated with dignity.
Therefore, there should be no war and racial discrimination.
Sceond thing that I want is high-technologies world.
These days, there science is developing with very fast speed, but I want more convenience world.
I wish people are flying with new invention.
It won't need airplanes or other transportation.
People would have more time to relax, and we can watch a movie or play soccer, because we can move faster.
Also, it would be perfect if we have our own tablet PC not like these days smart phone.
I want to have a PC like the Iron Man has it.
It can show you everything such as your friends, navigation, your families and so on.
It would be very convience.
Also, if robots do the difficult things instead of people, it would be great.
We can have a friend who do our house chores and homework.
Also, the robot could tell me my health, and I could exercise regularly.
We can live very confidently, because of robots.
Also, there would be no thieves, because of them.
Our society would be safe and happy, because of our scientific technology.
Third, we could got to the space and build a new world.
We need more place to live on.
We can build a new world in Mars so we can start living there.
Also, we can expend our space world.
We can build our new world in deep sea or the sky.
Human didn't discover the deep sea, because of its high pressure.
But if our science more developed, we can find a place that we can live very well.
If there are many new worlds, it would be very interesting.
In conclusion, I want a world that has no war.
Also, with high technology, we can save time, and robots could do our difficult things.
Thank you.
Caveat: Time Is Powerful
The topic is hair.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I had a lot of CC classes with the elementary kids. We play pop songs and the kids try to understand the lyrics and sing along – there's software that's pretty well designed to support this. Of course, the hardware resources (laptops and projectors) at the hagwon are always half-broken and still make this kind of technology-oriented class a challenge for us. But, well… it works out.
Mostly the pop songs are pretty recent: Adele or Katy Perry or whatever. But sometimes it seems like these really old ones appear. I was confronted with trying to present the Bee Gees "How Deep Is Your Love" to a group of 4th and 5th graders.
Students screamed and wailed in horrified protest. It was qualified immediately as "Old!"
Also, "느끼!" [neukki = greasy, sleazy, cheesy].
And finally, "Teacher! Too much hair!"
Indeed.
What I'm listening to right now.
Bee Gees, "How Deep Is Your Love."
Speaking of too much hair, I got a similar comment from a middle school student who goes by Pablo last week, when I happened to show him a very, very old photo of me that my brother had sent to me in my little care package.
Here is the picture.
I'm pretty sure that is me and my brother near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis in the early 90's – I'm almost positive that's when it was.
Pablo gazed at the picture, and said, "Is that you?" Then he said, "Wow. Teacher, you had so much hair!"
"Yes," I agreed.
And then Pablo said, reflectively, looking me up and down now, "Time is powerful."
Indeed.
[daily log: walking 5 km]
Caveat: Those Uzbek Girls
I was talking with the TEPS반 boys – there's only two right now – about what different countries are famous for. I don't remember the details of the conversation, but the meaning of this is e.g. Australia is famous for kangaroos or Egypt is famous for pyramids. These are advanced, ninth-grade boys. We were just killing time, it wasn't a lesson.
"What else can countries be famous for?" I asked something like this, speculating.
"Girls," one boy said.
Of course! These are ninth-grade boys, right? "What country is famous for girls?" I asked, genuinely curious what the answer would be.
"Uzbekistan," he said, as if it was a well-known fact.
"Really? Uzbekistan is famous for girls?"
"Oh, yes. They are perfect."
"How do you know this?" I pondered.
"It's just known."
[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]
Caveat: Grandmother’s Kimchi
We were doing iBT (TOEFL) Speaking test practice questions in the T1 반. I asked a question something like "Choose what you think is the most dangerous social idea in history and discuss."
The students have 15 seconds to think what to say and then must begin talking for 45 seconds. That's TOEFL.
That clown, Tae-hui, gave an answer, without waiting for me to say "start." He made me laugh:
"My grandmother's kimchi," he deadpanned.
What I'm listening to right now.
Capital Cities, "Safe and Sound."
Caveat: Teach Children with Love and Wisdom
Last night, I had a pretty long conversation with Curt. He was distraught over difficult business decisions: complaints from parents about teachers (fortunately not about me, at least none reported)… therefore more changes in the employee rolls forthcoming… lost students….
"I don't want to be 원장 [wonjang = hagwon boss] anymore!" he sighed.
He paid me an unexpected complement, then, as I complained, in turn, about my current struggle with reconciling my slow and still painful post-cancer recovery with my ambition, such as it is.
"In the time if have known you, you have shown a strong ability to be reborn," he said. He stood up and demonstratively tapped the [broken link! FIXME] Nietzsche quote that is still taped up beside the staffroom door. I'm often surprised and pleased by the philosophical turns our conversations take.
"I reinvent myself," I clarified, perhaps wanting to move away from the religious connotations of being "reborn" that he no doubt wasn't really familiar with in English.
"Yes. You were very different when I first met you." That was in late, 2007, and I worked for him the first time in the spring of 2008.
I didn't feel different…. I don't feel different.
But yes… I reinvent myself, it's true. Constantly.
"So now, I have to reinvent myself again," I finally said, with my own sigh.
"Yes. You can do it."
I will strive to become a better teacher, in my new post-cancer version of the jared.
Here are some ideas from my sixth-grade student Andrea in her recent month-end speech, on how to be a better teacher.
She's the kind of student that I am teaching for – I prefer students like her who have such high standards and expectations. I have titled her speech, "Teach Children with Love and Wisdom" – because that's what she says.
Caveat: Halloweeneen
The '-een' in Halloween means "eve." So Halloween Eve should be called Halloweeneen.
We had Halloween parties at the hagwon for the Monday-Wednesday-Friday cohorts of elementary kids. It was more tiring than teaching regular classes. I'm exhausted.
At right is a picture of me with two girls who wore costumes. I wore a costume too, although it was a bit of a stylistic mish-mash: the original (a few years ago) was Zorro. But I don't have my plastic sword, so I was using a giant inflatable plastic hammer. And I don't have my mask on.
It appears I'm a psycho sneaking up on them. That wasn't really the intent of the picture, but it works for Halloweeneen.
My middle-schoolers, in reaction to my costume, said I resembled a younger, more dangerous Dumbledore (of Harry Potter). I wasn't sure I should feel flattered by that.
[daily log: walking, 3 km]
Caveat: “I sat in a corner and was alienated”
I took Jacob to hagwon with me this evening for a little over an hour. I had a full teaching load in the afternoon because I was doing some substitute classes, but then at 6:30 I brought Jacob into my TOEFL2 cohort, which is my most advanced class of kids who happen to be roughly Jacob's age.
I would say that over all, it was a bit awkward. It's hard to get teenagers to interact when they're not wanting to. Jacob wasn't unpleasant about it, however. Later, when we got home, he said, "I sat in a corner and was alienated." This made me laugh. He seems to have captured the tone of the Korean educational experience, then.
[daily log: walking, 6.5 km]
Caveat: Junior Marxists Club, Karma Chapter
My student Jaeheon, in 6th grade, wrote the below in an essay written to the prompt "How can we make the world better for all humankind?" He gave three things we could do, also including his first thing – free healthcare for everyone in the world – and his third thing – unification of all the world's religions. Both those ideas are patently utopian, but his second thing was literally utopian. I quote (and, as always with student writing, I leave all mistakes and transcribe exactly as written as best I can):
Second, Change the earth to 유토피아 [yu-to-pi-a]. 유토피아 [yu-to-pi-a] is the world that work with self's ability and get the same payment. Think about it when all the people get the same payment their will be no poor and rich also there will no worry about tomorrow so all people can be happy.
If that isn't a rough round-trip-translation (English-Korean-English) of Marx's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," I'm not sure what is.
When I pointed out to Jaeheon that this was part of the communist program, he seemed deeply disconcerted. He said he had to think about it.
I like students like Jaeheon a lot.
Caveat: 왕따의 이야기
I was correcting essays and came across this depressing, anonymous work. I know who Jack is – he’s a student. I know who Ken is – he’s a teacher.
There was a boy who called Jack And he was 10 years old and he was Wangg TTa [왕따]. Because he always says “I’m most handsome!!” So his classmates hit the Jack. Jack was so tired to that. So he suicided by a bottle of sleeping pills. But he’s mother wasn’t sad. So Jack became ghost, and killed his mother and Ken. So they became ghost, too so they killed Jack one more time. The End.
As usual, the above was transcribed retaining errors, punctuation and orthography. The word 왕따 [wang-tta] deserves some comment: the word means a kind of outcast, maybe a word like geek or nerd or weirdo or loser would be a better translation than outcast. In verb form (와따시키다), it is the act of ostracizing such a person. Although we associate bullying with the school setting in Western culture, the word 왕따 can apply to all social situations, including things like work environments (see comic, above right).
Caveat: Growing Up Making Speeches
Today turned out to be a much busier day than I had intended. I went to work and spent much of the day providing training and orientation to my replacement. This is a good thing, as I want my replacement to do a good job, but I feel stressed and overwhelmed now by some evening projects I had intended to get done on this last night of being a "civilian."
Over the weekend, while sorting through my harddrive, I found some old videos of student speeches – I mean really old – they're from 2009, when I first started making videos of student work, at LBridge.
Lo and behold, in that collection I actually ran across three students that are still, today, my students! That means I can see them changed over a period of more than four years. I couldn't resist spending one free hour at work today (waiting while my replacement was in class so I couldn't spend it harassing him with my ideas about pedagogy) making a set of three "before and after" videos. It's so amazing seeing these kids growing up, to me.
I feel an almost parental pride to have been their teacher, on and off, over such a long time.