Fourth-grader Jeonghyeon impressed me today, because she gave me a picture of a fish school. It was impressive because this was a fairly accurate representation of something we’d talked about during my “phone-teaching” with her last Friday. It was a sign that her comprehension skills are actually improving, and it’s a credit to the phone-teaching concept. She’s a difficult student – a befuddling combination of a sunny, positive attitude and stubborn resistance to actually learning something.
Here’s her fish school.
I’m extremely tired tonight. I think I slept badly over the last several days. I’m not sure why.
I was sharing with my boss an opinion: given that a lot of parents are expressing distrust of the merger between Karma and Woongjin, he should call them all, personally. That’s always been one my “if I ran the hagwon” ideas, anyway – the owner or on-site manage should be intimately involved in building and maintaining relationships with ALL the parents, since they are, after all, the paying customers. The students, for better or worse, are essentially product. This is not to depreciate them in any way – they are the thing I like about my job, and they’re why I do it. But applying the lessons I learned from a decade of working in real-world business settings, you can’t ever forget your customers.
Curt has been stressed, lately, though. In response to my suggestion, he just said in a kind of a lighthearted way, “개소리” [gae-so-ri = “bullshit” (literally, it means “dog-noise”)]. It was kind meant as, “yeah, right, like I’m going to find time to do that.” I laughed it off. And my feelings were in no way hurt. But I nevertheless felt (and feel) that he’s making a mistake in this matter, maybe.
During the CC class (karaoke) I taught today, the boys insisted in hearing / seeing the video for a song called “Party Rock.” It has a zombie-themed shuffle-dance-craze-including video. Those fifth-grade boys are utterly enraptured by this video and song. I can’t figure it out.
What I’m listening to right now.
My student Ahyeon was angry at me today. But unlike most elementary students, instead of acting out, she approached her anger in an unusual way: she ignored the class proceedings for about 20 minutes (I could tell she was angry – it was about some issue related to the awarding of points on homework), and spent the time carefully making a “black card” for me (picture at right), which she presented to me with a shy smile at the end of class. It was very unusual, but I was pleased with it, in a strange way. It was so communicative – which as a language teacher, is much more valuable than the content of the communication, if that makes any sense.
– Notes for Korean –
냄새 [naem-sae] – smell (I was excited to learn this word from context based on overhearing someone talking – that’s so unusual, and it’s a much, much better way to learn vocabulary than repeatedly trying to memorize it)
두음법칙 [du-eum-beop-chik] – liaison (initial sound-[change] rules)
At work yesterday, the front-desk person was handing out some student-placement spreadsheet printouts and she skipped me. This always annoys me, because I have a genuine interest in what’s happening to the students.
I think they leave me out because they assume I’m not interested, since I don’t often don’t join in the discussions they have over these printouts (given that they are in Korean and/or they often seem to take place at times when I’m off teaching a class – my schedule is thicker in the afternoons whereas many of the teachers have a thin afternoon schedule and a thicker evening schedule, and so meetings are often in the afternoons).
So this time, I said something like, “why are you forgetting me, can I have one too?” and she happily complied.
But then Curt remarked, muttering, “빈정상했어” [bin-jeong-sang-haess-eo]. And of course I had no idea what this meant. And I wanted to know.
It therefore became a long, drawn-out discussion over what, exactly, this phrase means. The verb (빈정상하다 [binjeongsanghada] / alternate form 빈정사다 [binjeongsada]) doesn’t appear any online Korean-English dictionaries we consulted. Google translate doesn’t even try.
After some back-and-forth, we decided it meant something roughly like “peeve” as in, “he’s/you’re peeved” (the subject is left out in Korean and so you can fill in whatever verb subject fits the situation). But I wasn’t really satisfied with this.
The Korean-Korean dictionaries online don’t have the verb (or the pre-derived verb-noun 빈정상) either. For the near-match 비정상, they offer definitions as follows. The definitions are hard enough to understand – my “translations” of the definitions are tentative at best.
1.) 어떤 것이 바뀌어 달라지거나 탈이 생겨 나타나는 제대로가 아닌 상태. “The condition of [something] not being as one desires [such] that some kind of trouble or revised change appears.” 2.) 바르거나 떳떳하지 못한 상태. “The condition of being unable to be honorable or upright.”
These definitions utterly fail to match Curt’s off-the-cuff definition and don’t match my intuition of verb’s actual meaning. They don’t make any sense at all, in my opinion. So that’s not it. Just a lexical wild-goose-chase.
Looking at the verb in parts (which isn’t always a smart or correct thing to do with Korean verbs, as my Korean tutor is constantly insisting), I see the first part is 빈정, which appears bound in other verbs like 빈정거리다, which means “to make a sarcastic remark.” And the second part is 상하다, which includes a definition “to be hurt, to be offended, to be troubled with.” This latter is promising – it seems to match Curt’s definition much better. If you add in a shading of sarcasm, it actually seems to capture my actual expression and manner pretty well.
So I’m going to offer a tentative English definition of the phrase “빈정상했어” as “he’s/you’re sarcastically peeved” … but in slangy pragmatics (and dating myself to the 1980s) as “don’t have a cow, man.”
What I’m listening to right now. Linkin Park, “Pushing Me Away.”
Some of my elementary students were drawing things during some extra time because we were taking a placement test related to the change in curriculum next month. I drew some alligators for a girl named Yumin, and she added her own other things to my alligators.
Another student drew something idyllic and Korean-themed.
Another was inspired to create his own alligator, which I liked a lot.
It was a long day at work, despite a light teaching load. I stayed at work and organized stuff so that when we move (in July), I’ll be ready.
So it's official, now – the letters went out to parents today, so they can't really go changing their minds, at this point. My current place of employment, Karma Academy, is merging with Woongjin Plus, which just happens to be the company that took over and eventually renamed my former employer, LBridge, affectionately known as "hellbridge" to some of its workers. Overall, there were a lot of things I liked about LBridge, so I don't see this as necessarily apocalyptic – and one of the things I liked least about LBridge was the management, which will have changed twice over by the time I'm back there again next month. My current boss, Curt, will be in charge. I wonder though, at how this will work out. There are a lot of "I wonders" now.
I'm going to keep an open mind. Given the current market conditions, mergers are one of the few ways a hagwon can grow. So I understand the business rationale. But why this specific marriage? – two hagwon could hardly be more mis-matched, from a business culture standpoint. That's actually the point, as a conversation with my boss last night underscored. Perhaps both can grow and improve through cross-fertilization.
The title to this blog post is rather alarmist. But I'm not really expecting a return to the dark days of 2008. And as I said, there were a lot of things I really liked about LBridge – especially the rigid curriculum. Karma could use some structure, in that area. I had a moment of schadenfreude during a "training presentation" yesterday, when a powerpoint slide on a means of evaluating student writing was flashed on the screen that bore clear markings of being the descendant of the speech and writing scoring schema I developed while at LBrdige and had happily turned over to the curriculum designer (who's long-gone, now, but the earmarks of her work are everywhere). That weird feeling that you've left actual traces of your work at an organization that you've long left behind, but now, returning, there it is. "I made that," I wanted to say. I refrained.
I ran across this image a while back – from some episode of Spongebob Squarepants.
It’s Patrick’s to-do list, of course. I sometimes can relate – although my to-do list never says that. But sometimes, maybe it should, right? Zen.
The opposite of zen might be “nez.” How would this work? Always worrying, always stressing, always planning and organizing compulsively, never in-the-moment. Right?
Work is causing me some worry, these days – there will be a big announcement soon. More in the never-ending saga of “M&A: Korean hagwon industry edition” (that’s M&A = “Mergers and Acquisitions”). There, that’s a good teaser. But honestly, why should I worry. I’ll be fine. I’m not invested in it, and the contracts are always one year long. I hate to see what the kids go through, sometimes, though. Kids do best with stability. Adults all around the world are pretty lousy at providing that.
Finally, on my blog’s left-hand column, I have various widgets. I’m sometimes adding, deleting, moving them around. Did you see the new cost-of-war widget? I may tire of it soon – it’s depressing. But I thought I’d try it out.
The other day, my weather widget told me that the weather was “expired.”
Dayeon's is the best. Do you see that her zoo has hamsters and ants (lower left)? Do you see the girl taking a picture? Do you see the awesome alligators, with only their eyes peeking above the water? She's a pretty good artist for a third grader.
Here's a few by some other kids.
What I'm listening to right now.
[Update 2017-06-22: Video embed of song removed, due to link-rot, and because no other online embeddable version can be found. Sorry.]
Bob Dylan, "Man Gave Names to All the Animals." It's hard to find a good online version of this song. This is a live one that isn't such a great recording, but it's nevertheless an awesome song, and thematically appropriate for the evening. It always makes me remember, vividly, driving to Duluth in the 1980s.
Here are the lyrics.
Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, in the beginning Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, long time ago.
He saw an animal that liked to growl Big furry paws and he liked to howl Great big furry back and furry hair "Ah, think I'll call it a bear".
Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, in the beginning Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, long time ago.
He saw an animal up on a hill Chewing up so much grass until she was filled He saw milk coming out but he didn't know how "Ah, think I'll call it a cow".
Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, in the beginning Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, long time ago.
He saw an animal that liked to snort Horns on his head and they weren't too short It looked like there wasn't nothing that he couldn't pull "Ah, I'll think I'll call it a bull".
Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, in the beginning Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, long time ago. He saw an animal leaving a muddy trail Real dirty face and a curly tail He wasn't too small and he wasn't too big "Ah, think I'll call it a pig".
Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, in the beginning Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, long time ago.
Next animal that he did meet Had wool on his back and hooves on his feet Eating grass on a mountainside so steep "Ah, think I'll call it a sheep".
Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, in the beginning Man gave names to all the animals In the beginning, long time ago.
He saw an animal as smooth as glass Slithering his way through the grass Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake ….
Because today was the last day of regular class for the middle-schoolers (due to upcoming test-prep time, again – AGAIN!), we played some games in the “good” classes.
We were playing a version of the mafia game (a commercial version called Lupus in Tabula, Korean edition), which requires that the students dissumlate or “act” as I call it. They have to pretend they are not the ware-wolf, or pretend to know who the wolf is, etc.
After getting “killed” several times early in the game, one girl said, “I think I’m a good actor, but I think I’m not.” This was terribly funny, for some reason. It was pretty accurate, too – her confidence on how to the play the game was outstripping her “poker face.”
Anyway, it was fun. And now I will miss the middle schoolers, again.
I was talking on the phone – “phone teaching” – with a 4th grader named Jiyun.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m studying.”
“What are you studying?”
“Math,” she answered, laconically.
“Do you like math?” I asked, trying to draw her out.
“Nooo. No. I don’t like math.” She paused. “It’s’s a big problem. My mother is a math teacher,” she explained. Perfect English. Especially for a 4th grade elementary student. She’d made me laugh. I was impressed.
I said to my class, “Do you know the provinces of Korea?” I thought this would be an ‘gimme’ question – most Korean middle-schoolers know the provinces in their country. How wrong I was.
My student answered, enthusiastically, “Australopithecus!” There was no hesitation or doubt in his voice.
Perhaps he’d misunderstood my question. But what in the world did he think I’d meant? Or was it a joke? I never found out.
“Teacher is so handsome,” said the 8th grade girl, with apparent sincerity.
I was somewhat taken aback. I sometimes get such effusive praise from younger students, or from old ladies in the subway – but almost never from self-respecting, well-adjusted teenagers. I tried to take it gracefully. Fortunately, she rescued me from my self-consciousness, by adding, “Your head is small. You are like a LEGO man.”
This could either be the kind of ironically meant “damning-with-faint-praise” remark typical of teens around the world, or it could be that this somewhat strange but cheerful girl was a fan of LEGO-people. I’d be happier to believe the latter. But who knows.
In the spirit of her complement (?), I drew the self-portrait above right on the blackboard at the close of class.
My student Jeonghyeon isn’t the most intellectual. The elementary third grader has a reputation for not ever even having mastered English phonics, for example. But today she gave me a picture – of a kangaroo eating “flower ice cream” that shows clear evidence of having understood the principles of phonics – look how she’s decided to spell out her title, at the top: “forow iscrime.” This shows some awareness, at least, of how English phonics works – it’s not just a random agglomeration of letters, which I’ve known some students at her level of ability (including her, in the past) to do with any vocabulary they haven’t memorized.
Today was “Teacher’s Day.” I’m not sure what this day is supposed to be for – unlike children during “Children’s Day,” teachers on Teacher’s Day don’t get the day off and no one takes them to the park. But I did get a few stray gifts from well-meaning students (or perhaps from the kids of well-meaning parents), including this pink box of Japanese sweets (well, I assume they’re either Japanese or Japanese-style, since there’s Japanese on the label).
We were talking in one of my classes about their mid-term test scores at the public school, in their various subjects – not just English. Then later, I was asking them about their “dreams” – as in their lifetime ambitions. The following conversation took place (with some minor omissions for coherence).
I asked one student, “What is your dream?”
“I need money. A lot of money,” he answered. This is typical for 8th graders. And Koreans. And Korean 8th graders.
“That’s not so easy,” I reflected. “How will you get a lot of money?”
He shrugged.
“That’s difficult,” a second student offered.
The first student said, brightly, “I got very lowest score in 도덕.” [도덕 (do-deok) is mandatory ethics class, in Korean public schools.] This seemed rather cynical, or else it was a clever joke.
He thought for a minute, and the discussion moved to other students’ dreams. But then the first student interruped. “My dream. I want to be a father.”
The room was quiet for a moment. The second student said, “Oh! That’s not so difficult.”
The girls in the back of the room giggled. I decided to change the subject.
…
I went jogging in the park by the lake tonight, after work, under a rising bloody orange gibbous moon. I love to be in the park at exactly 11 pm, when they shut off the outdoor lights. It’s still plenty light enough to see – the city is all around. And they don’t close the park – people are still around. But it’s suddenly much, much darker. It’s like a sudden chord change in some dramatic music. The feel of it changes.
What I’m listening to right now.
Gus Gus, “Starlovers.” Very weird, kind of groovy song. Creepy video. [UPDATE: the creepy video linkrotted into nothingness, but the audio track is restored via a replaced youtube link.]
An utterly unrelated, random picture from my archive, just for whatever. Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, 2007.
I had my first day back with the middle-schoolers after the end of the mid-term test-prep period. Many of them were absent, but a core group of my RN1T cohort of mostly seventh graders was present, and they were definitely entertaining. The highlights:
Jeongjae said his homeroom teacher was a pig. I said that didn’t seem like a very nice thing to say. “Why is she a pig?” I asked.
“She gives horrible test!” He explained, which I could see leading to antipathy, but didn’t really make her a pig. “And she gives me food all the time. Extra food. She keeps making me eat!” Jeongjae is very skinny. Maybe she’s trying to take care of him.
“Hmm,” I mused. “That sounds more like a pig-farmer, than a pig.” This went right over the boy’s head. But Eunjin, in the other corner of the room, broke out in a fit of giggles. She’s very quiet, but her English comprehension is excellent. She got the joke.
Later, we were talking about wild animals. “Are there any wild animals in Ilsan?” I asked.
Jeongjae’s hand shot up. “My homeroom teacher!” He announced, confidently.
The best was when Donghun’s hand shot up, unbidden. “Teacher!” He exclaimed, as if making a profound discovery. “My favorite beer is Heineken!” Out of the blue, and his accent was flawless. This is from a seventh grader. I think it’s from a television commercial. I couldn’t help but laugh at this.
We’ve been doing a lot of karaoke (노래방 [noraebang] in Korean) in class at Karma. We’re preparing for a talent show. I heard some girls doing a really pretty good rendition of this song, today. I don’t really like the song. But it’s stuck in my head, now.
What I’m listening to right now.
Bruno Mars, “Marry You.” The video isn’t the official Bruno Mars video – it’s something someone did for a film class, I think.
Nah. Just kidding. I’m not going anywhere. “Bye Bye Bye” is the name of a song we’re doing in the sing-along / listening comprehension CC classes, which I’m teaching to some of the elementary groups during the test-prep period. It’s by N Sync. I don’t like the song. But the kids seem to – not all of them, but some of them. And playing it, for them, going slowly, going over the lyrics, line by line. Well… it gets stuck in your head.
What I’m listening to right now.
N Sync, “Bye Bye Bye.” The sound quality on this youtube seems exceptionally poor, and that’s probably intentional – prevents redistributive piracy. But you get the idea.
It was supposed to be “Rabbits eating vegetables.” But the latter word wasn’t familiar to my low level elementary students, whereas they all knew the word “basketball.” So when we recited the little dialog in chapter 9, that’s how it came out.
I tried to explain that rabbits don’t eat basketballs, but rather, vegetables. And I drew a picture on the blackboard, to explain why. I don’t have that picture – a student who found it disturbing erased it too quickly. But I have a reproduction that I drew just now – see picture at right.
I saw a seventh grade student named Sumin in the lobby. "How are you?" I asked.
"I'm excellent," she answered, in confident English.
"Oh, that's good. Why are you excellent?"
"시험대비 is like a vacation!" She held out her hand, thumb's up, and grinned. [시험대비 means "test prep" – our hagwon closes down the regular middle school classes and offers special test-prep classes for middle schoolers for their upcoming very important public school English tests].
The background is that Sumin is a relatively new student at Karma, and I don't think she's been through the 시험대비 before. And she happens to be a straight-A, 100% average type student – so I suspect the public school English curriculum isn't challenging for her. Therefore the test-prep for this is likely to feel like a vacation.
On the blackboard in the staffroom, these last few days, was the following reminder from the boss.
I felt particularly proud of the fact that I didn’t really need a translation. I didn’t understand every word, but I got the gist of it easily enough – partly it’s driven by being familiar with the context. A transcription of the boss’s challenging handwriting:
학생정신교육강조
1. 수업시간에 나가지 않기
2. 교실에 쓰레기 처리
3. 핸드폰 전자기기 전원오프
4. 쉬는시간 준수
Using the googletranslate, with some tweaks, we get:
Emphasize the moral education students
1. Do not let [students] out during class time
2. Pick up trash in the classroom
3. Mobile phones and electronic devices powered off
4. Comply with the break schedule
I find it interesting that a bunch of low-key rules are referred to as “moral education” – but that’s how Koreans conceptualize these things – I don’t think it’s an inaccurate translation.
Karma Academy goes through these cycles, about 2 months in length. We crack down on rules, then they gradually relax, and then finally we crack down again. Partly, during the test-prep time, which started just now for the middle-schoolers, Curt tries to run a more “serious” environment, whereas he lets things relax and be more fun during the other parts of the academic schedule. I have no problem with these rules, for the most part, except that I’m actually pretty comfortable with my students having their cellphones in class. All but a few of them, even of the elementary age students, are quite adept, now, at using them appropriately, in my experience, and my feeling is that they’re so ubiquitous that removing them is like asking students to give up book bags or something. Plus, because that’s where the dictionaries live, and I’m not an opponent of dictionary use, I allow them for that reason, too. Some of my younger students do seem to have nasty trash-leaving habits, but this is nearly universal with children, and is best dealt with by nagging.
In my Phonics class (lowest level, 1st or 2nd graders) I have a second-grader named Yedam. Yedam is pretty smart, but she doesn’t deal well with stress – so when we have a spelling test, she loses her cool, and never does very well. And then, almost inevitably, after the quiz is over, and she sees her low score, she cries. I try to just help her to understand it’s not such a big deal – when it’s not a test, she often does just fine.
Yesterday, she didn’t cry at the end of the test. Instead, she wrote, boldly, across the top of her quiz paper, “너무 분하다.” My coworkers all told me it means she’s angry, and seemed alarmed: “Why is she angry?” But the dictionary conveys a more subtle meaning, that I think is closer to what she intended: 분하다 can mean “chagrined” or “vexed.” So what she meant, I think, is “I am very chagrined.”
I took a picture of her test paper.
Ultimately, despite her score of “2,” I viewed it as a sign of huge progress that instead of crying, she expressed her feelings verbally. Note that the word “alligator” is always the last word on a “Jared quiz.” – so everyone knows it despite its multisyllabicity.
Everyone knows my plastic alligators. I had Kevin the large plastic alligator and a recent acquisition, Baby Kevin 2.0, in my EP2 classroom earlier today. I was letting the students “hold” Kevin, during class (portrait of Kevin at left). But unfortunately, one boy was having trouble not playing with Kevin as we were trying to listen to a CD of some listening dialogues. So finally, I had to take Kevin back.
“Hojae-ya,” I said. “Give me Kevin.” The boy made a sad face. “He can sit over here,” I explained, sympathetically. I placed him on the podium at the front of the class.
Hojae gazed at the plastic alligator longingly. “잘가 친구 [chal-ga chin-gu],” he said, mournfully. That means “farewell, friend.”
It was like the tragic ending of a sad movie.
What I’m listening to right now.
Punch Brothers, “This is the Song.” The rain was falling steadily as I walked home, but the air was chilly. It reminded me of the winter I spent in Valdivia, Chile (August-October, 1994). It rained for 4 months. Without stopping.
My debate class students have been writing speeches for an imaginary chance to address the UN (see also earlier post). Here is another student of mine, on the topic of South Korea’s high incidence of student suicides. It’s not super well-written and it was a little short for the assignment, but I think she actually demonstrates some excellent rhetorical instincts – note her effective use of repetition and the exhortation at the end. My guess is that she is a stunningly good writer in her own language. As usual, I reproduce without corrections, with typos and all mistakes intact.
Hello. I am Kim Chae Yeon from South Korea. I’m just ordinary student you can meet anywhere. I think you wonder why I came here. I’m just ordinary student, but I think I have to say this in UN. Do you think all of the world students are happy? If you think all of the world students are happy, your thinking is wrong.
Especially, South Korea students life is all the same. School and Academy, School and Academy, Again and again and again…. Do you know how many students killed themselves in a day because of the education system? Only in South Korea, almost 42 students killed themselves in a day because of the education system. Do you think this education system is really correct? This education system takes the student’s happiness and life. I am not speaking only of student’s prospect. This is the biggest problem now.
The most serious problem is in front of your eye, buy why you only see the far from away like war or weapon?
My student said, "오오… 단어 좆같에" [ohh, dan-eo joj-kat-e]. This is bad Korean cussing – literally, it means "oh, vocabulary, like a dick," but the pragmatics (the elocutionary weight of it, so to speak) might be something like "oh, vocabulary is a motherfucker."
I often understand when my students are cussing in Korean. Most of the time, unless they're insulting me or one of their peers directly, I ignore it. This is in line with the way most Korean teachers seem to handle such things, in my experience. But he'd said it right in front of me. Rather than try to call him on it, or scold him, I tried a different strategy, this time. I repeated it, exactly, right back at him.
He laughed, and one of the girls in the class put her hand to mouth, scandalized. Then he said, "Oh, Teacher, Don't Say That!"
I laughed. "But you said it."
"Oh, I know. I'm sorry, teacher."
It actually resolved really well, in my opinion. I'll have to remember this in the future.
We were giving a month-end test today. I was giving a listening test to a group of 7th graders, and one student, who I know has moderately high ability but who is stunningly lazy about studying or doing homework, stared at me during the entire time of the test.
Here's what's weird. He got the high score – by a great deal: 97%. And I had this weird feeling that he was somehow watching me, as we listened to the listening test, and was somehow reading my facial expressions or gestures to determine the answers. I think of myself as keeping a "straight" face during these tests, because I know that sometimes it is possible for a teacher to "give away" answers during a listening test in how they react to the possible answers given. But really… am I giving away the answers in some transparent way? Some tic or something?
Well, who knows? Should I ask him? Is it cheating? It's unconventional… to be certain. I should sit in the back of the class, maybe, next time, and see how he does.
I’m having my debate class students write speeches “for the UN” – i.e. what would you say if you could address the United Nations?
One of my students offers some harsh, harsh words. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty intense from a seventh-grader. I’m not entirely comfortable with his implicit embrace of authoritarian solutions, but in other ways he’s very perceptive. As usual, I reproduce without corrections – I’ve changed his name, however (“Hong Gil Dong” is Korean for “John Doe”).
Good evening! All members of United Nation. I am Hong Gil Dong. I am from Republic of Korea. Just call me John. Today, I am going to show some opinions what all members have to listen and practice. I`m going to tell the problems of ethics, environment, and economy.
First, don`t think democracy is always ideal and make fair democracy. I think members of UN are slaves of democracy. Do you know why? Because if there is a good policy but it damages your country, you always say sophistry. Then, you don`t choose any policies. So is the democracy ideal? In addition, if there is a good policy which was made from weak country, you just ignore the policy. And it`s not fair.
Second, it`s both economy and environment problems. I think Un makes people, the slaves of money. Why? Because, your policies are good for economy but these are just protection for big companies, and big countries which like to destroy environment and take lots of money. Such as Republic of Korea, Japan, China, some countries of Europe, and USA. These countries are rich countries, and the top of mammonism. So if you keep making these policies, these countries will kill environment continuously, and make innocent people to slave of money.
Last, this is most environment problem. You say human must develop with good environment but you force to join all environment treaties what countries don`t kill environment. But you don`t force to join these treaties what countries kill environment. So I think you stop talking symbiosis development.
I said some criticism to you. I wanted to criticize more but other people, Earth, and me will give you some chances. So please, practice good policies and carve my criticism in your heart. Thank you.
I will conclude with a random picture, which I took in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico in 2007.
Then I asked, “so what’s the term for a baby dog?”
All Koreans know the word “puppy,” but they don’t necessarily use it, semantically, as in English – it seems to just mean a cute dog (admittedly English can do the same thing, too). I assumed someone could think of this word, though.
Without even a pause, however, a bold seventh-grader raised his hand.
“Yes?” I said.
“Son of a bitch.”
Brilliant. I laughed for a few minutes.
Unrelatedly, a picture of the Ilsan power generation plant, on the east end of town, taken from standing across the street from the Costco. I was struck by the stark tree and the grey scudding clouds. The picture isn’t that good, though. Just random.
I was collateralized once before – in the advertising sense, where my image got included in advertising material. It doesn’t bother me.
I like the picture this time – I’m deploying my alligator.
There’s a write up in an Ilsan area “trade publication” of some kind, about the hagwon biz. There’s a picture of the cover of the magazine, at right. The title is “학부모를 위한 최고의 명문학원 가이드,” which would roughly translate as Guide for Parents to the Best Hagwon [after-school academies] in Ilsan. The magazine is distributed at public school parent meetings.
For some reason that our boss doesn’t understand, Karma English Hagwon is the first write-up in the guide. This is extremely lucky, from an advertising perspective. There’s a two page write up on Karma Academy, with yours-blogging-truly, alligator to hand, on the second page.
Here’s a scan of the two pages. You can see our entire staff (yes, it’s a small hagwon). There were a bunch of children down the hall behind me yelling when we took the picture – because they were all in their classrooms unsupervised. Very exciting moment.
The picture of me with the alligator is slightly ironic – because that is perhaps my single most difficult student there, facing the alligator. You can click the below image if you wish to embiggen it.
I had a bad, bad day. On top of a pretty crappy week.
I've been feeling really lousy about my teaching ability. And today, I got in an argument with my boss. Nominally, it was about the fact that I have this very low-ability 6th grader who has been placed into a class of slightly higher-ability 2nd through 4th graders. My concern is that – given Korean social dynamics, especially – he's setting a really bad example to the younger students. And frankly, I personally have no idea how to control him, or what to do with him.
But it turned into an argument about me complaining "all the time." I don't think I complain all the time. So that made me angry, that he would accuse me of that. And then the last straw was when my boss said something to the effect of, "well, it's the job of a good teacher to manage this kind of situation." The obvious implication was that, in complaining about this situation and insisting it was insoluable within the classroom, I was… a bad teacher.
This is not something I take well, even on good days. But in the light of my recent insecurities regarding my teaching, it was a brutally unpleasant blow.
I've been toying with the possibility that I may not renew at Karma, despite everything I've said in the past, and despite my intense desire to remain in Korea. This was a further nudge in that direction. Leaving Karma would be a big decision, not to be made on a whim. I have to realize that, all said and done, it's the best job I've had since coming to Korea, and one of the best jobs I've had, in general. It's really mostly my own insecurities, along with my frustration with a feeling of "stasis" in the non-work-aspects of my life, that are driving this desire… this restlessness.
It's not a restlessness to travel. Even a year after I made a renewed commitment, last March, to never "travel" alone, again (in the touristic sense, I mean), I'm still steadfastly uninterested in being a wanderer, anymore. I have a huge level of a weird kind of comfort with my corner of the world, and if I were to leave Karma, that corner would be hugely destabilized – I can't say I would feel anything but dread about that. It would probably result in my returning to the US, because if I can't be satisfied with the "best job" in Korea, my prospects for other Korean jobs would be quite poor. Returning to the US has about the same level of appeal for me as entering a mental hospital – given the US media's self-portrait, as seen from here, my home-country is going patently off the deep end.
The fact is, though… I'm becoming painfully disillusioned with respect to my teaching ability, these days. I like teaching. I love the children, I get so much from them. But if I can't be a decent teacher, then… for everyone's good, I should get out of it.
Yesterday in one of my elementary classes, we were playing a game. One of the 4th grade boys was so excited that when he raised his hand, he fell out of his chair. It was quite comic – it had the appearance of someone yanking up his arm so hard that he flew into the air and landed on the floor, but he did it on his own. The other kids laughed, and so he hammed a little bit after that.
The other kids began joking around (in Korean) that he was like a broken machine or toy, and someone said he was 중국산 (chung-guk-san = “product of China”). This was humorous, too. We all laughed. For the rest of the class, we had a little meme going, where anytime someone made a mistake, there would be a chorus of “중국산!” [Product of China]. I guess it was funny – it shows that China’s reputation for mass-produced crap is not just confined to the US.
