Today, I get to move – 3rd time since starting this job, last month. Maybe it will work out. Maybe not.
Meanwhile, busy day ahead of me. Some girls saw that I had used some tissue paper to wrap the mouth of the alligator, and immediately felt this was a medical emergency. They proceeded to operate, although they were also trying to watch Girls’ Generation (소녀시대 = a popular Korean pop group) music videos on the computer.
Yesterday with some of the afterschool kids (I don’t have an afterschool class on Thursday, but my co-teacher and fellow foreign teacher Casi have one) were playing with the green plastic alligators. They were having a lot of fun. Here is a picture.
Here is a picture of one of my first-graders, Haneul, who insisted I needed to take a picture of her.
Today is Buddha’s Birthday, a national holiday. Casi and I walked over to that Baekje Buddhism monument this morning (appropriate, right?). Here is a picture of an unexpectedly ascetic-looking Buddha that we saw there – see his ribs, showing?
Now I’m in Gwangju, where I found a place with FAST free internet wi-fi. I’m fixing and updating my blog.
In the 3rd grade classes, we've been doing some very simple command forms, as part of the national curriculum. We had a little dialog for our current chapter's "role play" section. There's a little animated cartoon that goes along with it, that's played on the DVD. There is a prince and poor man, and they're having a little conversation. Note that although this is English class, the story being played out seems deeply Korean in character (in my humble opinion). I'm not sure if it's based on a Korean folktale, a European folktale, or is strictly a product of the authors' imaginations. Regardless, it could work in a medieval European setting or in a pre-modern Korean one (meaning… up to, well, just a few years ago). Here's the dialog:
Prince: Sit down, please.
Poor Man: Thank you. I'm hungry.
Prince: Oh no! Look at your hands. Wash your hands.
Poor Man: Oh, please! I'm hungry.
Prince: OK. Open your mouth. [Prince puts some food in the Poor Man's mouth]
Poor Man: Thank you.
Prince: You're welcome.
So we had the kids playing out this extremely simple little tale, in pairs, having memorized their lines. Most of the kids are pretty much playing it "by the book," with very little emoting or "acting." A few get into the role, with some begging gestures when the poor man says "Please," for example, or a supercilious glare from the prince when he remarks on the poor man's dirty hands. But one pair of kids played it over the top, and I was laughing hard when they finished.
The best part was when the boy, who was playing the prince, said "OK. Open your mouth." The girl who was playing the poor man opened her mouth, with an appropriately starving and pleading expression on her face, and the boy, with a great deal of flourish, reached under his desk and pulled out a little thermos. He proceeded to carefully and slowly unscrew the top, and poured out a measured portion of the liquid inside. This was totally unexpected for both me and my co-teacher – we just watched, surprised. The boy, as prince, then glanced, with an arched eyebrow, at the "poor man," and proceeded to… drink the juice himself!
The "poor man" was devastatedly disappointed. Her face showed it, too. The prince poured another small amount into the cup, and only THEN offered some to the poor man. At this point she took the drink – with a perfect expression mixing desperation and disgust – drank it slowly.
It was like watching a tea ceremony, but with the intentional rudeness of the server drinking for himself before serving his guest. Which, of course, captured perfectly the socioeconomic tensions lurking in the little play's subtext. All the students, the co-teacher and I all applauded and laughed together at this excellent performance.
I finally had my first time with the "kindergarteners." Actually, the Korean term that is translated as kindergarten is 유치원 (yu-chi-won) and it really means any schooling below first grade – so the age range is from "barely out of diapers" right up to 6 or so (western counting). Many public elementary schools don't have kindergartens, but this one that I'm working at, because of the same extra funding that allows them to have two amazing and underappreciated native English teachers, also has a kindergarten wing. And on Wednesday mornings, barring other events, I get to teach the little ones.
I spend 30 minutes with each group: oldest, middle, and youngest. They were great fun. Kids that age are easy to teach language to, because they just sit and soak it up, like sponges. Half-an-hour a week won't get them fluent, but at least it gets them exposed to it, a little – kind of like the Spanish that American kids get so often in lower grades.
I showed them one of my famous plastic finger-chomping alligators (actually, it was my co-teacher's new alligator, who had bought a few after seeing how I used them in class and liking the idea). They were very, very focused. And we did the 코코코 game (ko-ko-ko means nose-nose-nose): you touch parts of your face, and name them, and then at some point you make an intentional mistake, like pointing at your ear and saying "nose." The kids think this is hilarious, and it helps them learn the vocabulary. You can apply it to other things too, like piles of toys in the shapes of food, or whatever. It's a pretty informal game, but those work best.
Finally, we read a story (there are some pretty good Korean-developed curricular materials that include custom-written stories, that I was given to use). Reading picture books to kids is great, you can stop and talk about what's going on in the story much more smoothly than when watching a video or listening to a CD. It becomes more INTERACTIVE, and can work at any level: "Where's the dog?" "On roof!" "Why?" "Hide."
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."~Oscar Wilde
This is relevant to language teaching, since speaking a new language requires a type of disinhibition ("hibition"?) very to similar to that required by truth-telling.
“꿈도꾸지마” means “stop dreaming” – it’s a negative command form. It was cool to hear this on TV only a few days after having managed to finally acquire the relevant grammar and vocabulary. Mostly I learn things and I’m left wondering, when do they really use that? … or else I hear things and I wonder, when am I going to learn about that?
I’m frustrated with my current Korean teacher, still. She seems less pedagogically able than the one I had last month. The insight I had last night: the one I had last month always dedicated a minimum 10~20 minutes in each class talking with each of us in the class about our lives. Where we lived, what we were doing, etc., in Korean. And often, successfully using whatever vocabulary or grammar items we were currently learning. Whereas my current teacher always only follows the lesson, which at best represents fictional situations or roleplays and more often is just rote substitutions of various kinds.
It’s so much easier to learn a new bit of language when you’re using it for something relevant to your life.
I read a long book review of a book by Doug Lemov entitled Teach Like a Champion, in the New York Times. While the apparent reported premise of the book – that good teachers can be "made" as opposed to it being something that is innate – resonated with me deeply, I came away from the review feeling a bit annoyed with the both the reviewer and the book's author.
That's because instead of coming out and explaining the details of Lemov's thinking about how one becomes a better teacher, or how one can be taught to be a better teacher, the review only serves to "tease" the content of the book. The reviewer is obviously a Lemov "fan," and she's just cheerleading without really contributing to an intelligent discourse about teacher education. Basically, the message of the review is: buy this book, and you'll get the secret to becoming a better teacher.
Knowledge like that shouldn't be proprietary. But setting aside philosophical/ethical quibbles, I also suspect that knowledge of that sort can't be proprietary – by which I mean that it's not going to help improve education as long as it remains proprietary, when looked at from a cultural practices / knowledge systems angle. Where good educators come from and how they're made, if they can be made, is not the sort of information you can or should hide behind a "for only $16.77!" barrier (current price on Amazon). Lemov (and possibly the reviewer) may wish to revolutionize education in America, but I doubt they'll make much progress until they lose the mercenary attitude. Is that too idealistic of me?
I have had consistently bad experiences with knowledge that hides behind "buy this book" barriers – I'm thinking mostly of the infinite number of self-help manuals that circulate in the world, but my experience with Rosetta Stone language-learning software is also a recent, and expensive, example. I have begun to develop the belief that "good" knowledge (by which I mean truly revolutionary and/or useful knowledge) must, by definition, be "open source" in some sense of the term.
So getting back to the idea that good teachers can be made, instead of found, I guess my thinking is that I agree, and I think the idea could be revolutionary for teacher training, but for now I'll continue looking at my own insights, and keep searching blogs and other online content, and keep reading less promotion-reliant tomes.
Yesterday morning I did a demo teaching in a real classroom. I felt very nervous. I knew the job was a long-shot, and I'm pretty sure that the demo teaching wasn't, ultimately, a deciding factor, either way. The fact was that the potential employer, a rather posh private elementary school in Northeast Seoul, seems disinclined to hire me due to bureaucratic obstacles (i.e. the complications of getting me a "fresh" E-2 visa by working with the Korean immigration authorities, as opposed to the convenience of hiring someone already on a valid visa, either E-series or F-series, where it's fairly simple to set up).
I don't know why I was so nervous. I think I had a pretty good lesson plan, although the main caveat (yes, caveat) would have to be that no lesson plan survives actual contact with children, at least not 100%. And I'm experienced enough to know this. The kids were first-graders – younger than most that I've worked with, at least in Korea. But they seemed very entertained by what I'd put together: I had them going around asking each other questions about what they would like to eat, based on the contents of a story they'd been reading that the school gave to me ahead of time.
My thoughts: probably, it was a more chaotic classroom than the Korean teachers were used to seeing. I have always striven for a "student-centered" classroom, as much as is possible given any particular curriculum. And since they'd only given me the story, without any other curricular guidelines, I simply did what seemed like the best thing: make a lesson that kept the students moving around and talking in English to each other as much as possible, without worrying too much about "controlling" it.
The result was apparent classroom chaos – any time you get a dozen first graders on their feet, you can hardly expect anything less. But I saw two important things: they were speaking English to each other, and they were having fun. That, in my opinion, is success. Hmm… I feel like I'm trying to defend myself, here. And, as I pointed out at the top of this post, I don't think I need to – I actually think that they understood what I was doing and were not disappointed in it. But I think, too, that they were just "going through the motions."
Hard to read the Koreans, on this matter – my Korean language comprehension is still quite weak, and I therefore don't pick up what they're saying to each other during or after the class with much accuracy or detail. But I could tell the native English-speaking teacher they had watching me was cool with it – he was quite friendly to me after we finished, and said something like, "go ahead and just stay with them as long as you'd like," which was a pretty positive evaluation, I thought.
Conclusions: I will only get the job if the school still finds itself without any other viable, "easier" candidate several weeks down the road and becomes "desperate" to fill their position. Not to mention the fact that I'm still missing one piece of paper I need to present (it's in the mail, hopefully). But, as far as the demo teaching, I was feeling pretty happy with it, afterward.
My friend text-messaged me the above, saying he’d seen it as a name for a 학원 [hagwon]. It means: “Computer & Filial Piety.” Which, in and of itself, just about summarizes the weird tensions in Korean society between old and new, East and West, etc., etc., and all that trite cliche stuff that’s nevertheless totally going on.
I wonder what the classes are like, there? Is it like a Confucian-style computer-literacy school? Or is it computer-based Confucian moral education? Or a little of both? Or is it just a cool sounding name, and has nothing to do with curriculum or teaching philosophy? Hmm… I’d vote for that last one, based on my personal experience. Maybe there’s neither a PC nor an analect in sight.
I’ve finally done it – only six months later than originally planned. I’ve posted the video clips from my last day at LBridge, and specifically, for that class where I went in and from absolute scratch I taught a simplified debate format and we had an actual debate.
These kids were at best high-beginning or maybe low-intermediate level students. They had never had debate in English class before. So in 35 minutes, we went from zero to exactly what I was doing with my advanced students. Well… obviously, their speeches were quite short and the topic I gave them was quite simple, but I was very proud of what we accomplished. And I ran the video camera the whole time. So, here it is. [UPDATE: this link was broken when I dismantled this website, some years ago. The videos are still on youtube, however: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV]
I use my cellphone as a stopwatch in class when students are giving speeches. Further, I occasionally allow the students themselves to be “timekeeper” for a given other student’s speech. This means my students are often playing with my cellphone. It doesn’t really bother me, although more than once, I’ve gone back to it later and found its most recently used application was something under the “game” heading — I rarely play games myself on the cellphone because, since it’s a Korean cellphone, it tries to help me play the game with instructions in Korean. I did once manage to get a 37% score on a quiz game entirely in Korean, basically by viewing it as a linguistic abstraction game.
So… I was pulling photos off my cellphone last night, and found the following. I have no recollection of when this photo might have been taken. Is it flattering? I’ve definitely been making a lot of use of my plastic black and red pitchfork (lower left of photo), lately.
I don’t know how to put on the fancy frame, either. But whoever did this picture of me apparently had no problem not only surreptitiously taking this snapshot but then managing to add the fancy frame without my having a clue. I think it was a time when they were brandishing their own cellphones and I was hamming a little bit, so it’s not like I wasn’t aware of having my picture taken. In today’s modern (Korean) classroom, it’s ubiquitous, and something I accept as a matter of course. I suppose that technically, there are rules banning the use of cellphones in class, but I view such rules as both reactionary and irrelevant, and rarely enforce them except maybe during quizzes or when they’re clearly proving too distracting.
…
“Are you devil?” Gina asks, every time.
“Maybe,” I hedge. It’s all part of the schtick, right?
Every teacher needs a schtick. Or a fork. And a coupla alligators (made in China).
Today, I felt like an "old hand." Cynical and well-informed. We had the annual summer speech contest today. It's my third speech contest for LBridge, so I knew the routine. Last-minute disorganization, great kids, but a bit scaled down from previous events. I got to be the finalist speeches' MC again. It's weird how I just kind of shrugged and went with it, when the boss came to me five minutes before and said, oh, by the way, can you be MC? There was a time, I remember, when such cavalier deployment of my limited talents would have pissed me of f and made me uncomfortable, but I just went with the flow, and it was fine.
I was please to see several of my students place in the finals, including Willy (6th overall), Tracey (5th overall) and tiny Dana (4th overall). I'll try to post a few pictures later, although I don't have as many as I'd have liked, since my camera ran out of batteries.
Willy gave a speech about how parents shouldn't try to make their children into slaves. "I can think for myself, so please let me think for myself," he explained. Another boy, David (not my student) gave a really serious, excellent and compelling speech about "one thing about Korean culture I would like to change": his choice? Korean men's drinking culture. That's a pretty heavy-duty topic for a 5th grader. And he did a really good job with it.
I have always felt there was something central to the role of narrative in the human psyche. And recently, as I evaluate myself and my progress as a teacher, I have come to realize that if I assess my "toolbox" (those various tricks and gimicks and techniques that I've accumulated over my recent several years of teaching EFL), there is one thing that stands out as a consistent "winner": telling stories. Telling good, interesting, compelling stories is possible at all levels of EFL instruction, and I have yet to have a bad reaction to a story, as long as I've taken the time to make sure it is well-structured (beginning, middle, end, character, etc.). I used to give away prizes or play games with my students, but nowadays, when they clamor for some kind of reward, they generally say, "tell us a story."
So, to be a better, and better-equipped teacher, I need to work on building my repertoire of narratives. Many of the narratives I tell the students are semi-fictionalized (some more, some less) episodes from my own life: the time I cut my hand on a machine at work, the time I got shot at by a drunk man in Mexico, the time I was in a small airplane struck by lightning. Lately, I've been telling purely fictional stories about mad scientists transplanting brains, since we're doing a unit in my Goldrush classes reviewing parts of the body. They really seem to enjoy these — I came into class today to cries of "draw the man with the brain." That's reference to the sketches I do on the whiteboard.
This list started as occasional jottings in my little notebook, and then several months ago, moved into my "might make a blog about it" document. It's by no means complete, and these are only some thoughts, wishes and desires about what might make for a great working and learning environment.
It's not necessarily an effort to think about what's really possible given all the different constraints that Korean English-language hagwon operate under. Further, the list is fairly specific to the private hagwon environment as it currently operates in Korea, and is based on my experiences of the last two years with elementary-age students. Maybe I'm thinking about this a little bit as an entrepreneur… what I would be comfortable with if I really did run a hagwon, and how I would differentiate it and be successful in the cutthroat Korean private after-school academy market.
What would make a great hagwon? Here goes…
I have this really smart class called Eldorado 2a월. The students had a debate speech test today, and so they embarked on a project to try to keep me distracted and conversational in hopes of delaying the inevitable start of the speech evaluations.
Somehow, we were talking about self-confidence. Unlike most of my classes, there was no need to spend time explaining what self-confidence was, conceptually. Someone asked, "Are you self-confident?"
"I am in some things, and not in others," I offered.
And rather to my surprise, one student asked, "Do you feel confident about teaching?"
It was a penetrating question from a 6th grader. It was not being asked in a hostile tone, so I answered honestly: that in fact, I don't always feel confident about teaching. I said that in teaching, I was always feeling I could do a better job. Yet in that moment, in that class, I felt really pleased with how things were going. I wasn't "fishing for compliments"… and none were offered. They just nodded as if they understood.
The tone felt a bit serious, so Candy lightened the mood. "I feel really confident about eating," she said, with a wry smile and a dry tone.
"Yes, me too," chorused some of the others.
I managed a situation badly.
The background.
I had two students, let's call them Jim and Jerry. They're among my more advanced cohort, both 6th graders. Normally, cheating isn't much of an issue, with these high-level kids. If a kid relies on cheating to get ahead, it's unlikely that a sustained habit of it can get them to this advanced level — there has to be real ability.
It wasn't a major test — just a quick vocabulary quiz. The sort of thing I wouldn't even bother with, if I could design my own curriculum. Certainly not in the "memorize the English words to match the Korean definition" format that these kids are given. But… anyway.
I don't keep an eagle-eye on the kids when they take these quizzes. If anything, I keep up a bit of a monologue laden with (hopefully) clever uses of the vocabulary words, mostly as a kind of good-spirited effort to give some hints as well as distract them to make the quiz more challenging. I'd rather have a more interactive classroom with slightly lower scores, to be honest.
Anyway, I guess Jim and Jerry cheated. One of them copied the other's paper, and I didn't notice during the quiz. There are occasional roving eyes, and I will sometimes say something like, "Keep your eyes on your own papers, please." But, at least in the advanced classes, I've never caught anything that looked much like blatant cheating.
But when I was correcting the quizzes, the evidence for copying was overwhelming. If two kids get right answers, then obviously they're the same right answers, and whether they've cheated or not is not something that can be determined after the fact. But Jim and Jerry both got very low scores (in the area of 20%). And they had lots of peculiar wrong answers, which were exactly the same between them. Some examples: "facillity" for "facility"; "endangerous" for "endangered"; and, most hilariously, "testis" for "attest to". There was, in fact, only one word where their answers differed at all — one of them got it correct, and the other left it blank. It was a word near the bottom. You can see, I hope, why I concluded that there had been cheating.
I jumped to a further conclusion… though with less certainty. Jim had studied for over a year in US, while Jerry has never studied abroad (I don't think). And I feel it was much more plausible that Jerry copied from Jim than vice versa, based strictly on linguistic evidence. Why? Because misspellings like "facillity" and ANY use of the word "testis" by a 6th grader reeks of what I think of as "native-speaker error." No Korean, exposed to only Korean English education, will know the word "testis," whereas almost any American child will have been exposed to term in some playground or locker-room context, and will find it funny or strange or mysterious or all of the above.
So my working hypothesis is that Jim wrote his answers (mostly wrong, a few right) and Jerry copied, except in one instance near the end when he happened to remember on his own a word that Jim hadn't gotten.
Whatever. That's not why I'm frustrated, now. I'm frustrated, because I managed the situation badly.
I circled their scores on the quiz papers, and was due to give them back to the students today (Friday). I intended to discuss my observations and concerns with the two boys, and keep the problem entirely "close to the vest" i.e. "in house." But I also left blanks for their scores in my grade sheet (rather than make a note – my first mistake). Because we just finished mid-terms, I was trying to get caught up in entering grades into the computer system, and so I turned around and at another point in time I was tearing through my grade sheets, entering grades. I wasn't really paying close attention — just making sure everything I had was in.
When I saw those blanks for those two boys, I decided to put in zeroes (my second mistake — blanks should be blanks, never zeroes). I did that with the idea in my mind that the two boys in question weren't stellar students, and that there was some issue, but I wasn't specifically remembering the cheating problem. I've done this before, rarely, and mostly what happens is one of two things: (a) neither the students nor the parents (who see the scores online once they're entered) care; (b) the student or parent comes to me and asks to resolve the issue somehow — doing a make-up or something like that. No problem. Normally.
But Jerry's mom saw the zero online almost immediately, and then called his homeroom teacher. Jerry’s homeroom teacher sits right across from me, so when she got this "alarmed-mother" call, she immediately just said, "hey, Jared, what's the deal with Jerry's quiz grade?"
I looked in my grade book, and saw the quizzes with the circled scores, and, remembering the cheating concern, I simply explained, immediately, the whole story. That was my third, and biggest mistake. I have always felt, believed, and tried to practice the idea that things like cheating controversies should be strictly between student and teacher until at least one conversation has taken place between them. But I'd not seen Jerry since quiz day, and so I hadn't met my own criteria. Yet I nonchalantly dumped the whole problem out there in public view.
If I'd followed my own rules, I'd have (a) never typed a zero into the computer (b) never said anything to Jerry's homeroom teacher about it until talking to Jerry. The fact that both things happened in sequence meant that the thing exploded (predictably), and got completely out of my control. The mom was furious. Of course, she picked a peculiarly "Korean-mom" way of being furious: she declared that I must be a terrible teacher, because I wasn't doing my job, which was, apparently, first and foremost, to "prevent her son from cheating." It has been reactions like this, in the past, that caused me to make up my own policy regarding keeping such controversies "in house" as much as possible.
So the whole thing escalated to the campus director. The mom's anger has been assuaged, a little — by removal of the zero, a commitment on my part to "talk fairly" with her son, and, most importantly, a chance to "retake" the quiz for a better score.
But the whole thing has been a bitter experience. Embarrassing. Frustrating. Depressing. I'll get past it. But. Argh.
Random Notes for Korean
답장 = reply
전달 = delivery, conveyance
인쇄 = printing
목록 = listing, catalog
방울 = drop, dewdrop, little bell
완화하다 = mitigate, assuage, mollify
거짓말 = lie
언론= speech, discussion
언론의 자유= freedom of speech
The following conversation with one of my students took place via cellphone text message this morning. I’ve never had a student do this before – she wrote English purely using Korean syllables. I’m going to have to show her how to key Roman letters on her cellphone. Or maybe she did it to challenge me in some way?
Jessica: 티쳐 캔 유 리드 코리안? 아이 호프 소．아임 제시카 앤드 아이 해브 어 쿠에스텬스 [tichyeo kaen yu rideu korian? ai hopeu so. aim jesika andeu ai haebeu eo kueseutyeonseu]
Jared: what is your question?
Jessica: 슈드 아이 츄스 온리원 토픽 올 두 얼 토픽스?? [syudeu ai chyuseu onliweon topik ol du eol topikseu??]
Jared: right. choose 1 topic
Jessica: 탱큐☆★ [taengkyu]
I have a little self-inking rubber stamp that I use to "sign" my students' homework, as it goes faster and the kids think the stamp is fun. The one I'm currently using says "AMAZING!" and has a picture of something vaguely resembling a dragon (or perhaps an alligator). So it's all part of a theme, I suppose.
Today I was in my "Mayflower"-level class, which is the lowest level I teach, currently. So there are sometimes challenges in communication. I was going to stamp my student Ellen's workbook, but she put her hand up very seriously and said "teacher, I'm already amazing." That was pretty good English, for a level that often struggles to put together a sentence. And she used the adverb correctly, too ("already").
So I answered, "yes, I can see you are amazing. That was amazing!" And I stamped her book three times, rapidly, which everyone thought was hilarious.
According to various news sources (e.g. The Korea Herald, The Australian), South Korea's response yesterday to the North Korean nuclear test has been to finally get around to joining the US's "Proliferation Security Initiative."
This was particularly interesting to me, because of an incident in one of my most advanced debate classes about a month ago. We have these "newspapers" (they have current events packaged for ESL learners, produced by a domestic Korean publishing house) that always have a current debate topic in their pages. I really like pulling our in-class debate topics from these newspapers, because they are always topics that are immediately relevant to South Koreans, being policy issues that are under discussion by the government. I can urge the kids to consider that they are learning not just English, but something along the lines of a South Korean civics class. This provides at least some of them with some additional motivation, and because the topics are prominent in the South Korean media, it also makes them easy to research, even if they are often conceptually quite difficult.
Last month, the newspaper had as its debate topic the question as to whether South Korea should fully join the US's Proliferation Security Initiative. I didn't know much about it, and I didn't put too much time into researching it, myself. I read the article, gave it some thought, and it seemed like a pretty uncontroversial thing, to me. I understood South Korea's ambivalence, about it, however, given the always fraught nature of its relationship with its northern neighbor — North Korea had basically said that it would view South Korea joining this treaty as a "declaration of war." Huh… right.
I tend to avoid stating my personal opinion on these debate topics until after the debate is finished, so as not to bias the students' take on them. But I'd formed in my mind that joining PSI would probably be OK. Until Sally's discussion of it.
Sally is a sharp sixth grader. A bit of a prodigy, in some ways, excellent with these civics and social studies type concepts. I have joked that she's going to be a lawyer, some day. Anyway, we were beginning our discussion of this Proliferation Security Initiative, and she begins, quite simply: "I read about it, and I think it's illegal." My jaw dropped open. "Uh… That's not what the newspaper said," I was thinking to myself.
But she went on to explain that it involved arbitrary search and seizure in international waters, and that it basically boiled down to a form of international racial profiling of ships-at-sea. Not using this kind of vocabulary — she's not THAT good — but she did a perfectly adequate job of making these ideas clear using simpler vocabulary. And I was just stunned, even recognizing that she was probably basing this on something she'd found on a Korean opinion website of some kind. Because here was a 6th grader, lecturing me on international law. She'd managed to internalize the arguments, and it was clearly not just parroting but that she understood the significance of them. I was so impressed.
Sure enough, when you look at Wikipedia on the topic of PSI, you find that it was another one of those dubious cowboy-internationalist undertakings of John Bolton, former UN Ambassador under President Bush. Given that pedigree, how could it NOT be illegal? I bonked my forehead and went "d'oh!" And, because of Sally, I changed my mind about South Korea joining the Proliferation Security Initiative.
Now, it becomes moot (note to self: now is the time to explain the meaning of the word "moot" to Sally's class — we can revisit PSI for 5 minutes in light of the news). South Korea has gone and jumped into it, anyway, in reaction to the North's intemperance. Ah, well…
It was a pretty rough week. Not so much in the quantity of work, but in the ups and downs of the affective environment at LBridge. There was the announcement, mid-week, that there will be layoffs, campus closings, etc. Though not impacting me directly, obviously the mood in the staff room has taken a beating. And today the rumors began to surface that teaching loads would be way up, next term. Which is logical, but no more welcome, for all that.
And there were deprecatory things muttered about "speaking teachers" (code for E2 visa-holding teachers as opposed to "natives") who have "easier jobs." While I disagree with that, with regard to class load, I do acknowledge that not having to interact with the parents, as is required of the native teachers, definitely makes things a little bit easier. I see how they struggle and suffer with the constant shifts in mood and policy (oh, there's a policy?), and of course, lack-of-support, on the part of management.
But the thing that has me most depressed is the situation of a student of mine. Not just mine… she's been in the Eldorado-ban (level) for a good portion of my time here. Her English name, self-selected, is Clover. I actually really have enjoyed having her in my class. She's not a great intellect, and her English skills are spotty. She's not a hardcore studier, and she's often moody. She can be easily discouraged, and is too often comparing herself unfavorably to her peers. The competition gets her down. But… she could be a lot of fun, too.
One day, a month or two ago, I came in, and she announced, "today, I am Robuckle." I said, "that's an interesting name. I like it." But I wanted to know where it came from. She managed to explain, after jumping up to the board and drawing it out in Korean hangeul, that it was the consequence of playing a common language-game with the hangeulized version of "Clover." This, of course, enchanted me – everyone, including my students, know about my love for all sorts of language games.
Here's how it works. If you write "Clover" in Korean syllables, it comes to keul-lo-beo (클로버). Then, according the rules of the language game, you put the first syllable last. That gives lo-beo-keul (로버클). But now the leading /L/ has been un-twinned, so it gets to become an /R/, according to standard Korean phonology. That gives ro-beo-keul. Finally, you un-hangeulize it back to something close to English phonology, and it sounds like "Robuckle." Fabulous!
Clover enjoyed having made me so happy with such a silly thing. So I enthusiastically endorsed the renaming of Clover as Robuckle.
Robuckle went back to being Clover a few weeks later, but after that, I always would grin to myself whenever I was scoring a paper of Robuckle's, or entering a grade, or whatever. I'm easily and eccentrically pleased, I guess.
Anyway. Clover's grades have been dropping quite a bit, of late. And she got a terrible score on the speaking final speech. She complained (via her mom, conveyed to the homeroom teacher, conveyed to me) that I had scored her unfairly. And she became grumpy and taciturn in class. Which of course caused her subsequent scores on things to drop, too. I asked her, several times, to bring me the scoring sheet I had given her for the speaking final – I was open to renegotiating the score, or, even, letting her have another go at it. But she was more interested in being angry about it. She finally told me her mom "threw it away" (meaning the scoring paper), to get me to leave her alone about renegotiating the grade.
The other day, she apparently complained to her mom that she "hated" all of her teachers at LBridge. Which is fine. Such complaining is the god-given right of every adolescent. But she alleged that we all hated her, too, and that we were unfair to her. Such complaints come from children everywhere, all the time. But the problem in the hagwon biz, where the parents are the paying customers… well, you can imagine: I've written about this dilemma at least once before. The management is just as likely to side with the kid as with the teachers, especially if the kid in question is being unequivocably backed by his or her parent.
The outcome of this is that Clover's homeroom teacher got a dressing-down today by the manager, for not intercepting Clover's problems, and for being unfair, and for not mediating her perceptions of unfairness of her other teachers, such as myself. And that left Clover's homeroom teacher pissed as hell, naturally. At Clover. At Clover's mom. At the manager. And Clover is, most likely, dropping out. And Clover's sister, a star pupil across the street at the middle-school branch, is being pulled, also. Officially, it's all the fault of us teachers.
You see how this works? It's depressing.
And despite all that, I'll miss Clover, too. Her unkempt hair, her occasional wry grin, her sullen slouch, that baseball cap permanently affixed to her head, her flashes of real intelligence shining through the murk of atrocious syntax.
Alas, Robuckle.
The first hagwon (a Korean for-profit, after-school academy – think "night school for elementary kids") that I worked for was called Tomorrow School. I was under the impression that it was pretty successful, but it was a small, single-location, "mom and pop" business. The owners, Danny and Diana, showed either a lot of market savvy or else had a lot of luck in selling it when they did – basically, they jumped out at the top of the market, as far as I can tell. So, after my first four months, Tomorrow School was purchased by a rapidly growing chain of hagwon being built by LinguaForum corporation.
LinguaForum was not, originally, a hagwon business but rather a significant publishing house of language-teaching materials. I had the somewhat vague impression that they were building the chain of hagwon mostly to function as a sort of "lab school" environment in which to develop, test and promote their textbooks and teaching materials. In that respect, I liked them, because they showed a great deal of methodological sophistication in terms of their higher-level curriculum design and intentions. But they were new to the hagwon business, and their on-the-ground execution was pretty weak. I don't think they had a clue how to actually manage, capitalize, and compete in Korea's private after-school-academy market.
So, after taking on too much debt by growing too fast (mostly through acquisitions of mom and pop single-location hagwon like Tomorrow School), LinguaForum decided to abandon the field. They tried to arrange some kind of complex cross-investing relationship with LBridge company, which was a successful and growing but well-established local player in the Ilsan area hagwon market. I'm under the impression that more than one of the terms of the deal fell through, and neither LBridge nor LinguaForum were happy with the outcome.
Nevertheless, the consequence was that last July, LBridge acquired my contract from LinguaForum. Unfortunately, management flat-footedness (in the form of no small amount of arrogance, among other things) meant that although the LinguaForum hagwon chain ceased to exist (the parent publishing house remains), only about half the teachers and barely 10% of the student body tranferred over. I have the unconfirmed suspicion that the failed deal was bad, financially, for LBridge.
All of that, combined with the slumping economy (although, as I've mentioned before, South Korea, relative to other OECD countries, is doing quite well) and an intensely competitive hagwon business environment with lots of consolidation, cutthroat student poaching, etc., means that LBridge now finds itself it somewhat dire straits. Yesterday, it was announced to staff that there will be layoffs, campus closings, and shrinking teaching "teams" in the coming Summer term. I don't think I'm directly affected… my current understanding is that they're going to let my contract run out as written to the end of August. But end-of-contract "bonuses" are imperiled, apparently, and Korean staff (i.e. those who are working here as Korean citizens rather than under work visas, regardless of native language) are deeply and justifiably concerned about job security.
Enrollments have definitely been shrinking. There have been lots of complaints about the difficulty of the curriculum – yet, last fall, there were complaints about the lightness of it. To keep changing the curriculum in response to the tides of parental sentiment is a little bit of an unwinnable battle. You've got to adopt a curriculum and methodology, and stick with it. LBridge definitely has proven poor at this.
Mostly, however, it seems to me that success in the hagwon biz is about building and managing relationships with kids and, of course, parents. And my gut feeling is that LBridge is TERRIBLE at this. Unlike Tomorrow School or LinguaForum, LBridge leaves the major portion of the parent-relationship-management problem to the front-line teachers. While philosophically this may be a good idea, the fact that the management provides precisely zero training or support to the teachers who they throw into this role means that LBridge sets itself up for failure. The fact is that they basically treat their staff like wage-slaves rather than professionals (i.e. things like a lack of respect, a distrust of teachers' abilities to manage their own time, etc.), yet they think they're being clever by having their front-line people be the ones in charge of interacting with parents. You can see the mistake, here, I think. The parents, after all, are the paying customers. You don't want disgruntled and untrained staff being the ones who manage your customer relationships.
To connect this crisis to a business I know fairly well, it is like those tech companies that rely on their technical people to manage customer relationships. This, as we all know, rarely works. You need customer-relationship-management specialists – commonly known as salespeople. That's how for-profit business works. Far be it from me to parrot the likes of the Harvard Business Review, but it seems to me self-evident that in successful companies, intelligent and hard-working salespeople and marketers drive quality and innovation, and then the technical people make it happen behind the scenes, where they can murmur and grumble to their hearts' content. In the hagwon biz, that means having dedicated "parent-relationship-management" specialists, I think.
Danny, the owner of the Tomorrow School, understood this intuitively: he did almost nothing but focus on interacting with the parents, as far as I could tell, leaving the day-to-day management of his business to his wife Diana, and the classroom execution was left to the teachers from whom he expected a great deal of self-reliance and innovation (which is to say that, despite my complaints at the time – see my blog from a year and a half ago – he actually treated his workers more professionally than I've seen at LBridge… we always see things more clearly in retrospect, right?).
I spent 20 minutes last night explaining the debate topic to my Eldorado 1 class. I knew the topic was a bit over their heads, but I had no idea by just how much.
The topic is whether or not South Korea should join the US in a "proliferation security initiative" – basically, should South Korea join other nations in working hard to prevent the nuclear proliferation problem. But it's a sensitive issue, here, since North Korea is the number one offender on the nuclear proliferation front, at the moment. And the South has ambivalences about its other neighbors, too: China is increasingly public about its military (including nuclear) capacity, and Japan is NEVER to be trusted in its non-proliferation commitments (for obvious historical reasons, from the Korean perspective).
The consequence is that while many South Koreans clearly want to side with the US in the non-proliferation movement, there are just as many that would like to simply ignore the situation, either because they don't want to offend the North for fear of antagonizing it (typically, those on the left), or because they would like to see the South developing (perhaps secretly) their own nuclear deterrent (typically, those on the right).
Anyway, I spent lots of time drawing maps and diagrams on the board, and explaining in as simple vocabulary as I could muster, the situation regarding nuclear proliferation. And then, as the bell rang, my student Ann timidly raised her hand, and said, "Teacher… which Korea?" I said that I didn't understand. She elaborated, "Here, Ilsan. Which Korea – North, South?"
"This is South Korea," I said, bemused. Her face brightened. "Oh, thank you. Good night." Oops! Sometimes you need to make sure basic concepts are clear.
In other news… my web-access problems at home are getting progressively more annoying. I couldn't get into facebook, last night. And unlike with my blog host, I was unable to "sneak" in using a proxy. I may be better off trying to freeload wifi off my neighbors, and not pay the $25 a month to SK Broadband. I certainly would never dream of trying to interact with customer service in Korean. I remember vividly my shock and dismay when I realized that the person at the customer service call center at my DSL provider in the US didn't know what a Domain Name Server was. Nothing is more depressing than trying to explain technical stuff to the technical helpdesk people. And to try to do so across a severe language barrier might just cause my brain to self-destruct.
So I read in Newsweek an editorial by Jacob Weisberg, entitled "What else are we wrong about?" The observation that caught my eye: "Homeownership encourages longer commutes. And at least one study says it makes you fat and unhappy."
I've had less-than-glowing sociological intuitions about America's homeownership-as-secular-religion for some time. And the recent subprime mortgage crisis points up some of the instabilities, although it mostly seems the blame lies with exploitative financiers. The point is, a homeownership "religion" can can be exploitative. At the least, it becomes a form of social control: keep your citizens in sufficient debt that they can't challenge the underpinnings of the economic system.
But as I reflected on the homeownership question, this morning, I had a curious new insight. One of the sociological factors that seems to drive US homeownership trends is the "problem of public education." Which is to say, families in search of "better schools" search out "good school districts" which are inevitably "farther out" – leading to overleveraged mortgages and longer commutes, etc., etc. Look at the recent immense movement of lower-middle-class and working-class hispanics into California's Inland Empire, to get away from the "city problems" and "city schools," among other things.
All of which means that, at least indirectly, the US "public education problem" could be viewed as a root cause (I said a root cause, not the root cause) of things as diverse as the current global financial crisis (via the subprime mortgage problem) and global warming (via the excessively long, automobile-dependent commuting pattern of American workers).
Maybe that's just my biases at work. I really believe that the single thing that needs to be "fixed" about the American polity is the education system.
I become more and more convinced that it is not necessarily an advantage, for Korean learners of English, that the Korean language (South Korean, anyway) has been so welcoming of English vocabulary over the last half-century. In fact, it creates some serious problems. Here's why.
Korean phonology allows far fewer consonant clusters than English does, and in general, vowel and consonant inventories are radically different between the two languages, too. Therefore, when Korean borrows an English word, it messes with its native phonology substantially to make it "fit," or nativize it. The main thing that happens is that "epenthetic" vowels are inserted between consonants that aren't allowed to follow each other in Korean, or at the end of English words that end in consonants where Korean doesn't allow such a consonant ending.
A notorious example: printer -> 프린트 (REV peurinteo IPA [pɯrintʌ]). The main Korean epenthetic vowel used is 으 [ɯ], which is basically the Korean functional equivalent of the English schwa [ə]. Because of this, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that Korean speakers develop the mistaken belief that [ɯ] is a common English sound, when, in fact, it not only doesn't exist in English but is a freaky, difficult, weird-sounding vowel for English speakers.
The problem is that Koreans then internalize a false rule, which is that this sort of vowel epenthesis is the "right" way to pronounce English words. I've had kids literally argue with me, passionately, in class that "hadeu" (IPA [hadɯ]) was the "right" pronunciation of the word "hard," for example. The reasoning is basically that, if these thousands of borrowings from English into Korean are English words, after all, how could Koreans be saying them all wrong? It's naive "folk" linguistics, but it becomes a huge battle in the classroom.
Worse… in some kids, whose parents or former teachers thought they were doing them a favor by transcribing their English lessons into hangeul (Korean alphabet), the problem becomes insanely worse, so that they will utter whole sentences, verily, entire speeches, in "hangeulized" English. I had two students do this today. I wanted to cry. How can I help them, when they argue that "del ijeu noting rongeu wideu ma-i peurononshieishon" (there is nothing wrong with my pronunciation)?
Sigh.
Estos últimos días me ha interesado ver varios videos y artículos sobre el '7º Parlamento de las Niñas y los Niños de México,' que es un concurso de escolares del quinto grado de primaria en que actúan como legisladores, debatiendo varios temas de interés social y político. Estos jovenes son de la misma edad de los a quienes enseño 'Debate' en inglés, acá en Corea. Entonces se trata de tanto temática como actuantes muy parecidos. Vea…
Hay algo sumamente emocionante ver estos alumnos emitiendo una retórica de estilo de los grandes políticos mexicanos.
I have a small class where I teach students skills for the speaking component of the iBT (internet-based Test of English as Foreign Language, by New Jersey's ETS, the creators of SAT, GRE, and all kinds of other fun tests). These are 5th and 6th graders, and the weirdness of teaching them to take the TOEFL is immeasurable.
Consider a recent, compelling editorial by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., in the New York Times. He concludes, "we need to move from teaching to the test to tests that are worth teaching to." I agree with this, and know that it applies not just to the "crisis" in American education but equally to the shortcomings of e.g. Korean English-language education. Which is to say, quite simply, why are these kids taking this test?
The TOEFL is intended to be a college-enterance exam for non-native speakers of English, to establish ability level appropriate for American University work. But Koreans love tests, and they love pushing their children hard. So they figure, the earlier the better, right?
These kids, in terms of basic English ability, are perfectly capable of getting mediocre to good scores on something like the TOEFL. But the problem is with topic. Because the test is intended for university-age students, sometimes the kids have no experiential basis for trying to answer the questions put to them. What does it mean to ask a 5th grader if she wants to get married right after college or have a career first? What does it mean to ask a 6th grader if they like having a roommate in the dorms? How can they say whether they're more interested in going to a small or large university?
We've been working on "type 2" questions, lately. Sometimes, they're called "Choice" questions or "preference" questions. Below is a sampling, which I've compiled and edited from various random sources, or thought up myself based on what I've seen of typical "type 2" content. Imagine trying to coach 5th and 6th graders into making concise little 45-second speeches on these topics. Whether they're perfect native speakers or Koreans doesn't matter – the problem is that so often, the content just doesn't "work" for that age level.
1. Some people prefer to live in a small town. Others prefer to live in a big city. Which place would you prefer to live in?
2. Would you prefer to do an important college assignment as part of a team with other students, or individually on your own?
3. Some students get their best study done at night. Others prefer to study during the day. Which time do you prefer for getting study done?
4. Would you prefer to run your own private business or work for a large company with many employees?
5. Some people prefer to eat at food stands or restaurants. Other people prefer to prepare and eat food at home. Which do you prefer?
6. Would you prefer to go on a trip overseas to a new country with a companion you know, or just by yourself?
7. Some students go directly to the teacher with questions about their course work. Others prefer to ask their classmates first. Which do you prefer?
8. During your spare time, would you prefer to watch a movie or read a book?
9. Some students try to combine part-time work and study, while others prefer to study only and work later once their courses are finished. Which do you prefer?
10. Would you prefer to go on a long trip by car or by train?
11. Some people like to stick to tasks they know they can do well. Others like to try new things and take risks. Which do you prefer?
12. Which kind of job would you prefer: a job that is uninteresting but has a high salary, or a job you really enjoy with a moderate salary?
13. Some people like to hurry and get things done as quickly as possible. Others prefer to take their time and get things done at a slower pace. Which do you prefer?
14. Do you prefer friends who are intelligent, or friends who are reliable?
15. Some students try to do moderate amounts of homework on a daily basis. Others prefer to get their homework done in one go over 1-2 days. Which do you prefer?
16. If you went to study in a different country with a different culture, would you prefer to adapt yourself to the new culture, or concentrate more on maintaining your own culture?
17. Some people like to keep up with current news by reading newspapers. Others prefer to read about the news online. Which do you prefer?
18. Would you prefer to do a course that involves lectures and tutorials onsite, or a course that is conducted online via distance learning?
19. When shopping, some people use brand names to help them decide what to buy. Other people go only by price. Which do you prefer?
20. Many universities offer intensive courses during the summer and winter periods. Would you prefer to take an intensive course durung the summer or the winter vacation period?
21. Some people like living in the center of cities close to downtown areas. Others prefer to live further out in the suburbs. Which do you prefer?
22. Some people give money as gifts to friends. Others try to give a specific kind of present. Which kind of gift do you prefer giving to a friend?
23. To find out about a course subject, would you prefer to go and ask a teacher about it, or talk to a student who has already taken the subject?
24. Some students like to use the library to do most of their research. Others prefer to do most of their research using the Internet. Which do you prefer?
25. Some people like to spend their leisure time outdoors, while others prefer to spend it indoors. Which do you prefer?
26. Would you prefer to spend your vacation period at home with family, or go on a trip somewhere with close friends?
27. Some students prefer lectures where the teacher does all of the talking. Other students prefer classes where students are more interactive and contribute to the lesson. Which do you prefer?
28. Some students like to buy all their own books and keep them after their courses are finished. Others prefer to borrow course books and return them once the course is finished. Which do you prefer?
29. Some people like to get married and start a family while they are still young (under 30 years of age). Others prefer to wait until they are older to start their own family. Which do/would you prefer?
30. Some students like to listen to music while they are studying. Others prefer a very quiet atmosphere for their study. Which do you prefer?
31. Would you like to spend most of your life living and working only in your own country, or would you prefer to spend some time living and working in a new country?
32. Some people enjoy hobbies or sports that are personal and individual. Others like hobbies or sports that involve groups of people. Which do you prefer?
33. Some people want to have specific instructions or directions when they try something new. Other people like to experiment and work things out for themselves. Which do you prefer?
34. Would you prefer to live in an apartment building, or a private house?
35. Some students like to make a specific study schedule for themselves, while others prefer to do their study only when they feel like doing it. Which do you prefer?
36. During discussions, some people like to lead the conversation and do a lot of the talking. Other people prefer to listen more and talk only when they have to. Which do you prefer?
37. For a group assignment, would you prefer to work with a new group of people whom you don't know all that well, or work with your close friends?
38. Some people like to keep a private diary which they don't show to other people. Other people like to start things like online blogs, where other people can read the posts and make comments about them. Which would you prefer to start – a private diary or an online blog?
39. Some students choose courses in order to get good jobs in the future. Other students choose courses that are very interesting to them, even if they don't always lead to good jobs. Which do you prefer?
40. Some universities are small and have only a couple of thousand students on campus. Other universities are very large and have many thousands of students enrolled. Which kind of university do you prefer?
As I noted here, before, I had a very bad day last Friday. I had a bad day for two main reasons.
The first reason was more typical emptyheadedness from the management here. But that sort of unpleasantness is a) par for the course, and b) easily forgotten — it's not hard to move on from that, whether because of habit or because it just isn't that big a deal.
The second reason had more sticking power, because it came from a student. Mostly, I think I have a pretty good rapport with my students, but sometimes I make mistakes, either in how I interact with them (too lenient, too firm), or in how I attempt to engage their attention. The problem last Friday falls under the former. I was obviously too hard on a student, and it had an impact on her. Unlike most students, though, E__ is good about expressing her feelings. She gave me the following note, which I transcribe verbatim, errors and all. I feel really badly about it all. She was (is) one of my favorite students, but now she's dropped out of L-Bridge. Was it because me? At least partly… here's the note.
To Jared
Hello? I'm E___. I wrote this letter because of some reason.
First, I can't see you on next semester. Then, you will not have like me, the rude student. I like this L-Bridge, but I've been in this for 3 years. So, I think I'll come in any, but next semester, I'll not come. Second, I've many mistake then every teacher said it is ok. But, in last last debate, I got mistake but you didn't say anything except you did a bad job. I suggest, I don't want that and every students will have stress, like me. So, please do not do that! It hurts me. Don't show this letter to other teacher. Thanks alot in this semester. Bye! – From E___.
I have been collateralized – in the buzzword sense used in marketing departments these days: I’m being used to advertize a product.
See the recent picture from the L-Bridge website at right, with the winners of the speech contest of a few weeks ago, with me and a few other spokesforeigners standing in the background, looking respectably foreign. [Clicking the photo will pop up a bigger version.]
Genius Willy is right in front of me, wearing a silly grin (I’m in the middle between Joe and Jeff, in the back). Other students I’m proud of: Sydney (far left of photo); Johnny (third from left, front row); Sarah and Rebecca (back row of students, 3rd and forth from right) – the face between Sarah and Rebecca is Sarah-teacher (the somewhat hard-to-get-along-with curriculum manager at L-Bridge. In the small square photos, top row, 2nd from left is Eunice (better known as CGHP! “crazy girl hot pink!” — don’t ask what it means, I don’t have a clue, myself) and top row, 4th from left is Lisa.
Actually, I’m most proud of Sydney, because she placed into the final 20 despite the fact that she pridefully rejected any kind of coaching of any kind from any of her teachers. All the other finalists received extensive coaching and help of various sorts (grammar, pronunciation, etc.) from their teachers.
As part of our curriculum, we have these newspapers (which are presumably level-appropriate current-events newspapers that the kids can read, and from which we get many of our debate topics). I actually rather like the newspapers, despite their many mistakes, as the kids seem to get into actually being able to talk about relevant current events in class. I had a funny experience, however, recently. And some of my students actually "got it" when I pointed it out to them.
You see, with the newspaper comes a workbook, which includes some pages of difficult vocabulary to review. At the top of the page, it says, "반복 학습을 통해 반드시 암기하고 Reading Comprehension과 Writing을 통해 그 쓰임새를 학인합시다." (rough translation: blah blah memorize these words blah blah")…. Then, farther down, in the list of vocabulary words to memorize, they give this word with its example sentence: "proficiency 숙달, 능숙 example: Pushing children to memorize vocabulary or grammar rules will not lead to a high level of language proficiency." This is subversively hilarious.
Jenny is an intelligent student, and she tries hard, at least occasionally.
But I didn't quite know how to answer the smoothly uttered question, "what what why so what why so?" I don't think it's a translation from Korean, either. It's her own magical language, I guess. The way she uttered it, It had great English-question intonation, good pronunciation, and even the pragmatics were clear. Only the semantics were missing. Hey, 3 out of 4, right?
I noticed that California’s perennial water politics controversy, the Peripheral Canal, is in the news. It’s actually been on my mind, on and off. The reason is complicated.
Since I came to Korea, some of the aspects of the EFL curricula I have been provided with to teach from that I have most liked have been the various “debate programs.” I think debate is a great way to teach not just language skills, but also to address important, related issues such as critical thinking and general confidence. And when I think about debate, I always think about the debate class I had at Arcata High. It was in 10th or 11th grade, I think. Funny that I don’t remember that. Nor can I recall the teacher’s name. But, what I remember with great clarity and vividness was that the topic I ended up with, back in the beginning of the 80’s, was the Peripheral Canal: to build or not to build? I remember trudging up to the Humboldt State University library repeatedly to study such archana as tracing the lobbying money being spent by the MWD (Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a semi-private institution despite its name, kind of like the Fed of water politics), and feeling like I was uncovering some scary scandal, like in a movie.
The issue has always been interesting. I view it as the sort of archetype of the typical exceedingly complex environment vs human debate. It has always had sincere environmentalists positioned on both sides. On the one hand, the current extent of ongoing environmental degradation in the California Delta is unsustainable without some major change or human remediation. This has been recognized and essentially uncontroversial for 30 years (i.e. since before I was debating it in high school!). But other people fight the idea of building a canal to help “save” the delta, because the same canal will be able to support even further and faster degradation, unless properly managed for the benefit of the Delta ecosystem instead of simply to slake the ever-growing thirst of California’s cities.
One interesting feature of the current push is that some groups are pushing for an amendment to the California Constitution to make sure that the Delta (meaning its ecosystems) get representation of some kind on the board that oversees the management of any canal that is built. Meanwhile, the governator, with characteristic recklessness, is pushing beginning of actual construction very hard. Wanting it to be part of his legacy. And, arguably, with the economic crisis creating a positive political environment for big public works spending (stimulus!), there’s some brilliant tactics on display there. The canal would be the largest water-related public works project since the California Aqueduct was completed.
Some things have changed. It’s no longer South vs North — Sacramento, lurking right on the eastern edge of the Delta, is thirstier now than L.A. was 30 years ago. And many locals who opposed the canal in years past are now so desperate to see something done to save the Delta that they are more in a mood to compromise. At least, that’s my perception. I still don’t know what the right answer is… I think the Delta is doomed, regardless, at least as it is…. Canal or no canal, rising sea levels (global warming) will push salt water farther and farther inland (people forget that the Delta area between Sacramento and Vallejo is at exactly sea level… and Sacramento is the U.S. city most vulnerable to rising sea levels after only New Orleans, despite being 150 miles inland) unless other steps are taken that dwarf the canal both in terms of ecological impact and cost: some kind of barrier will have to be built, a la Netherlands’ giant seawall, to keep San Francisco Bay from invading the Valley.
Anyway, all of which is to say… as I teach kids debating skills, I think back to that class. I hated the teacher… probably it’s a good thing I don’t remember him. But it was my first real academic-style “research” experience, and it generated what appears to have evolved into lifelong interests in a) the issues of the California Delta, and b) formal debate as a pedagogical method.
I received a fabulously well-written essay recently. And because we're focusing so much on revising and editing of work, I could see that it was a genuinely evolved bit of good writing – meaning the student wasn't just expressing natural talent and/or a strong and advantageous background (e.g. a past opportunity to have lived abroad). Instead, I could see how she developed her idea and then successively refined the ideas and grammar to make the final essay nearly flawless English. I penned in exactly 5 corrections – essentially zero compared to her peers. I've incorporated those corrections here. I admit I liked the essay, also, because of the more creative approach to the topic than most of the students had taken.
About 3 months ago, I had a funny and interesting dream. I'll never forget it. I was sleeping in my bedroom after I finished my school homework. In my dream, I was in a desert. I looked around and I saw a bear standing next to me. It was a polar bear wearing a cowboy suit. The polar bear turned and asked me if I wanted to try a red spotted dried snake. I ate it and it tasted really good. We started punching up all the cactuses in the desert and chased desert foxes. The time went by. Suddenly, the polar bear stopped running. I asked him why and he said this instead of answering, "It's cold, I should go home." I was surprised so much. The polar bear says it's cold in the hot desert? I knew it was a dream but it still didn't make sense. I jumped off the bed, and got out of the dream. And I saw my mom saying to me, "it's cold! So you should put your sweater on!" The polar bear wasn't the one who said it's cold. I just connected my dream and mom's talking. My family all laughed when I told them what was happening in my dream. I think I will never forget this dream.
I have long been drawn to the idea of zen-like meditation. But the fact is that I have a stunningly un-calm mind, and efforts at traditional meditation have generally failed me.
I have been reflecting that what I need to do, to meet this challenge I currently face – these massive piles of papers to grade that seem so overwhelming – is to somehow cultivate an “emptying” of my mind, around the process of having to grade student papers. Thus, I can try to turn the work with the red pen into a contemplative exercise.
Authors like Thich Nhat Hanh have written about the need to approach even the commonest of daily tasks – such as, say, doing the dishes–with a contemplative and calm and fully focused mind. And I’m not one of these people who naively believes meditation (zen-like or otherwise) requires paraphernalia of any specific kind, mental or physical. “Any activity done mindfully is a form of meditation, and mindfulness is possible practically all the time.”
Here is picture of a typical-sized pile that I face on a weekend. So, is it possible? Can I make the massive piles of papers-to-grade into a opportunity of enter into a meditative state? I need to escape the resentment and anger I feel about it. If it turned into something calming and contemplative, wouldn’t it then be something I would be less inclined to dread and procrastinate on?
