I arrived just this instant today at work to find the following anonymous note posted on the little bulletin board beside my desk, attached with a thumtack:
Kevin
Kevin
Kevin
Kevin
Kevin
-Kevin-
For those who don’t get the joke, “Kevin” is the name of my large green plastic alligator (below).
Yesterday I wrote about my dream that included (untrue) news about a student, Jaehyeon. Here is a picture drawn by Jaehyeon, a very creative first-grader.
Note the figure in the lower left (directly above).
When I asked him who this figure was, he said, rapidly, “gorillaboymonsterteacher!” And he pointed at me. I’m always pleased when my students represent me in their artwork.
Dear Everyone,
Who could have imagined I’d spend part of my 46th birthday singing along to a Justin Bieber video with a bunch of Korean sixth-graders? And that that would be, by far, the funnest part?
Ah, but such is life. My coworkers got a cake, which was chocolate, and quite good – although they also ate most of it, too – which was actually good, too, as it would have been unhealthy for me to eat too much of it.
And then there was one of those most excellent of Korean traditions, the envelope of cash – but note that the envelope, in this case, had a hand-made label saying “Happy Birthday JW” in ransom-note style (see picture). I like that kind of attention to detail.
The Thursday “CC” classes that I have are kind of like noraebang (karaoke room) training – which makes sense: all Korean kids need karaoke training, as one’s ability to do well in noraebang are integral to success later in life.
I tried starting with a music video of a song I like, myself:
OneRepublic, “Good Life.”
It’s a pretty good song, and I like it partly because it was popular on the radio during the week I was driving around New Zealand back in February. So hearing it, and trying to sing along, reminds me of beautiful scenery and road tripping – how can that be bad, right?
But the kids said the song was difficult, and in thinking about it, I’d have to agree. The rhythms are tough, and the sentences in it are long. So then, at their request, we did:
Bruno Mars, “Just the way you are.”
This is an easy song, and I actually had the lyrics down pretty well, myself, by the time we finished practicing it. I got into it, even. It grew on me. The kids seemed to like it pretty well, too.
But in the end, I had to submit to their unceasing demands that we do Justin Bieber. “Jeo-seu-tin Bi-beo!” I can’t say I love Justin Bieber, but I’m happy to make the kids happy, and this, somehow, in some mysterious way, makes 6th graders extremely happy. Such is the impact of a Canadian teen idol and global pop sensation, even on Korean culture. We did his song:
Justin Bieber, “Love Me.”
It’s not a bad song, if not terribly original – I like the chorus’s riff on the 1996 Cardigans’ “Lovefool,” for example.
But really, it was just a regular work day, right? Although I managed to get out of there a little early – not that I did anything resembling celebrating. I came home, did a load of laundry, and read a chapter of a book about Buddhism.
I got a lot of Happy Birthdays on facebook. Thanks everyone!
Love,
~ Jared
esterday afternoon, in my ET2 (formerly ET1) cohort of 6th graders, for a listening-skills class, we were working through the end of our textbook, where there is a series of practice tests. I have this routine going, where we work through the questions, and for any question where the majority of the class gets the answer wrong, it gets added to the list of the listening questions for which they have to write a “dictation script” in their notebooks, for homework. If the majority of the class gets the answer right, then the question is left off the list of dictation homework. This leaves the class highly incentivized to try to listen well and get the right answers.
Basically, unless everyone in the class is clueless, they will all come up with the right answer – the questions are mostly in a true-false or a/b/c/d format (such as is universal in tests, I guess). This is because they have ways of communicating the right answer to each other, as long as at least one of them has it figured out. This doesn’t bother me. It creates a spirit of teamwork in the class that I like to see.
Anyway, yesterday, we were working through the questions at a good clip, and we had added two dictation scripts (which are unpleasantly long) to the list of homework. We weren’t able to finish the third question, so at the end of the class, the bell rang (well, not a bell, it’s a little recorded stupid melody that sometimes crops up in my dreams, these days), and so I said, “since we didn’t finish this question, let’s add it to the list of dictation homework, too.”
There were a number of groans, moans, and unhappy shrieks. “But… teacher! Too much,” one girl complained.
Then a boy named Dong-hun, in perfect English, said, “Then, I would like to continue this class.”
I laughed so hard at this. I’ve never had a student request – in such a clear, reasonable way – to continue a class beyond the “bell.”
I answered, “Unfortunately, we cannot. I have my next class to go to, and so do you.” But, for having shown such stylish initiative and admirable logic, I removed the third question from the list of homework. I’m such a pushover for a kid with a nerdy sense of humor.
My student, Dong-uk, drew this portrait of me last night, during class, and presented it to me proudly. The likeness is disturbing.
The text he wrote:
WANTED
Jared Way (AKA 왜저래 [wae-jeo-rae = “what the heck?” but very similar to my name in Korean order – a running gag])
A little bit alchol [hmm really? looks like it, but … not accurate, I swear]
Doesn’t smoke
K a r m a E n g l i s h A c a d e m y
1,000,000,000$
“This is the lion. The lion is under the elephant. Lion hungry. 맛있당!”
Thus went the narrative of my first-grade student Jae-hyeon, to accompany the illustration he drew on the blackboard. Apparently, the elephant sat on the lion. The lion, feeling vengeful, ate the elephant, and declared “맛있당!” [Yummy!]. Note the extremely large exclamation point. You can kind of see what happened, if you study the drawing.
A month after leaving Hongnong Elementary, I am still receiving text messages (and picture-messages) from various former students almost daily. Sometimes I don’t even recognize the name – that’s frustrating, to imagine having had such an impact on students I don’t know that well. My heart is touched.
At left and right, some cute pictures from a pair of sisters who were evidently messing with their cellphone. Below, a little message that appeared on my phone last night, from one of the fabulous 4th graders. A cultural note: Koreans use the phrase “I love you” quite freely – both in their own language and in English. I was told repeatedly by my group of semi-anti-social 8th-graders, last night, “I love you.” There were elements of both irony and sincerity in these declarations. Nothing is quite so surprising to an American as having a guy who looks like a junior-varsity football player with a page-boy haircut making a “hand heart” and outright saying “Teacher, I love you.” Of course, I’d just given him a “pass” on his homework.
I’m still working on that project to scan some of the “goodbye letters” that the Hongnong kids made for me.
.
hi? im kim ji min .*”””*..*”””*.
* L O ♡ V E *
“* Y O U *”
.”*. ♥ .*”.
☆._.”**”._.☆
“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived and discerning this world good or bad.”
This is #53 out of a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations that I am attempting to translate with my hands tied behind my back (well not really that, but I’m deliberately not seeking out translations on the internet, using only dictionary and grammar).
…
51. 이 세상을 많고 적음으로 분별하며 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived and discerning this world, more or less.”
52. 이 세상을 높고 낮음으로 분별하며 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived and discerning this world high or low.”
53. 이 세상을 좋고 나쁨으로 분별하며 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
I would read this fifty-third affirmation as: “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived and discerning this world good or bad.”
Maybe it should be “through good or bad.” I felt tired, last night, just looking at my new schedule. I have a lot of preparing to do in order to be able to approach all my classes confidently. I’m especially hopeful to do a good job with the single high-level debate class Curt asked me to put together – since it’s the one spot in the schedule where he’s decided to use me as an innovator as opposed to someone just going along with what’s already in place. I really liked the LBridge debate program, so I suppose that forms the basis of what I want to do, but I will have to make it “my own.”
Unrelatedly, another miscellany: my student Yewon misses me. I miss her too – she was one of the most awesome fourth-graders ever. Here’s her email.
Lastly… maybe unrelatedly, again… here is a candid picture of Han and Chewbacca, at right, discerning the world through good or bad – legostyle.
Two of my first-grade students, Min-gyeong and Dan-bi, wrote “I love you 얄러뷰” in a big heart in their good-bye message.
I was trying to figure out “얄러뷰” – but it’s not Korean. I think “yal-leo-byu” is a transliteration of “I love you” – sound it out!
I got portraits of the fourth-graders today. Here they are.
4-1:
4-2:
4-3:
The 4-2 class did some role-plays today, and I took a few pictures.
I am going to miss Ye-won especially (on the left, below). The other day, she said to me: “I will hate the new teacher, already, because you are the best teacher.” That’s way too good for my ego. Plus, her English is pretty good, eh?
Here I am goofing around with some fifth- and sixth-graders during recess today. Note that the girls provided me with a disguise – can you tell it’s me?
Here are some memento photos of the cafeteria during lunch time.
My lunch tray, and my co-teacher Ms Lee across from me.
Here are some boys hamming for the camera.
Finally, here are some kids brushing their teeth at the communal teeth-brushing place:
I am going to miss this school so much. Should I have stayed? Maybe.
I will not miss the feeling of isolation, which was exacerbated by a school administrative office that is xenophobic and stunningly incompetent, and which conducted itself without exception with utter disregard for my status as a fellow human being, despite my substantial dependence upon them for my outside-of-work day-to-day living.
I think that one way to put it is that I will miss the weekday 9am~5pm part of this experience intensely, but I will not miss the weekday 5pm~9am part of it not at all. And that, when you get right down to it, is not a good proportion for a sustainable lifestyle.
I have learned hugely, this past year – about myself, about teaching, about children and about what’s important in the world. I hope I can keep these lessons alive in my heart and carry them back to Ilsan and my next job.
Yesterday was my last day with the third graders. It happened to coincide with “role play day” – a once-a-chapter event (about every two weeks given the current curriculum) that I very much have cherished. So some pictures were taken. This year’s third grade group lacks the charm and grace that I felt last year’s cohort had (who are now my beloved fourth graders), but they’re still a lot of fun.
Some of the third graders came to visit me later at lunch, and showed me an earnest, unexpected tribute – they’d written my name on their hands.
Also, I was visited by some fifth graders during lunch, one of whom had a hamster (there’s some kind of hamster fad plaguing the school’s student body, currently). I think it would be a very stressful life (and perhaps a rather short one, too) to be a hamster in a Korean elementary school.
Since next Monday is my last day at Hongnong Elementary, today (Tuesday) is my "first day" of "last classes." I said good bye to some first graders during first and second periods today. I felt sad. I will still see them around the halls for another few days, but the formal "goodbyes" to groups of kids are going to make this a long week. Some kids ran up randomly and gave me hugs as I left the classroom, unexpectedly. Others just tried to steal my plastic alligator.
I'm having all of my students in all of my classes write "yearbook" style messages on pieces of paper. I will scan and post some (all?) of them at some point. Many of them are writing very sweet and kind things. I feel happy because of that.
I use this song a lot (see sing-along-able youtube of it, and see example of another Korean class using it). I finally took some time to make my own version. Here are some kids in Mr Choi’s 2nd grade class, performing.
I have a 2nd grade student, Jeong-seok, who wrote an essay. His little essay was posted on the school's web forum, and my co-worker sent me a copy. It's flattering, and my heart is touched. I feel proud to be mentioned in a 2nd grader's essay in such a positive way.
영어수업을 할 때 게임을 했다. 동그라미모양종이에 자기가 하고 싶은 동전 숫자를 적으면 그걸 원어민 선생님인 제럴드선생님에게 드리고 진짜동전처럼 생긴 동전을 한국 선생님께 드리면 스티커를 받는다. 10개를 넘게 받은 친구들도 있었는데 나는 5개를 받았다. 나는 10개 보다 많이 받은 친구가 너~무~부러웠다 나는 스티커를 안내장 넣는 파일에 붙였다. 영어가 재미있게 되고 있으니 눈에 빨리 빨리 들어 오는 것 같기도 하였다. 방과후영어도 정말 재미있게 했다.
I guess that makes a good day.
[Comment added later: Some have requested a translation. My Korean isn't so good as to offer a translation. Google's translate-o-matic makes gobbledy-gook of it, which is about what I would do. I just kind of scan it and get the gist of it, knowing that it's positive. Here's the result of plugging into google (with a few minor but obvious glaring corrections): "When teaching English game. A circle on the paper and he'll put the number of coins you want it wiht a native speaker teacher, Jereot teacher, if it looks like a real coin coin Korea figure, the teacher gives a sticker. I have friends who were over 10 coins received five. I received more than 10, friends envied ~ Foreign ~ the invitation I put stickers attached to the file. English is fun may just be coming in soon, so eyes were fast. School English and was really fun."]
My nephew James made a Flat Stanley and sent him to me. I brought the Flat Stanley to my 2nd grade after school class and we gave him a small tour of our school.
I didn't edit the video much at all – I took out a bit where a kid had a stunningly disgusting runny nose, but other than that, it's just as it happened.
The Korean school calendar works very differently from in North America. Sometime around the start of March, each year, the “school year” starts. Kids move up a grade. Teachers start or stop contracts or migrate schools (except for us wacky foreigners). Moms (and even a few progressive dads) show up and take videos of little Iseul’s first day of school, as the kids nervously stand around in lines and formations meeting their teachers and listening to interminable speeches by authority figures.
It’s quite charming, in its Korean way. And having resolved that I’ll be moving on in two more months, I got very sappy and nostalgic watching all my much-loved first-graders becoming proud and yet strangely equally rambunctious second graders, and all my kind-hearted third-graders becoming world-weary and yet equally friendly fourth graders.
Here is a picture of the gym, as the kids did some high-grade waiting. They’re in rows, front to back, by class. Second-graders in foreground, with sixth-graders farthest away. Teachers standing facing at the heads of the lines.
Lot’s of changes. New teachers. Some older teachers, gone. There is never much forewarning of these things – no one tells the foreigners much of what is going on.
We have new English department co-teachers. Ms Lee is gone – some kind of sabbatical, related to her planning to take a big test to become a qualified highschool level teacher next fall. And Ms Ryu, the English “department head” (such as it is) whom I like so much… she’s not gone, but she’s no longer in charge of the English department. Adjustments forthcoming.
Leaving school, I met Hae-rim’s brother (whose name I always forget, because he insists his name is “crazy monkey boy”). He had a large box in front of the stationery store at the school’s main gate. He opened the box. Hae-rim was inside.
A passing random foreigner (yes, really, in Hongnong! – well, actually, it was just Glenn, the idiosyncratic Canadian who works at the middle school across the street) took our picture. Hae-rim, Jared, Crazy Monkey Boy. These are the kids I will remember very, very much, when I leave Hongnong.
I meant to post these videos several weeks ago. Having momentary access to broadband, in Atherton, Queensland, Australia, I decided to finish the post.
My students built "model classrooms" – 3 dimensional models of schools and other things – for my 3rd and 4th grade English "winter camps" during the first and second weeks of January. I made a pretty thorough video record of our work, and I think it's a good example of "what I try to do in the classroom" when I'm at my best. The full video is about 30 minutes. I didn't do much editing, but the camera was mostly in the hands of the students, and there were a lot of starts and stops and goofing around, some of which I tried to cut out. I divided it into 3 parts in order to post it to youtube. Here are the 3 parts.
Here is a video I took last Thursday.
My student Seong-un seems to be an up-and-coming Korean comic genius. I really only understood about 10~15% of what he's saying here, but even his deadpan delivery and timing seemed incredibly funny, and he had his peers all crying with laughter with this little narrative. So, I post it here, unedited. Let me know (if you speak Korean) if this is really as funny as it seemed to me.
Yesterday we ended our “winter camps” (morning extracurricular English classes). Here are class portraits of the last two groups, taken yesterday morning.
The smart first and second graders (not all of them came on this last day, so the class isn’t full size, here – it was a large group of 24).
The calm and organized fifth graders (a few are missing, but it was a very comfortable class of about 8~10 – attendance varied).
Unrelatedly… here are some photos to remember my current “home” by, as I travel to Australia today.
Here is the view from the steps of my apartment building as I left for the bus terminal yesterday afternoon.
And here is the main drag in fabulous, cosmopolitan Yeonggwang, in front of the bus terminal.
We started the second installment (“session”) of our Winter Camps English classes yesterday. Now, instead of first and second graders, we have third and fourth graders. Sometimes these kids really surprise me with how smart they are.
I don’t know the fourth graders very well, but they have a reputation, as a group, of being the smartest cohort at Hongnong – especially the high-achievers who come to afterschool and vacation-time English classes. Anyway, the eight or so fourth graders and I were drawing pictures of “My Perfect School.” The kids were including a lot of humorous additions in their “perfect schools”: not only stores, restaurants and movie theaters (all to be expected), but also delightfully peculiar things, including graveyards, prisons, churches, saunas (meaning the ubiquitous Korean public bath-house type places, quite unlike anything in Western culture, being family gathering places), secret passages, subways, and more.
One boy had created something for his school called a “3D Room.” 3D movies are big here, these days, just as in the US. But I was surprised to see that next to his 3D Room, he’d also added a “4D Room.” I wondered if he understood what “3D” referred to, conceptually. I thought I’d give it a try.
I didn’t really try to teach the word “dimension” as a vocubulary item. I just explained, “front-back, 1; left-right, 2; up-down, 3.” I mimed the motions. “That’s 3D – one, two, three.” Then I mimed out, “left-right, 1; up-down, 2. That’s 2D. Like a television. Or a piece of paper.” I picked up a piece of paper. “Flat. Right?”
Then I asked, “So what’s 1D?” He quickly nodded, and mimed a left-right, motion, stretching out an invisible piece of string on his fingers. He definitely understood. “That’s right, a line. 1D.” I pounced: “So what’s 4D? front-back, 1; left-right, 2; up-down, 3; what’s next?”
The boy’s face was blank. Gotcha, I thought. But then another boy, sitting next to him, blew me away. “Time, of course,” he said. It was one of those moments when you realize the language barrier obscures some very, very sharp intelligences.
Awesome.
The picture: des dumptrucks at dawn, du jour.
First and second grade winter camp today.
The Guk twins (2nd grade) made a snowman after class today, in the courtyard by the outdoor faucets. They are good kids. I’m very proud to say that I can tell them apart – Geon-u has a freckle on his forehead between his eyebrows that his twin Hyeon-u doesn’t. It can help that at least one of them usually forgets his glasses on any given day, but rarely do both of them. Anyway… their brother Snow-u has a funny-shaped nose, too, looks like.
The kids at school decided to use an extremely slippery, ice-covered ramp in the courtyard area as a recreational device during lunch break.
Earlier, when I looked out my window at 7:40 am, this is what I saw. Dumptrucks. Snow.
Walking toward the bus terminal, I saw one of the very, very sad palm trees planted in front of the Glory Hotel. Why do Koreans plant palm trees? I don’t think the palm trees like the climate.
Then Mr Lee stopped by me as I crossed the traffic circle, and offered me a ride. I met his kids, who go to Yeonggwang Elementary. I met his wife, again, and we dropped her off at her work at Yeonggwangseo (West Yeonggwang) Elementary. I had never been in that part of Yeonggwang – it was very beautiful with its fresh coating of snow, and reminded me of driving through rural southeastern Minnesota in winter – rolling hills, mixtures of hardwood and pine forest, stubbly pale yellow fields covered in white, grain elevetors, random rural hardware stores, etc.
Two sixth-grade boys ran past me in the courtyard. “Teacher! Teacher! African! Snowball!” they panted out, excitedly. But they didn’t slow down. They quickly disappeared into the back wing, toward the stairwell leading to the sixth-grade classrooms.
This was hard for me to understand. I was puzzled.
Until, a few moments later, Hwa-myeong raced into view from the alleyway between the storage building and the entrance to the boy’s bathroom. Ah. Hwa-myeong – our school’s only “ethnically diverse” Korean. He’s Afro-Korean, or something Middle-Eastern, in his background. He’s a nice kid – a little bit hyper, but well-adjusted and quite popular. But his nickname, of course, seems to be “African” (the English word, “a-peu-ri-kan” in the Koreanized rendering). He had a large snowball. He was on the hunt. I got him to pause long enough so I could take his picture, as he posed, proudly displaying his weaponized snow.
Here are some other pictures of our first snow.
The weather was Minnesota-y, today. Meaning not the cold, per se, but the strangeness. It was quite changeable. Morning it was bitterly cold and snowing. By noon, the snow had melted and it was blustery. At 3 pm, the sky was like the bottom of a copper kettle, and there was thunder and lightning. There was a brief downpour of cold, cold rain. When I was walking home from the bus terminal at 6 pm, the sky was cloudless and violet-pink-blue-gold, from the dregs of the disappearing sun, and there was a sliver of crescent moon hanging peacefully.
My favorite first-grader, Ha-neul, presented me with a portrait she’d created of me, today. I was very pleased.
Last week, on my Wednesday and Friday afterschool advanced (allegedly sixth grade but really a mix of 3-4-5-6) class, I was trying to do an exercise with story-telling. I had these handouts that I’d gotten a while back, where there are these wordless comic-book-style story panels presented, and then a series of “hints” (like initial letters of words, rebus pictures, etc.). The students look at the pictures and try to fill in the story based on the hints. It’s pretty difficult, actually – even I was having trouble a few times thinking of how the authors of the exercises meant for the words to go.
But my idea was to then have the kids make their own. I demonstrated one, on the whiteboard (an ad hoc story about miniature aliens landing at Hongnong, being cooked and eaten, and making the guy sick):
Then I had them make their own, as homework. Most “forgot” the homework – pretty typical for the afterschool class – but one student did an amazing job. She made a story about snow and cats making “cloud bread” (which I theorize is a literal translation of the Korean term for something like eclairs). It was excellently done. Here is here set of picture panels:
Here is her page of “hints” (remarkably few mistakes that impair the ability to fill it out):
Finally, unrelatedly, a truly humorous little sketch on the corner of a paper from a first grader. The Korean is “peck peck” (as in “kiss kiss”). Cute:
Having been teaching some of my students about Thanksgiving over the last several days, today we inadvertently recreated black Friday.
We’ve been giving out “alligator bucks” – kind of a classroom currency based on an idea I’d piloted during my summer camps classes – as rewards to students for good behavior, etc. And we’ve been opening an “English Store” every few weeks on Fridays to sell them things using the currency: some candy, some stationery and school supplies.
Up through the last time we opened the store, it wasn’t that popular. But a lot of alligator bucks have dropped into circulation, and the consequence was that today, during lunchtime recess, our English classroom was mobbed by students desiring to purchase things from our store. It was exactly like pictures you see of Black Friday shoppers in the US mobbing stores with sales. It was very funny.
Here are some pictures of the mob. It was friendly but impatient. There was a lot of good-natured pushing and shoving. One small first grader, who had alligator bucks that had been given to him by his older sister, was allowed through unharmed. I worked crowd control, feeling like a bouncer at a night club, so the tables with the merchandise wouldn’t be overrun.
And here’s a picture a student took of me with my camera the other day when we were practicing a dialogue memorization for a test.
Who said “I love me”?
I had my last “genius class” of the term, this evening. “Genius class” is a Konglishism for something that would be described in the US as a gifted program, maybe. The classes aren’t held at my school, Hongnong, but rather at the county office of education in scenic and happenin’ downtown Yeonggwang. Working for this office is the closest I have ever come, in my life, to existing inside a Kafka novel. It’s almost pure non-communication.
For example, I found out that I had to give a final test, tonight, because someone at the office sent a text message last week – not to me, but to someone who used to work at that office but that happened work at Hongnong Elementary. That’s the only communication ever received by me about the fact that I had to give a final exam. That’s just one example.
Anyway, I made a final exam, and gave it this evening. Despite the unadulterated bureaucratic horrors of working for the office, and the fact that the kids don’t really seem all that gifted to me, I found myself thinking that I’ll miss the kids. I always end up getting nostalgic, for the kids.
One of the kids is a girl named Ye-jin. She wrote a really terrible test. Her English seems almost non-existent. But she drew a picture on the back. Here it is.
The picture made a big impression on me. The thing that was striking to me about it was that it portrays me as seeming so overconfident, almost arrogant. I know I come off that way, to others. It conceals deep insecurities, of course. My student attributed to me thoughts such as “I love me!” (twice) and “Peoples are love me!”
Actually, I think it’s not just OK, but probably important to convey a very strong sense of self confidence when teaching kids – and as this picture reveals, apparently, I do exactly that. But it’s all a front, of course. I’m a deeply insecure person.
Nevertheless: “I like monkey.”
Really. Not even a real cow. I woke up, this morning, from a dream in which I was pretending to be a cow on stage, in a silly cow costume.
Perhaps this is how my subconscious deals with the anxieties around performance and managing children, in the context of yesterdays huge open-house and bigwig inspection, at work? I'm not averse to being silly – I've donned many a mask or goofy hat or wig during teaching time. But dreaming about it, in an otherwise amorphous setting, is a bit unexpected.
I may meet my friend Mr Kim later today, but at the moment, I'm feeling unmotivated. I will just relax this morning, I guess.
Yesterday went OK. I met one of the important people from the power plant, which provides so much of the supplementary funding that makes this otherwise poor rural school amazingly wealthy. He had bad teeth and bad English. I shook his hand and said "만나서 반갑습니다."
There was a funny moment when I was meeting some of the kids' moms. Ms Ryu introduced several of them to me, as they sat around a table eating green-tea cookies and chatting about who-knows-what. She said, "This is Ha-jin's mom, and this is Gyu-tae's mom."
"Oh, Gyu-tae," I cried out. "Oh, my, god," I added, reflexively – because Gyu-tae is a behaviorial challenge of the first order. The woman seemed to understand that reaction, though, because everyone just started laughing, including Ms Ryu. Gyu-tae is a great kid: smart and big-hearted. But he's never, ever, under any condition… still or focused. When I have him in my afterschool class, I probably say things like, "Gyu-tae, sit down, please," or "규태야, 그렇지 마세요" [Gyu-tae, don't do that] once every several minutes.
Last week, Won-seok captured a fly, and glued it to a triangular piece of scrap paper. It was still alive. “It’s hang-gliding,” he explained.
Today, it was incredibly cold. I was waiting for my first-grade afterschool class to start, and hanging out with some of them in the area behind the English classroom. The pathway is the one that leads between the gym and the library to the cafeteria. Min-sol was cavorting around in the very, very cold wind and sprinkling of raindrops. There was a rainbow, but my camera failed to capture that. I think it wants to snow.
We've been working on it for a long time: my 3rd graders and a little 7-minute musical I put together, using some songs from a curriculum book and my own amended script for the talking parts.
We tried during summer session, but the motivation at that time was low. Then we started again last month, and this time the motivation was high, because we were slated to perform in the school arts festival (학예회). That was today, and we did it. Not perfect, due to poor sound system, among other things. But it was successful as far as the audience (parents and kids, mostly) was concerned. And they were very cute doing it. Here's a video – poor quality, I admit. I didn't take it – I had to hand it off to one of the staffroom ladies, because I had to supervise the sound guy to make sure he started the songs at the right time based on the kids' dialogue.
I'm very proud of them. I'll make another video sometime soon with some other random footage from festival and from our practice times leading up to it.
재 방과후수업에서 이름이 유빈이라는 일학년 학생 있어요. 그녀는 아주 똑똑하지만 영어를 잘 못해요. 계단에서 저번에 그녀를 봤어요. 그녀는 뛰 놀고 있는 때 저는 조금 놀라게 생각해요. 그래서 떨어졌어요. 그녀는 울고되지 않았어요. “티처 때문에 엉덩이 아퍼”라고 했어요.
Sometimes, it’s all worth it. The other day, making a zoo. Today, clowning around with costumes.
Here are some pictures.
Ha-neul
Namgung Da-hun
Ju-hui
I Do-hyeon
Choe Do-hyeon
Geon-u
The day was dropping hints of winter. A blustery wind turning up leaves on suddenly old-looking trees, making them flash silver. Huge bales of rice wrapped in white plastic scattered across fields of gold stubble and puddles and black mud and shoots of green weedy grass nourished by the recent rain. Pale purple and white daisies and other unnamed fall flowers littering the highwaysides.
For the first time in months, I thought to myself, I'm cold. This is not a bad thing. I like being cold – that's why I long ago substituted my birth-home in California with my adopted home, Minnesota.
Little Ha-neul, of the charming smile, in my first grade afterschool class, had a prized new possession: a little chemical hand warmer in the shape of a dunkin-donut, with advertising to match. She was holding it to her neck like a pet bunny. We drew zoo animals in that class, while Mr Choi slept soundly at his desk in the front of the room, despite how loud they were.
The pines on the hills, as I rode the bus home, danced. The sky was gold and pink. I listened to Korn, and Gordon Lightfoot. I stopped at the chuk-hyeop for juice and toilet paper, and by the time I reached my apartment, the daylight was almost disappeared.
