Category: Kids

Caveat: 뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Cancer / Kids / My Photos / The Wonders of Work

I decided to walk to the Cancer Center. I actually live that close – it’s about 3 km and it seemed like a good way to try to meditate and clear my head before the procedures.

Here is a picture of the National Cancer Center as I approach from the west.

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Just past the highrise part is the main entrance.

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My MRI and CT scans were completed without too much incident. Right as they were happening, it was quite intense – I likened it spending an hour inside a running washing machine while having scary, cold substances injected into you. They set up this IV apparatus on my hand, for quick, convenient injection.

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It really only hurt when they were injecting the “contrast media” – at which point it was definitely painful. But in the MRI machine especially, it was quite a long time – about 40 minutes. I tried hard to keep my mouth and tongue still and tried to practice my anapana (breathing control) that I learned some years ago during my meditation training. I didn’t really succeed, so then I was making lists in my mind.

Afterward, I felt like crying – everything felt so overwhelming. Partly, I’d just undergone this experience after fasting since 6 am, and I’ve been pushing hard lately. I went into this little canteen they have in the hospital and bought some apple juice and sat in a corner and tried to think about something happy.

So I decided to walk to work – it’s just up the road a few kilometers from the cancer center. I felt kind of woozy from the stuff they’d injected into me, but I figured I could walk it off – and I did.

I hadn’t really planned to go to work today. They were surprised to see me there. But I told my boss, “I just want to feel normal. I just want to keep my routine.” I spent time trying to organize my desk. I wrote some emails to relatives.

Then I went into my BISP1 class – even though Gina was scheduled to replace me. She said, “Are you sure?”

I said yes – I wanted to see them.

Helen said, “You always complain about them.” This is true.

I said, “Well, today I want to complain about them some more.”

I walked into the classroom, and all 6 of the kids (4th through 6th grade) where on the raised stage part of the front of the classroom. While doing something resembling PSY’s latest dance, in vague synchrony, they sang “뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡, 뿡 뿡 뿡” to the tune of the Star Wars “Imperial March.” Keep in mind that 뿡 [ppung] is Korean for “fart noise.” So they’re singing “fart fart fart” as if Star Wars were taking place, while dancing on the stage.

This is how my class started. It was excellent throughout, although I think the ladies at the front desk felt it was too loud.

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Caveat: Please comebake healthy teacher

Banalities & Journaling / Kids

pictureI have about 20 students and former students who are friends on facebook. I knew that posting my health status there means that that information will become available to those students. Fortunately, I don’t think Curt is specifically uncomfortable with students knowing my status, but we both agreed it wouldn’t be something generally announced, either.

It didn’t take long, though, for my students to find out, since they are always checking their smartphones for any signs of novelty in their worlds.

Last night I got a kakao message from a student who had apparently seen my facebook posting. I’m actually impressed she took the time to figure out what my post was about, as she’s only an intermediate-level student. She deserves bonus credit just for that!

She made promises to always do her homework if I get healthy. Which is cute and charming and amazingly beautiful in its kidlike naivety. She concluded “Please comebake [come back] healthy teacher.” My heart is rended as I feel so happy from this sincere message.

How I’m perceived is so much different than how I perceive myself. Not just by students.

Last Sunday, my friend Peter told me that I was “one of the most consistently positive foreigners” he’d met in Korea. Really? He said my blog made me seem gloomier than my actual persona. Yet from the inside, if anything, it’s the opposite: my blog is more positive than my actual self. But I’ve remarked on that before – I guess I’m pretty good at keeping positive in social settings.

I awoke with incredible nausea this morning. I know it’s not anything directly related to my illness – I haven’t even started any treatment or serious medicine. It is, without a doubt, essentially a “gut level” emotional response to my emergent reality.

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Caveat: Jared의 실체

Banalities & Journaling / Kids

My student presented me with this portrait of my 실체 [sil-che = “true character, essence”].

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Apparently, it turns out that my true character is that I’m a couch potato ajeossi demanding food.

I asked, who’s going to be bringing me my food – in the picture I’m demanding “밥 줘” [bap-jweo = “gimme food”].

She explained that my “double” (some kind of doppelganger, it seems) would be waiting on me. I said that sounded convenient.

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Caveat: Kids vs Wolf

Kids / My Videos / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

In my young ones class (Stars 반), this month we have been practicing a play called “The Wolf and the Five Little Goats.”

I made video of our practice yesterday. At first I had intended to make this the final version and edit it so it came out well, but the girls don’t really have it memorized yet and they were still deciding how they wanted to arrange their scenes, so this is just a kind of running practice. They are progressing well, though.

I know it’s really hard to understand what they’re saying – they have a sort of on-going chatter in Korean wrapped around their fairly decent reading of the lines of their characters in English, but it’s very focused and on-task – they’re mostly discussing how to do a given scene and where to arrange themselves.

I love to see my students “take charge” of their own learning process, which is clearly what’s going on here: I’m just a guy with a camera, while they are deciding what to do, how to do it, and the pace of things. This makes for a classroom setting that is very chaotic from a traditionalist perspective, and some teachers find it scary to contemplate running a classroom this way, and other teachers will probably contend that no actual learning is going on – “they’re just playing” was a remark directed to me by a Korean teacher once, after witnessing this type of classroom. But if there’s one thing that I can feel confident of: they are internalizing the English dialog from this play at a level that is hard to achieve otherwise at this age.

We have done previous plays and they have echoed lines from those plays in appropriate contexts months later. One example – although it’s not in the text of the play we’re working on now, toward the end the goats push the wolf into the well (you can see the girls acting it out): the two girls pushing say “push, push!” and “push harder” – which are some lines from a play we did quite a while back. They improvised it at the appropriate moment in our current play.

pictureI really like the series of books that we’re working with for these – they suit my feelings about good ways to do dramatic arts with low-proficiency young learners.

To show what these materials look like, here is the front cover (at right).

Here are our eight characters. This also is part of what makes the girls’ performance interesting: there are three of them playing eight characters and do so with a remarkable level of sophistication. Watch, especially, in the video when the girl in the light pink dress is playing both the wolf and one of the baby goats behind the door.

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Here are some pages from the book so you can get a feel for it (you can click to enlarge them and see the lyrics to two of the songs).

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If you’re teaching 1st/2nd/3rd graders at low or medium level EFL in Korea, I highly recommend this series, called Ready Action! by publisher A*List E*Public. It’s worth noting, too, that this publisher, A*List, is the same one responsible for one of my favorite series of speaking and speech-giving textbooks for more advanced elementary learners available in Korea, called Speaking Juice.

Here is a video by the publisher supporting the first song in the script – a little bit annoying but interesting to see.

Caveat: Angry Legoguys… Oh The Humanity

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Kids / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

pictureI saw an article (hattip to Sullydish) that talks about some study that shows that legoguy facial expressions have been getting angrier over time. This is … interesting, and utterly plausible. I would not place myself in the camp that views this as some kind of reflection of our society’s broad decline or somesuch – at worst, I think it merely reflects Lego Corporation’s growing cynicism vis-a-vis the global toy market and their role in popular culture.

I have always loved Legos. I’m too old to have played directly with Lego minifigures myself as a child. My own legos were simpler than what the toy series later became. But the minifigures came out in time for my younger brother to have had many of them, and later, my stepson had a large collection, too.

At one point, I invented some very elaborate stories about a Lego civilization called Legotopia with my stepson. I even wrote some of them down in the mid 1990’s, but a lot of those things I wrote down during that period were lost because of the disasterous Hard Drive Failure of 1998.

I recall that I had drawn a kind of map of Legotopia, which included a large city called Legoville in the center, and then various surrounding kingdoms and lands, such as a County of Towers (lots of Lego towers and a medieval theme), a Duchy of Roses (lots of pastoral Lego creations on the old Belleville theme), as well as a kind of “wild west” called Castle Pass. It was all more of a universe-creation project than it was a germ of a novel or series of short stories.

I always vividly imagined these lands and places populated by seething masses of undifferentiated “legoguys” with their quotidian struggles and triumphs. I’ve always called them “legoguys” (even the “girls” are called legoguys) – I’m not sure if the original coinage is mine or my brother’s. I made an emperor in Legotopia who went by the moniker of Legoguy XVII – as a proper name, appropriate to the leader of their grand civilization. He was the most generic-looking legoguy I could find in my stepson’s collection.

I still have a (very small) collection of Legos, which I have on occasion shared with some of my students (like the large Lego alligator that lives on my desk at work). Informal survey: I currently own 6 legoguys; two of them are angry. The picture I snapped just now, above right, shows one of them, battling a legogator.

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Caveat: Focused Play With English As a Side Effect

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

My little ones, the Stars Betelgeuse 반, have been practicing a new play. It's yet another version of the boy who cried wolf.

This is just a practice run – but I think it's cool to show how they have fun as they become more familiar with the script and their roles. This is what English education should be at this age – focused play with English as a sort of side-effect.

Caveat: Bad Words

Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

I received the following essay today. It's supposed to be a TOEFL-level essay. I'm not super impressed, and the score I gave to it was not passing, but I nevertheless found it quite amusing. I copy it here verbatim, errors and all, per my usual practice (with some names changed to protect the innocent).

Question: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? If you cannot say anything nice, it is better not to say anything at all.

The topic is if you cannot say anything nice, it's better not to say anything at all. Some people will disagree and some people can agree with this topic. I agree with this topic because of two reasons. The first reason is bad word can make people's feelings bad and my second reason is people can fight each other because of a bad word.

My first reason is bad word can make people's feelings bad. Because right now, I said Kevin sun of the bitch and he said me sun of the bitch too and I said sun of the bitch one more time and he said I'm diarrhea so we will continue to say bad word to each other. And I said him "You are a cavin!" and he said me "You are a cane!". So we can't be a friend because we can fight.

My second reason is people can fight each other because of a bad word. Before, one person whose name is K. He said bad words to other person whose name is C and they fought and they hurt so much so they go to the big hospital. I really saw it (it's lie). Ah, K said he is a gay, too. I go to the hospital which they're in, but they are saying bad words each other.

In conclusion, because a bad word can make people's feelings bad and people can fight each other because of a bad word so I agree with this good topic. There can many people that disagree with my opinion, however, I agree with this topic.

Caveat: bottle+God

Kids / Quotable / The Wonders of Work

As I was correcting some student journals last Friday, I found the following page-o-doodles inside the back cover. Given this is a fourth grader, I was duly impressed.

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Many of these little vignettes are quite fascinating. There’s quite a lot going on.

I was particularly intrigued by the “병신 bottle+God” in the upper left. 병신 [byeong-sin] is a word that means things like “crippled”, “deformed”, “retard”, “fool”, “idiot”. It’s standard schoolyard insult vocabulary, in other words.

But here in her picture, the individual morphemes have been (mis-)translated into “bottle god”. Is this a common inter-lingual pun in the 4th grade set? Did she come up with it herself? What about the fact we’ve been reading Aladdin in class – is this “bottle god” the Genie? Was she thinking of that? Or is she recalling some passage from The Little Prince (see other doodles)? Or was she thinking about her drunk father? (I shouldn’t say that, but I, uh, happen to know… there was an incident, this one time at the hagwon…)

Then again, there seems to be a video game character of some kind called “bottle god” which may be an actual intentional or accidental inter-lingual pun on the part of the game developers (recalling that South Korea has a huge native games industry and is not above inserting bizarre bad English and also intentional puns into their products).

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Caveat: 짱!!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

When I was in middle school (or as I knew it in those dark days, “Junior High”) I was most definitely not popular. I was nerdy and shy and even more antisocial than I am now (which is saying a lot).

So I suppose there is some redemption in being sufficiently popular among a clique of 8th graders at my hagwon to find this written on the whiteboard when I walked into the classroom this evening.

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It says, inside the blue border, “제라드 샘 짱!!” 제라드 [je-ra-deu] is a misspelling of my name, perpetuated not by my students but by my fellow teachers. It’s forgivable. 샘 [saem] means “teacher” (cf Japanese sensei), and 짱 [jjang] is a student slang term that means “the best”.
So you get, “Jared teacher [is] the best!!” That’s gratifying.

Under that it says “Chicken fight.” This is an inside joke with this group of students. I might explain it in a later post – I have some additional materials that require translating first.

Under that it says “판타스틱한데?” [pan-ta-seu-tik-han-de] “Are you fantastic?” Then it says 오잉 [o-ing] with some additional circles thrown in. I think it’s a sort of “ya.” Finally in the lower right it says 이힣힣… [i-hih-hih…] which is just a sound effect of some kind – perhaps laughter.

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Caveat: 원숭이 세척 자주 좀

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

In my previous post, I mentioned a student survey that I’d recently seen some results from. This survey was only among the elementary students, which is a fairly small group for me since my schedule is more weighted toward the middle-schoolers these days. I actually only have about 20 elementary kids, currently, scattered in half a dozen quite small classes. This survey represents 14 of them.

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I might talk about the numerical results at a later point. The two things that jumped out at me were a) my highest scores were for having a “fun / interesting” class (second row), and b) there are 2 students who, apparently, would definitely not recommend me as a teacher to their friends (last row, far right box).
What I wanted to focus on here were the 5 free-form comments at the bottom. These are mostly amusing – there is, in fact, only one comment that is serious, and from its content I already know which student wrote it: she is complaining that I don’t return graded essays for the advanced TOEFL writing class in a timely manner. In that, I’m guilty as charged.
Here is a close-up of the comments.

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Here is my transcription, with rough translations.
숙제 내주지 마세요.
Please don’t give homework.
한국어로 말해주세요.
Please speak in Korean.
원숭이 세척 자주 좀
clean the monkey a little
좀스피킹 좀 재미있게 해요. 그리고 Writing 검사를 제대로 해주세요.
Speaking is a little bit fun. But please check writing more thoroughly.
원숭이를 깨끗하게 써주세요.
Please administer cleaning to the monkey.

pictureTwo of the five comments received were that my monkey needed to be cleaned. My “monkey” is the Minneapolitan Rainbow Monkey (who goes by the name “Dinner” which is a reference to his relationship with the alligator), which has been mentioned previously in this blog. I took him home last weekend and let him go on a ride in the washing machine, so he’s cleaner now. But I perhaps should make that a weekly custom – he lands on the floor a lot.

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Caveat: Wingdings

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

An advanced-level elementary student was writing an essay for me in the computer lab the other day. She printed her essay and came running to me in either feigned or real panic. She showed me the printout, below. Obviously, something was amiss.

"Teacher! What's wrong. The printer is broken," she complained.

I went and looked at her screen and then again at the document.

"The printer isn't broken," I sighed. "You need to stop playing around with font choices in Microsoft Word and spend more time writing your essay."

Wingding 002

What is this font you speak of, O master?

I have been in a very strange mood, lately. I feel like an old man in a rest home for the mentally deranged. Just a feeling…

What I'm listening to right now.

Harry Nilsson, "Without You."

Caveat: Teacher

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

Student: "Teacher! How are you?"

Teacher: "I'm good, how about you?"

Student: "Not so good, teacher."

Teacher: "Because of the tests coming?"

Student: "Yes, teacher."

Teacher: "You know, saying 'teacher' all the time is not really how English-speaking students talk. It's 'konglish'."

Student: "I know, teacher."

Teacher: "In the US, students almost always address their teachers by name. So I would be Mr Way. But mostly they just don't say 'teacher' or a name at all."

Student: "Mr Way? Really, teacher?"

Teacher: "Yes, really. So instead of saying 'Really, teacher?' you would just say 'Really, Mr Way?' or just 'Really?' Do you understand?"

Student: "That's … strange, teacher."

Teacher: "I know."

Student: "Goodbye, teacher. See you later, teacher."

i was surprised at how much madison got off

Caveat: Teacher! I hate your job!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

I have a student named Sangjin. He is quite insane, but in a kind-hearted way and with a penetrating awareness, if not exactly an academically-oriented intelligence.

In class this evening, I was keeping points on the whiteboard for the students. He gave a wrong answer, and per the rules of this system, I deducted some points. It was actually a lot of points, because the points at stake escalate as the class nears the end – this keeps the game competitive right up to the bell.

"Teacher! I hate you," Sangjin said. He was grinning his silly grin.

"Why?" I said, with some sudden mock seriousness.

"Because. Points," he explained, telegraphically.


Psyarms"You're mad because I took away points?" I asked, to confirm.

He nodded and folded his arms, Psy-style (see picture). This is the way Korean rap stars have conversations.

"But," I protested. "That's my job!"

"To take points?" asked another student.

"Or to give points," I suggested, optimistically.

"That's a good job," the other student said.

Sangjin raised his hand. "What?" I asked.

"Well, then… Teacher! I hate your job!"

I couldn't stop laughing.

Caveat: With A Baseball Bat

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

or… The Horrifying Class

My students are filled with passive-aggressive anger toward their parents, and I almost wanted to cry today, having to interact with it. Korean parents push their children so hard. And sometimes unkindly.

We've been having the students write "Parents Day Letters" – Parents Day is a Korean holiday on May 8th, that is sort of a combined Mother's Day and Father's Day. The idea is that the kids get gifts for their parents, or write them letters, etc. So as an activity at Karma, we're having the elementary kids write Parents Day letters, in English.

One boy, in 6th grade, wrote his letter, and it was filled with the appropriate platitudes: thank you for raising me, thank you for helping me with my problems and being there for me, etc., all in the somewhat unnatural English to be expected of only intermediate ability, limited English. But then he came up and showed me something. At the end of his letter, he'd written "I love you." He pulled out something he had in his pocket, a flashlight. It was a black-light flashlight. "I wrote in invisible ink," he explained. And indeed, he had written in invisible ink: superimposed on his "I love you" was a clearly visible "I hate you" under the black light. I didn't know whether to amused or appalled.

I shook my head. "Do you think that's a good idea?" I finally asked.

"Maybe not," he admitted, but grinning.

"Are you going to change it?" I prodded.

He shrugged, and returned to his seat. I may intercept the letter.

Then a 5th grade girl refused to write her letter. She was suddenly refusing to speak English. She's a pretty good student, but not very consistent, and she gets frustrated easily. I got a little bit angry, saying she had to write her letter. She wrote it. She brought it up and showed me. It said a lot of platitudes, but near the end it said, "Mom I hate you x 10 x 100 x 100 x 100." You get the picture. She was angry at her mom.

She was standing in front of me. I circled the phrase in her letter. "I don't think you should say that," I said. I could tell she was angry. I could see she was even on the verge of tears.

"But it's really true," she defended.

"I understand," I said, blandly. I really believe adults should validate the feelings of children as much as possible. "I think sometimes we shouldn't say things that are true," I suggested. "How about writing about something true that you can agree with. Something about the future?"

I crossed out her words and sketched out a possible answer on her draft letter. What I wrote was to the effect of: "Mom, I hope that in the future you can help me and show me your love." I pointed to my draft sentence and asked the girl, "Can you agree with that? Is it true for you?" I was kind of prompting her, and happily composing her sentence for her, because I didn't want to add layers of frustration with the English language on top of the frustration she was feeling with this assignment and about her parents.

She wrinkled her brow and studied it, to make sure she understood it – it's in English, after all, and she maybe had to sort it out or translate it in her head. Finally she nodded, but then she said, "I don't want to give her this letter." Adamant.

"I think you have to," I said. "It's the assignment."

She shocked me, then. "I really don't want to. Why should I give her this letter? My mom hits me with a baseball bat." Tears were coming, now. "yagubaeteu," she emphasized, repeating the term for "baseball bat" in Korean just to make sure I knew what she was saying.

I just stared at the girl, then, a little bit slack-jawed. The other students were staring, too. "We'll talk about it later," I said, somewhat awkwardly. I let her wrinkle up her letter draft and stuff it into her bag when she returned to her seat. At the end of class, I asked her was she OK.

She spoke rapidly in Korean, to the effect of: the bell rang, I'm getting out of here, leave me alone.

I let her go.

In the US, we're obligated as teachers to follow up on these kinds of revelations. Korea doesn't work that way – especially for foreign teachers like me, and especially not in a hagwon environment like mine. The most I can do it mention it to her homeroom teacher or the owner of the hagwon. Past experience with this kind of thing tells me that nothing at all will happen.

Parental child abuse as we conceive it in the US seems largely unrecognized as a crime in Korea, as far as I've been able to figure out. Yes, there are laws on the books about it, but they're only enforced rarely if at all. Just like the rules about corporal punishment in schools. Some schools follow the rules, some don't. Enforcement is random.

Helplessness is not a happy feeling.

Caveat: The Scary Dino

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

My students did a rendition of "The Scary Dino" using cut-out, handmade paper puppets attached to disposable chopsticks. The kids love this type of thing, and never seem to grow bored of it. I think it's good learning, too. They memorize their conversation lines and songs over time, and those phrases come out in later lessons. It goes quite well, and reinforces my notion that a "dramatic arts" component would be quite successful in a hagwon environment, if only Korean administrators would open their minds to the idea.

Caveat: Dog Has Bone

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

The dog is green. It has a bone. I don't remember what this was about.

Dog 002

I have been pushing out a lot of negativity, lately. I was hearing it in myself, today. Not so much with students – I have my mostly successful facade with my kids… but I'm definitely pushing it out with coworkers and others.

I need not to be doing that.

Caveat: 왜저레꺼몽키

Kids / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Kkeo 002 My student who recently changed her name to Jara (which is just something she invented as far as I can tell) drew a picture of my minneapolitan rainbow monkey holding some bananas (at right).

The first part of the descriptor to the right of the monkey's head is easy to understand: 왜저레 [wae-jeo-re = "what the heck" – but in this context it's my name: "way-je-ret"]. The last part of the descriptor is easy to understand: 몽키 [mong-ki = "monkey" obviously]. So the overall intended meaning is clear to me, too: "Jared's monkey." But the suffix on my name was puzzling me: -꺼 [kkeo].

The ending is not in my reference grammar. And the initial explanations from my coworkers only told me what I already had figured out – it's a possessive. The standard possessive suffix (i.e. genitive case ending) in Korean is -의 [ui]. It's the only one I thought existed. So confronted with what seemed a new one, after so many years… of something so basic. Well, I was distraught.

None of the Koreans I asked seemed at all unfamiliar with it – they all took it as obvious. But when I pointed out that it wasn't in my reference grammar or anywhere to be found in any online dictionary or web search, they, too, were scratching their heads. I began to suspect it was a sort of informal or slang contraction of something – but of what, exactly? It's not even to be found in Samual E. Martin's presumeably exhaustive Reference Grammar. Therefore if it's slang, it's fairly recent or considered somehow more obvious than you'd think.

Eventually, a coworker of mine suggested it was a contraction of -의것 [uigeot]. This isn't entirely implausible – there's a sort of tendency to faucalize (geminate) consonants in the context of contraction processes in the language. So dropping the [ui] and faucalizing the [g] -> [kk] seemed vaguely conceivable.

So I'm going to settle on the idea that -꺼 = -의것 for now.

I'm not sure why Jara made herself into a turtle at my monkey's feet. That's more of a psychological puzzle than it is a linguistic one, however.

Another student in the same class drew a portrait of me on his vocabulary quiz. I appreciate its minimalism.

Kkeo 001

Caveat: The Price of Lateness

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

"Teacher, why are you so late to class?"

I was indeed late. I had accidentally looked at an old class schedule, instead of the most recent, and I had somehow vacated my mind of the fact I'd been switched on Wednesdays, to one hour earlier for this particular cohort of kids.

"You're very late," another said.

"I know," I said. "Sorry."

"You should pay us a dollar because of coming late," a student suggested. This proved a popular idea.

"Really? I have to pay you for being late?" I asked, in mock surprise. "Each of you? Really?"

"Yesss," they rallied.

I paid them.

Caveat: …the (rainbow colored) monkey on my back

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

Today in the BISP1-M class, the students were begging to play my invented game of "[broken link! FIXME] monkey darts."

Initially, I said no. I've been annoyed with these kids.

But then one boy said, in perfect English, "But… teacher! Monkey darts is my life."

This weakened my resolve. So I relented, and allowed them 5 minutes of throwing the toy, rainbow-colored, minneapolitan monkey at the whiteboard at the end of class.

The game has an aspect of gambling, the way that we've been playing it – if they hit the target, they get a small cash prize (in the form of my "[broken link! FIXME] alligator bucks"); but if they miss the target completely, they have to pay me from their savings.

The boy who told me that monkey darts was his life? He lost $6. Next stop: gamblers' anonymous.

Caveat: Hello! and Enormous Turnips!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Hello 004

With my second graders, we were going to do a play based on the story about The Enormous Turnip, with some musical bits, based on a script in our text, but the kids found the script too hard to memorize and disliked the costumes too. Furthermore, there were five characters but only three students. So we did a "dramatic reading" instead. I think they did fine. I'm happy with them and they are very cute.



The picture at the top was drawn by one of the girls in the play. She did it freehand and presented it to me, saying "Hello!" She's a pretty good artist.

Caveat: Cronus and Casanova Walk Into a Hagwon Named Karma. . .

Banalities & Journaling / Kids

In the non-stop laugh-fest called the BISP1-M 반 class on the elementary side, we were attempting to read a painfully bowdlerized version of the Greek myth of how Zeus came back and killed Kronos. It's surprising the extent to which certain rarefied aspects of Western mythology permeate Korean pop culture – apparently, most of the kids already knew this story. There may be some song or video or "gag show" comic routine involved in their knowledge of this, but a truly bizarre moment came when, as I was explaining the bizarre facts of the Zeus myth, a fifth grader named Kevin burst out in song. I'm not familiar with the song.

I was talking about how strange it is that when Zeus give the poison to his dad, Kronos, the old man proceeds to vomit up his other children, whom he'd eaten earlier in the story. I'm miming the act of vomiting for the kids, since it's not a well-known vocabulary item. And fifth graders being fifth graders,  this is profoundly entertaining, in a way few other things can be. So we're having fun. And then, right as I say, "and they're not even babies!" (talking about how the eaten children that Kronos vomits up are now grown-up siblings), a boy named Kevin croons, "Ahhh, Ohh, Casanovaaa!"

Huh wuh?  Casanova? How's he fit in this story? One of the girls yells out, "Zeus was a Casanova!"

Well. I guess they know this story already. "Not really a normal Casanova," I try to amend. But it's really too late – they are all dissolving in tears of giggles. And that's how the class ended.

As a kind of nerdly incidental, I would like to point out that it is speculatively believed by many Indo-Europeanists that the Greek name Kronos and the Sanskrit "karma" share a common etymology, a sort of "cutting" or "inscription."

Caveat: Oh, Monkey! 오래만요!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology

My BISP1-M class had been making me upset. Every time I keep points in the class, or we play a game, they nearly come to blows arguing about rules and turns and points. I don’t have this problem with other classes, but because of this, I had told the class that I was no longer “keeping points” (i.e. in-class, game-based points) and no longer paying “dollars” (my private currency I give to students so they can shop at my “store”). Further, my minneapolitan rainbow monkey (used in the popular sport of “monkey darts“) was banned from class.

This made the class quite sad, but we’ve been limping along since then.

Today, not intending to, I brought the minneapolitan rainbow monkey to class. He was sitting on the podium at the front of class, and, upon seeing it, a fifth-grade girl who likes to go by the name Laracle (which is Korean pig-latin-analog for Clara: 클라라 -> 라라클) jumped up and grabbed the small toy monkey and danced down the middle of the classroom, like in a reunion in a romantic movie.


picture“Oh, Monkey!” she exclaimed in a sing-songy voice.  “오래만요!” [long time no see].

It was cute.

During the vocabulary quiz in the same class, another boy somehow managed to forget the Korean word for “wing” (날개) – either that or he was making a pointless (and point-losing) joke. He drew a picture of a wing, showing he understood the meaning, and perhaps for another class I’d have given credit for his answer – but I wasn’t feeling charitable. See the picture of his test paper at right.
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Caveat: Think, everyone

Kids / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Quotable

My fifth-grade student who goes by Clara wrote about political economy in her essay book yesterday. I haven't corrected her errors – she's a fairly low level of ability but her meaning is clear. As usual, I type this exactly as written, not correcting grammar or spelling mistakes.

Hello my name is clara. Today I talk about rich pay much more taxes than usuall people today. The first reason is "who have much more money." Think, everyone. Usuall people have much more money? "No." Yes, no is right. Why? Rich dad gives money to his son. Then, Rich dad's son, son's son, that son's son… sons are rich. Usuall people same to rich? No! that is rich pay taxes. thank you.

Caveat: Baby Ostrich Karma

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

More strange and disturbing news from students:

An 8th grade girl: “Teacher! You look like a baby ostrich!”

I looked at her, unable to muster any kind of response.

She waited three beats. Four beats. “Very cute,” she clarified, in the same tone of amazement.

Was this a quick recovery, or a pre-planned joke? No matter. I will take compliments… such as they are.

Here is a picture I drew while a student in a lower level class was preparing a test (she’d failed to bring her pre-prepared speech from home, so I gave her time to rewrite it and practice it a bit before her speech test). It came out pretty well. Some characters my students will know, combined with a sort of happy-go-lucky feel.

picture

There’s no baby ostriches in it, though.

picture

Caveat: Little Red Riding Hood

Kids / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Puppets_html_m3dbccf3fLast Thursday, my students used puppets (in custumes!) to perform a version of Little Red Riding Hood. I played the wolf, using an alligator puppet. The little girl is a white rat puppet and her mom is another alligator puppet, while grandma is a wombat puppet and the hunter is an ostrich puppet.

It's all just slightly incoherent, but I like it anyway. I love my classes with the little ones – basically I just play with them in English. It's a good gig.

Caveat: The Mysteries of Motivation

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Teaching & Methodology

I was talking to a student in hallway. I happen to think this student is somewhat smart, but she doesn't try very hard, and she gets low scores on tests and such.

She had impressed me, a while back, with a speech in one of my new intermediate-level debate classes which she'd penciled on some scrap paper in class in the few minutes before it was required. The speech was entirely compatible – in clarity, understanding and detail – with speeches the other students in the class had spent the last several weeks preparing (writing essays as homework and getting my feedback on them), but she'd done it in the few minutes before giving the speech.

I have a long history with this student, too – she was one of the elementary students I taught at LBridge, in 2009. I remember thinking the same thing about her then: a kind of stealth intellectual, under a facade of lazy, dumb teenager.

I asked her why she pretended to have lower ability in English than she really did. I can't remember exactly how I phrased the question, but this is a level of discourse that most students nominally at her level wouldn't even understand, in English. She just shrugged, and said "It's easier."

Following a hunch, I asked, "You understand everything I say, but you pretend not to?"

"That's right." She grinned sheepishly and sauntered away.

Sigh.

Caveat: Angus Goes Fast

Kids / Teaching & Methodology

In my young-ones class, yesterday, we were drawing our own versions of the current Disney book we're reading. The kids drew some horses, for example.

The book is a very simple reader based on the recent Pixar movie, Brave.

Here is the book cover, and the page we were working on.


Horse 002Horse 003

 Here is my version – I always do what I ask the kids to do, as it makes things easier to explain and it's more fun, too.

Horse 009

Here are the kids' versions. I like their horses.

Horse 005

Horse 006

Horse 008

Caveat: Giving Speeches

Kids / My Videos / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Teaching & Methodology

I'm teaching a lot of debate classes, these days: more, by almost an order of magnitude, relative to previous terms at Karma. And I make video of all my students' speeches. And I evaluate the speeches and give scores. This is a laborious process, and part of why I'm feeling overwhelmed with work. But I have decided it's a really great way to get middle schoolers actually talking in English class. The combination of natural adolescent reticence on the one hand combined with the horrifying discomfort of speaking a foreign language they don't feel confident with, on the other, means that getting middle school English students to actually talk is about as easy as pulling teeth from a chicken. But if you turn on a video camera and tell them it's a test, they'll stand up at the podium, shaking and quaking, and give their damnedest. It's a bit coercive, relative to my most preferred methods, but overall I'm pleased with how well it works.

Here's one of my favorite classes, giving some speeches on the debate proposition: "Immigration to South Korea should be encouraged." They complained that this topic was difficult, but they all said it was interesting, too.

As a bonus, this video has a complex connection to an earlier blog post: I'll have to give a door prize if anyone actually identifies the connection. I don't know if I have any blog readers loyal or attentive enough to do this. So this is a kind of stealth-test.

Caveat: Puppet Has Puppet

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Teaching & Methodology

Is it just because I've been reading Cervantes that this strikes me as profound?

I had a 2nd grade student, Anna, who explained to me: "Puppet Has Puppet." The story…

We have been using puppets, to do a role play, in class. The story is a variation on the infamous Little Red Riding Hood. But my collection of puppets doesn't include wolves or little girls or grandmas. So I had the innovative idea of making "costumes" for the puppets, and the kids are loving it. It's a long process, that we're doing every Thursday class.

So there are some side-characters, not part of the classic folktale but included in this version, including a Snail and a Butterfly that Little Red Riding Hood meet on her way through the forest. We were trying to solve the problem of which puppets would "play" these two roles and we made some cut-outs of cloth to represent the Snail and the Butterfly. Then Anna attached the two cut-outs to a wombat-puppet's "hands" and announced her breakthrough observation: "puppet has puppet."

Brilliant.

Here's a picture I snapped – in the staffroom (in front of the distracting bulletin board – sorry) – of the wombat puppet with snail and butterfly puppets attached to its hands. The snail is on the left, the butterfly is on the right. The wombat is wearing a "dress" (more like a cape) because it also plays the role of grandma.

2013-02-07 16.30.18

 

Caveat: changing lives, one operating system at a time…

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Kids / My Photos

It’s always amazing to hear from former students. I received the following email from a former student, the other day.

Dear teacher Jared Way

Hello, my name is ___ and I am a high school student now in Korea.

Why I decided to send this message to you is to express my thankfulness to you.

I was an elementary school student maybe 5 years ago, and I still
remember that you have taught me english in academy for quite long time.

Why I still remember you is because (maybe I’m not sure if you will remember me) of the story thay you have told us.

One day you told me that in America, about 70% use Windows as an
personal OS, but in Korea almost 99.99% use Windows just as monopoly.

And you told us about another operating system called ‘Linux’.

I was curious, and I searched over the internet to install Linux on my
computer, but it was too hard for me. So I asked you what kind of Linux I
have to install, and you told me that Ubuntu will be fine. And also
you’ve kindly print some installation manual to me and explained how it
will works, and how to install.

After I have succeeded to install Ubuntu on my computer as a multi-boot,
I still remember that you told other teachers thay I’m really good at
computer! And I also remember thay I have asked some Greek words to you
because i was also interested im Greek language.

Anyway, you gave me an worthy experience to Ubuntu as young, and from that on, I’ve tried to use Ubuntu everyday.

So,,,, now I’m now in “Daegu Science High School”, a school for students
talented in Science, and mathematics, of course still use Ubuntu in my
laptop : )

Because I have experienced Ubuntu when I was young, I could learn many
computer knowledge and my information science teacher in school asked me
to make an lecture resources about Ubuntu and Linux. Also my
information science report on first semester was “Usage of Ubuntu as an
operating system in science high school, and reaserch the relativity
between Android” which I got highest grade, and help me to get ‘A’ in
total.

So, I was always thankful to you to give such a great experience but
cannot,,, but I thought that i must do, and found your homepage and now
writing this long letter.

So, thanks for reading this long long letter, and I hope we could talk each other more by letter or phone in advance  🙂

So thank you teacher Jared, and I’ll wait for your reply~


26 January, 2013

I was very flattered. Daegu Science High School is very prestigious, too. I sometimes see my sharing these kinds of messages here in my blog as seeming overly self-centered or self-promotional, but it’s one of the reasons I like teaching – that knowledge, that comes back, sometimes years later, that I’ve maybe made a difference in someone’s life.
The email has some irony, as my own work with Ubuntu Linux ended not long after having apparently evangelized this student – I gave up on Linux, for the most part, in 2009 – it was too difficult to get Linux to behave in its interactions with typical walled-garden Korean internet, for one thing (e.g. Korea’s ActiveX addiction). But the smart phone / Android world created by Samsung is changing this, finally (and fast). Perhaps if I was using Linux, now, I’d have less frustration.

Unrelatedly, here is a picture from walking to work yesterday, from near the same spot where I took the [broken link! FIXME] mist/rain picture the other day.
picture

Caveat: The Drama Of The White Down Feather

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Less Banal Than Usual / The Wonders of Work

This is a completely true story.

Imagine there is a classroom full of eighth-graders – Korean eighth-graders, attending a typical Korean evening English class. There is a girl, who is named Shy But Intelligent Girl, giving an interminably long, well-written but painfully-delivered speech.

Meanwhile, there is boy sitting in the front row who is named Oblivious Boy. He already gave his speech, so he is relaxed: he is on the verge of dozing off, even. Oblivious Boy is pretty handsome, in a KPop sort of way, and the girls seem a little bit intimidated by him, which in 14-year-olds tends to come off more as a dismissiveness, in their mannerisms.

Unfortunately, Oblivious Boy is wearing a black sweater, and attached to the middle of his back, in the midst of the clean black sweater, is a large white down feather – the kind of white down feather that sometimes sneaks out between the seams of popular North Face brand down winter jackets. The white feather is protruding well over a centimeter from the back of his sweater, as he sits motionless in the front row, gazing up, absent-mindedly, at Shy But Intelligent Girl who is giving her interminable but well-written speech.

This white down feather is too noticeable. It’s an affront to fashion. Who better to decide this than the girl seated two rows behind him? Her name is Fashionable Girl, of course. She is seated with her friend, Confident And Sociable Girl. They are giggling because of the protruding white down feather on Oblivious Boy’s black-sweatered back.

picturepictureThis distraction demands a solution. Fashionable Girl quietly extracts a pair of green-handled scissors from her bag. Straining across the intervening desk, she clearly intends to remove, or decapitate, the offending white down feather. But she hasn’t quite reached Oblivious Boy’s black-sweatered back with her snipping scissors when her friend, Confident And Sociable Girl, realizes what Fashionable Girl intends,  and so she whispers for her to stop. Stop! She makes a mime to her friend which – as anyone fluent in Korean teenager gesture-language could recognize – means, “omigod what if he notices?”
Fashionable Girl pouts, and then she has an idea.

She tears off a square of paper from her notebook, about the same size as the offending white down feather. She whispers something in Confident And Sociable Girl’s ear, and the latter turns and leans forward. Fashionable Girl the places the square of paper in the same position as the offending white down feather, and then she proceeds to use the green-handled scissors to pluck the square of paper off of her friend’s back.

Confident And Sociable Girl turns around and gives a jubilant thumbs up. Their experiment was clearly a stunning success – the offending piece of paper was successfully removed with the green-handled scissors, without being detectable!

Meanwhile, Shy But Intelligent Girl’s interminable speech continues apace – if, well… rather interminably.
Having conducted their successful experiment, Fashionable Girl resumes leaning across the intervening desk in her effort to assault the offending white down feather on Oblivious Boy’s black-sweatered back.

Snip, snip, snip. She can’t. Quite. Reach.

At this particular moment, it occurs to Confident And Sociable Girl to take a moment to look around the room. Much to her alarm, several sets of eyes have drifted away from Shy But Intelligent Girl’s interminable but well-written speech, and are instead following the drama of the white down feather avidly. It’s not just several students either, but The Teacher, too. He’s standing at the back of the room, and he watching curiously.

Omigod!

Confident And Sociable slaps her friend’s green-handled scissors-wielding hand down in panic, and immediately, both girls collapse into giggles, face down on their respective desks.

Shy But Intelligent Girl pauses in mid-delivery of her interminable but well-written speech, with a combination of annoyance and mortification on her face. “Why are these other girls interrupting my speech?” her expression demands.

Oblivious Boy, however, remains oblivious.

The Teacher returns his attention to the interminable but well-written but now-interrupted speech, and prompts Shy But Intelligent Girl to continue. The Teacher makes a “cut it out” face at the two giggling girls. Minutes later, the speech has resumed, and the green-handled scissors have reappeared, and have resumed their snipping adventures, shakily snaking across the gap between the two grinning girls and the boy at the front.

But they just can’t. Quite. Reach.

Unfortunately, at this moment, Shy But Intelligent Girl’s interminable speech suddenly terminates.

The Teacher says, quite unexpectedly, “Yudam. Put the scissors away, please.”

“Yes.” Fashionable Girl sits back and gives a look of pure innocence, and she looks around the room as if it was some other kid in trouble. Confident And Sociable Girl giggles again, and whispers to her friend.

Oblivious Boy, however, remains oblivious.

Another speech begins, and this chapter comes to a close.

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