Category: The Wonders of Work

I had a group of 7th-graders who didn't know my age (either they were relatively new students who hadn't been through an "introduction" class with me, or else they'd completely forgotten).

I had them attempt to estimate my age. I do this when they ask how old I am, unless I make a joke and say something outlandish, like "I'm 647." Kids are notoriously unreliable in estimating my age, but I nevertheless feel discouraged that the average age estimate was almost 10 years too old: 55. Normally the average, at least, comes out not that far off, despite some outlying individual estimates.

Am I looking old, lately? Acting old? Is my ennui showing?

Sigh. Again.

It was a hard day at work. I think I shouldn't complain about it, though. Just move on. As recently observed, overall, it's one of the least stressful jobs I've ever had. So… I shouldn't let it stress me out.

Changing the subject, the concept of the dangling participle was annoying today.

In fact, English also has something called an absolute construction, and many sentences criticized for including a dangling participle can be explained as including an absolute instead, which is considered grammatical.  Is the green sentence above an example of a dangling participle or an absolute construction? I believe it's the latter.

Really, then, I wonder: can something dangle absolutely?.

Little Yedam was pretending to have a terrible headache. But she wasn't really that sick – every time I looked away, she would resume wiggling and bouncing and avoiding her chair. Her classmate would remind her: "don't you have a headache?" (in Korean). Yedam would resume her agonized chair sprawl.

Then she got excited when she was reading out loud to me, and she began jumping up and down. She hit her head on the windowsill by accident.

"지금 정말 머리 아파! [now my head hurts for real!]" she revealed.

One of my advanced elementary students had an ingenious if somewhat cruel plan for helping the homeless people for which Seoul Station is somewhat notorious. He said he would make counterfeit money and give it to them when they beg for it. This would get them arrested, he explained, and they would end up in jail. In jail, he explained, they would have a warm bed, better meals, and help with their alcoholism. I decided not to disillusion him by discussing the fact that it's still quite common in Korea for police to beat up suspects, etc. He's speaking to an idealized notion of what the police should be as he is to any actual reality, obviously.

Obviously, I can't endorse this idea. It's got aspects that seem both immoral and inhumane. But… You've got to give him credit for creative problem-solving.

I have a sixth-grade student named Yungyeong who hits me all the time. Not hard hitting – it’s that kind of reflexive, playful, ‘oh I’m just kidding around’ slap that some people seem to adopt as a way to reduce the awkwardness or formality of interactions. It’s a little bit annoying, although I also accept it as a rather inept, low-level expression of trust on the part of the student, and in that way, I’m even flattered by it. We were discussing my alligator (the green plastic Chinese alligator) before class, and she did it again – whack, on my arm.

“Why do you always hit me?” I asked.

“심심해서,” she protested immediately. [Cuz I’m bored]. And she whacked my arm again.

What a perfect sixth-grader answer.

Yesterday at work was hard. Every time I have that PM2 cohort, I struggle – they are bright kids, including a few too bright for their own good, but they are unruly and uninterested in academics of any kind, as far as I can tell. This is a hard consituency for me to teach toward – I'm one of these people who thinks that if kids don't want to learn, and are clearly smart enough to be making that choice with some degree of self-awareness, then it's not really my role, as a teacher, to try to change minds. That's a waste of my energy, as such changing of minds is difficult and resource-intensive on the part of the  teacher. That kind of mind-changing is the job for parents or other role-models – if they can manage it. And sometimes, adults simply have to accept the kids aren't going to do what you think they should – and be accepting of their choices, even if we believe they're bad choices. As I've said before – sometimes kids have to fall down on their own.

OK, that got philosphical fast.There were other small incidents that left me feeling gloomy about work yesterday: greedy parental demands and irrational complaints.

It's become quite cold. I like this kind of weather. Hopefully today will go more positively.

Several long-time teachers are leaving Karma Academy this week. Yesterday was Lena's last day, and she gave a small simple gift of a can of Starbucks coffee. There was a little note attached, and it said, "I was happy to work with you. Take care! P.S. Don't think too much." This last P.S. was funny – it's weird how even people who don't know me very well, and across cultural barriers, nevertheless seem to understand my neverending, utterly fundamental character defect. I was flattered to be so transparent, maybe.

Last night, we had hwehshik (business dinner+drink), but I'm trying so hard to not drink alcohol, which makes me a definite killjoy in the Korean cultural context at events of this sort. I tend to just sit very quietly and listen to the conversation and banter, viewing it as an extended listening comprehension exercise in the Korean language. Sometimes I can earn some respect and/or surprise from my coworkers by interjecting some short comment or question, generally in English, that's appropriate to the current topic – which shows that I'm understanding, at least sometimes.

Well, I always come away frustrated and slightly depressed after these things – because I refuse to drink because of my health (and because I'm such a depressed, unhappy drunk), and that makes my coworkers see me as "too serious" and strange, and that makes me mad that I can't just be taken at face value. Sigh.

Life goes on.

I guess they’re taking over the world. You have a hint of this, when a Korean seven-year-old spends a deeply focused 20 minutes crafting a story about them, along with illustration. Personally, I like his versions of the birds.

A certain student of mine drew this picture of me.

Frankly, I look like a South Park character. That’s not so bad, I guess. I think the “this is warm” under my foot – which I initially took to be a pile of poop – is actually meant to be a “worm,” but misspelled as “warm.”

Who is the certain student? The boss’s daughter. What might this mean?

My TP2 cohort shrunk even further – two of the remaining three students are on vacation trips with their families, leaving me with one student left. Rather than try to continue following my debate curriculum (go ahead, try to have a debate class with one Korean middle-schooler – try!), I decided to just have a kind of conversation class.

I have these little cards from a "Kids' Chat Game" that I bought once at the Minneapolis airport. They have goofy or sometimes thoughtful little questions – conversation starters. We went through them, low-pressure, just finding ways to talk about things. One question was: "If you could invite anyone in the world to your school to talk, who would it be?"

The answer the student formulated and expressed surprised me: "I would invite my English teacher, Jared. He knows about everything in the world." 

Talk about feeling complimented! I didn't even think this student liked me. I often berate him, in my mild-mannered way, for not doing homework or being laconic in class. I was rendered speechless, momentarily.

Do I know about everything in the world? Not really. But I have a way of speaking, in my more advanced classes, rambling from topic to topic, telling little stories and snippets of news and autobiography, that must seem rather wide-ranging to these kids.

Well, anyway. I'm not reporting this except to say, it was nice to know a student seems to think well of me. One doesn't often get direct, clear, positive feedback in the field of teaching.

The thing with having a Buddhist boss at Christmastime is that it doesn't mean anything that it's Christmastime. It seems like a lot of work is "ramping up" these days. Keeping me busy.

Actually, I'm just perfectly fine with that. I have nothing to do with Christmas, anyway. I'm a "grinch" as the family parlance would put it. So I'm happy to work some extra around Christmas, to be honest. I put in a very long day today. And we go in early on Christmas Eve.

A coworker asked me if I had a special plan for Christmas. I said, "No, I'm a Buddhist at Christmastime." I was joking. Or half-joking.

She said, "So what do you do for Buddha's Birthday?"

I said, "Well, then, I'm a Christian." She laughed, getting my joke.