Category: The Wonders of Work

Today was one of the worst, most depressing work days in recent memory: just a conspiracy of things going wrong.

I slept badly over the weekend, so I wasn’t well-rested. Then I learned my uncle (my closest uncle, like a second dad to me) had experienced one of those “but for the grace of god” moments, missing dying in a fiery helicopter crash by a matter of minutes at a shift-change (as a helicopter pilot, this is an actual risk for him). I guess brushes-with-death are one thing, but then no one in my family telling me about it for several weeks just underscored how little my family thinks of me.

And then a student’s mom complained because I had made the word quizzes too easy in a class. But here’s the thing: I made the quizzes easy because that same mom complained two weeks ago that the quizzes were causing too much stress for her kid. So wtf does she want?

And then a student said, in a loud voice, 선생님 미워요 [I hate the teacher]. Does he think I really don’t understand any Korean at all? He’s heard me say more complex things in class, I know. What a little jerk. And no matter how contrite or apologetic he was after this, it stings – because these types of expressions-of-feelings are deeply honest. I completely believe that. So… well, it’s not my job to be liked. I know that. But I don’t really want to be hated, either. And being hated isn’t a good way to get through to kids, is it? I can’t get at what I did wrong with this kid.

And who am I to complain about my family’s lack of communication with me, given my own behavior? I don’t exactly reach out to them in a conventional sense. Still…. Digression: obviously this blog means nothing to any of them, as most of them resent how I don’t write them, yet this blog – though it may serve other purposes, too – was, in fact, started on behalf of my friends and family. Just because it’s unorthodox, how is it not communication? How is this different from a christmas letter copied and sent to family and friends? Is it that technically difficult to bookmark this blog in your browser, and click on it when you think to yourself, I wonder how Jared is doing these days? You’ll get an update, several times a week – even discounting all the BS and cultural detritus I throw here that I know isn’t that personal. Grumble.

So it was a bad day. And I’m tired. And I’m overwhelmed by work, in a very LBridge way, lately. I’ve reached the point where I’m thinking about the end of my contract. That’s a very bad sign, especially with 8 months left. And it’s a bad sign with respect to my long-standing level of trust and relationship with my boss, too. If I leave, it will be nothing short of a betrayal.
Then again, given my family history, I guess betrayal is part of the game of life.

What goes around, comes around.

My student gave me a hamburger for Christmas. It was cold.

But I felt that it meant a lot, coming from a student (or perhaps a generous mom). I brought it home and reheated it. It wasn’t very delicious, but I appreciated the thought. It was my most significant Christmas present.

Grading journals, today, I ran across these two things. First, more love from Lucy:

Second, a philosophical sentiment at the end of a book-review by a 4th grader who goes by Harry.

“I think freedom is not always good.”

Today was a very busy day at work, for which we've been preparing for a long time. We had a spelling bee and speech contest event for the elementary kids. It was a madhouse of children eating a massive number of snacks and shrimp-burgers (bleagh, by the way). But the spelling bee and speech contests went well, I think.

If I find some good pictures or video, maybe I'll add them later, but nothing at the moment. After it was over, I ran some shopping errands and now I just feel tired.

A former student stopped by, today. Her English name was Irene. She was possibly one of my first Korean students, among that group of middle-schoolers I inherited from the very famous Gary-teacher at Tomorrow school in 2007. She was in 7th grade, then, and I taught her through the time at LinguaForum, in early 2008. Well, she is starting college in a few months at Seogang University [update: my friend has informed me that the correct spelling of the name is Sogang University, but this violates the official revised romanization standard as established by the South Korean government – the Korean spelling is 서강, which is unambiguously romanized as seogang; the spelling sogang should be reserved for the Korean 소강 – I’m not sure if this is a word or name or not]. I remember her well – she was an excellent student, so her going off to such a good university is hardly shocking. But I felt very old.

I realized I have been in Korea for a long time.

Unrelatedly, a smart-alec kid named Kevin said the following in debate class, with respect to the proposition: “My soul is PRO, but my body is CON.” The proposition was a sort of “joke proposition” such as I sometimes do: “Night is better than day.”

My 5th grade student drew this pretty good picture in his workbook.

I have a sixth grade student who goes by the English nickname of Johnson. He is the absolute lowest-scoring individual currently enrolled at KarmaPlus English Academy. He has some weird behavioral issues. He chose his English nickname, for example, fully aware of its slang meaning, which I needn’t elaborate upon here.

The other day, I was making the kids in the class – the lowest level class that I teach – memorize a dialogue from our book. I was making them write it out. Johnson decided to add pictures to his version, which I reproduce below. I realized his pictures are pretty faithful to the pictures in the textbook, except he’s introduced a plethora of middle-finger gestures, to liven things up. The boy on the skateboard in the first frame is clearly presenting his middle finger proudly to the other person. And in the second frame, the one person is clearly meditating on a whole string of F-U icons.

Such is life with adolescents immersed in our fabulous global culture. I don’t really find it that offensive. I often pretend to be more offended than I am, if only in an effort to convey to the students that there might be some limits to inappropriate behavior. Mostly, I hope that showing them kindness and tolerance can induce them to pursue the same values. I’m not always successful. But I try. And I like to document their oddly entertaining quirks and foibles.

I went into the classroom at nearly 10 pm, and Jeongjae and Donghun were still in there, studying for some vocabulary quiz, presumably. But Jeongjae was looking at his math book.

“You guys are still here?” I asked.

“Yeaaasss,” intoned Jeongjae in that laconic voice of his.

I pointed at his math book. “That doesn’t look like English,” I observed.

He glared down at the offending text as if it had suddenly appeared on his desk unexpectedly. He pondered his predicament for only a moment.

“Ohhh. but Teacher! There is x! X is English.”

“Yes, I think that’s English,” his friend agreed.

I couldn’t really argue. Though maybe “x” is more Latin, than English, in a math problem. But, well… who was I to argue? (Note that the image is not Jeongjae’s math problem – just a random image of a math problem in Korean with an ‘x’ in it that I grabbed out of the intertubes. I’m not sure Korean 7th graders are doing precalculus.)

I came back into the classroom on the 3rd floor, only to find Junbeom, a 6th grader, sitting alone, on the floor, under a desk. He had finished his homework – I didn’t feel upset. But I was curious.

“Why are you sitting there?” I asked.

“I’m eating,” he said.

“What are you eating?”

“오징어 땅콩,” he explained, sheepishly. He held up the package. Literally, this phrase, ojingeo ttangkong means, roughly, “squid nuts.” They are apparently squid-and-peanut-flavored rice-puffs.

“Why are you eating under that desk?” I asked.

“It’s funny,” he explained.

My student who goes by John wrote this too-short essay in his essay book.

Jarad Way always say 왜저래? so his mother really upset. Jarad be punished. So he was really sad. So, He changed his name 왜저래?

I’ve written before that I sometimes jokingly tell my students that my Korean name is 왜저래 [wae-jeo-rae = way-juh-ray]. It has a similar sound to my name when pronounced casually in Korean order (i.e. last name first): way-ja-red. And the meaning is something akin to “what the heck?” – it’s not really bad cussing, but it’s not exactly polite – this explains why my mother punished me, in the essay. It’s a clever folk-etymology of my name (auto-onomastics?), from a 5th grader.

Here’s a bit of self-flattery to make up for the preceding – something encountered in 2nd-grader Lucy’s essay book earlier today. Notice how she started to write alligator but decided that that was too hard, and wrote “Steve” – which is the current alligator’s name.

This picture is from my student Claire: a portrait of her teacher, Jared, that she drew during class.

I couldn’t decide whether to be amused or crestfallen.

"I love you," my student announced, looking up at me. Koreans – or, at least, a subset of Koreans – will be much more demonstrative and free with these kinds of expressions than typical Americans. I've had many students, male and female, come straight out and say "I love you" in this way. This isn't just about having limited English – they will just as easily say 사랑해요 to a Korean teacher in Korean. I've heard it, many times. Korean teachers will use it with their students, too.

Sometimes, it's utterly random. Other times, from students, it means something akin to, "I didn't do my homework" – it's an effort to preempt teacher wrath or anger. In any event, it's more common with elementary students than middle schoolers. But this was a middle schooler who goes by the English nickname of Kelly. Generally, when Kelly says this, she means "I didn't do my homework."

"Teacher is soooo handsome," she added. She must have a lot of undone homework to apologize for, I speculated. But I hammed it up.

I put my hand on my chin in a kind of stereotyped Korean pop-star pose. Several kids laughed. And then Kelly broke her run of compliments. As if awakening from a bad dream, she shook her head, and announced, "Oh my god. But teacher is sooo old!"

Gee. Thanks.

We had three Halloween parties – to cover the various shifts of children we teach. One yesterday and two today. It was all barely-managed chaos, but I think the kids had fun. I had fun. But it’s a lot of work, too. We did various activites: memorizing Halloween-themed poems or songs, face (or hand) painting, costumes (for those kids that brought costumes), and my favorite, paper decorations. Then the kids would march down to one room where the Assistant Manager had set up as a witch giving out candy. They would knock, say “trick or treat” and would have to present something: their song or poem or painting or costume or craft. The paper crafts were attached to the wall. There are no pictures of me or the kids in action – because I was too busy to take pictures. I was kind of coordinating everything, and running from classroom to classroom making sure everyone had something to do.

Here are some pictures of the crafts wall.