Last night we had a 회식 [hoesik = work-related dining and drinking experience, for which I think there is no useful English Translation – maybe 50's style "Business Lunch" with lots of alcohol, but late at night].
As is so often the case, I found out about it only because of my efforts to be attentive to the Korean-language patter around me – they just assume I understand what's going on, anymore, which places the obligation on me to pay attention.
So I turned to my coworker Kay and said I would go, but I hate these "last minute" versions – as I've mentioned before on this blog. She was momentarily quite confused. We went back and forth a few times, before she finally said. "It's not last-minute. Curt announced it in the Kakaotalk last week."
I checked my Kakaotalk (a kind of facebook messenger type app ubiquitous in Korea) on my phone. "Uh… you mean this?" Last week, there was the following exchange, in Kakaotalk (which I'd had while still at my mom's in Australia):
Curt: Happy day jared let's have a party soon~
Jared: Thank you! We can have an English-teaching party on Monday.
Curt: Ok let's.
Kay nodded.
I said to her, "You realize I was joking when I said 'party,' there? And I thought it was obvious."
I use the word 'party' in this joking sense ALL THE TIME, at work. I use it with my students, as in, "uh-oh, I guess we need to have a homework party," in response to a class where the majority haven't finished their homework. I use it with coworkers, as in, "We're having a comment-writing party, I think."
I don't know where I picked up this ironic usage of 'party' – maybe during my years working in tech in Los Angeles. We would have 'coding parties' and 'testing parties' for software. It seemed pretty common in the circles I ran in.
Kay was dismissive. "I knew it was a joke. But Curt didn't. So he made it a plan for a party."
I just laughed.
And later I went to the party.
It was at that meat place near the cancer hospital where Curt knows the owners, I think. It's OK – though this Korean-style barbecue-at-the-table is not my favorite cuisine, anymore. Requires careful chewing.
It made my first day back at work after my vacation VERY LONG. "Party as adverse experience." Hard to adapt.
Yesterday morning, I predicted I would have a hectic week. In fact, yesterday was more than hectic – yesterday was downright insane. My coworker Grace failed to return from her vacation as scheduled (maybe an airplane travel problem? I wasn't clear on the situation). But her substitute teacher was no longer available. We had no teacher for 6 classes, and about 30 minutes to adapt.
So Curt shuffled the schedule, combined some classes, and we made it through. I had a full schedule, needless to say. 8 classes, straight through, no breaks.
For the combined and non-standard classes, mostly I taught non-standard lessons. I'm pretty good at ad-hocing it. So it went OK. I had one combined class with 20 students, though – which is HUGE by hagwon standards. I haven't faced a class that large since I taught at the public school down south in 2011. They were the younger kids. We played bingo. It went smoothly.
Several hilarious student anecdotes eventuated.
I was giving a planned, really hard month-end essay writing test to my ED1 cohort, but being a bit frazzled, I wasn't being very sympathetic or helpful to my poor students.
A boy named Sean, who never pays attention, looked up in the middle of the test, and asked, "What's a film festival?" Perhaps that seems innocent enough – a gap in vocabulary, no more. However, in fact we had been reading, brainstorming, discussing, and trying to write essays about film festivals for the past month. The core of the test, in fact, was to write an essay about an imaginary film festival, for which I gave some made-up details (location, schedule, etc.). So this was a rather glaring gap. Rather than try to help the boy, I just started laughing. I think the students were disturbed by this performance.
I laughed so hard I nearly cried.
Later, in one of Grace's speaking classes, I asked a 6th grade boy named Kai if he was in any clubs. We had been discussing clubs such as a taekwondo club, computer club, chess club, or that kind of thing.
Without missing a beat, he said, "I'm in the night club. Every night." He mimed a disco dance move. Where did that come from? I laughed again. That might seem like a pretty clever pun for a non-native speaker. Actually, it makes a bit of sense. "Club" is a borrowed word from English to Korean (클럽 [keulleop]), but only in the "night club" meaning – thus that's the central meaning for Koreans, rather than what we think of as its main sense, which is just a social organization of some kind.
I was yelling at my HS1-T cohort the other day, as is so often my wont these days.
It's a very frustrating group of students – a collection of obstreperous, very smart but extremely rebellious 6th and 7th grade girls (yes, all girls – by some grave misfortune).
So I was yelling. The standard stuff: please focus on your work and quit talking about your favorite pop star idols; please speak English during class; please do your homework, next time.
Maybe the "pleases" were getting thin on the ground. I was pretty annoyed.
One girl (whom I won't name) said, "You know, you're not very good at being scary."
I sat down, deflated.
"I know," I sighed. The girls all had a laugh, and went on their merry way.
What I'm listening to right now.
Communist Daughter, "Soundtrack To The End"
Lyrics.
You put on a pretty face And we never saved our money And then we got stuck in place And I lost my milk and honey
And all the songs were new And they broke our hearts in two While we walked away So I just pushed on through And I made my muscles move 'Cause I could never say
And all our hearts were breaking There was music all around And the walls were always shaking 'Cause our love was the sound Our love was the sound
We took six of one And nothing from the dozen I guess I'll never need another hand to stay awake Oh, get me right up to the brink I'll break one way or other
Some of the best of us are already home Still singing softly through the stereo Although we tried to make the only amends Now it's just a soundtrack to the end
And all the songs were new And they broke our hearts in two But we still walked away So I just pushed on through And I made my muscles move So I don't have to say That it's not right to carry on It might be old but she isn't gone And you never listened anyway
All our hearts were breaking There was music all around And the walls were always shaking 'Cause our love was the sound Our love was the sound
And all our hearts were breaking There was music all around And the walls were always shaking 'Cause our love was the sound
I was doing a prospective student interview yesterday at work, with a 2nd grade elementary student. My task in these interviews is to try to decide which class to place the student in, based on current level, but where the kids are too young or too low-level to be able to do a typical Korean-style diagnostic test.
I had the student attempt to read from one of our elementary readers, then we tested a few random flashcards from our phonics series. Finally, I tried out our "phonics diagnostic," which is a kind of graded set of sheets where we attempt to gauge how well the students can sound out unfamiliar words.
The boy really wasn't very good at any of this, but he was pretty good at catching my meaning and understanding my directions, in spoken form. We get a lot of students like this, who've attended some kind of pre-literacy "immersion" (in quotes because it's often not very immersive) kindergarten – they have some rudiments of English in spoken form but are very weak on alphabet and reading/writing.
Anyway, I always conclude these interviews with a very short writing test. I have the kids draw a picture of their favorite animal, then have them try to write something about their animal. At his level, I didn't expect much, but in yesterday's case, the result was a bit odd.
The boy drew a picture of a very implausible dog (at right), then smiled and confidently wrote, "Thia bag hippe."
"What's that say?" I asked.
"This dog happy," he said.
Hm: not strong on phonics or sight-words, then, and maybe not even completely clear on the whole alphabet concept, but, for all that, apparently confident.
Well, I admit I'm feeling more than a little bit grumpy about work, this morning.
Last night, we had one of those typical Korean after-work dinner events: 회식 [hweh-sik]. Not formally obligatory, but socially "highly recommended," as it were.
But here's the thing: I didn't go.
And I would have gone.
But I didn't even know it was happening. That's pretty annoying.
Typically, there are two kinds of hweh-sik. The first kind is the pre-planned, long announced one. Often, there's a message on the staffroom whiteboard at least several days before, which I try to take the time to look at once a day and see if anything new has appeared. Of course it will be written in Korean, but I'll decipher the handwriting, look up any words I don't recognize, and make sure I know what it's about. And hweh-sik is a common enough phenomenon that I recognize these readily, now.
The second kind is more spontaneous, as in, "hey, we're going out after work." Even then, I'm not always told, but if I'm in the staff room or at the front desk, I'll overhear the conversation, in Korean, and catch the drift and butt in and see if I've understood correctly.
Well, last night, I guess the decision was made after 8 pm. I had classes for the last two periods of the day, so I wasn't out of the class room at all – I just went from one class to the other, and reappeared in the staff room after my last class. The decision had been taken. And no one was talking about it. And no one told me.
Sometimes, on these spontaneous kind, I will bow out. I don't like having my daily schedule discombobulated unexpectedly – it's part of my new, more stick-in-the-mud personality that seems to have been implanted with my re-engineered post-cancer tongue. I have been bowing out of these spontaneous ones less, lately, though. I really do see the value of these gatherings, even if they are stressful for me.
They are stressful – more than any other aspect of my job. I'm not particularly good at socializing, anyway. I'm a shy person, and not very good at what you might call "bar banter" which is, of course, the main semantic content of these types of outings. And of course they are 97% in Korean. I'm the only non-Korean speaker, after all. Why socialize in the second language, even if everyone is competent in that second language, when the first language is more comfortable?
So it's like a language immersion experience. And as you know, I have insecurities about that… about my abilities and competence, about my failure to do better, about my presumed identity as a "linguist" – "What, you're a linguist? Why haven't you mastered Korean?" Remember, linguists aren't necessarily polyglots. Those are different things. I study about language, I just don't learn languages – not very well, anyway.
Anyway, summarizing in brief, sometimes I decide not to go. And I might have decided not to go, last night – I wasn't feeling the best, already. I was tired, finishing a heavy schedule yesterday, and in a bit in bad mood because of my struggles with that HS1T cohort that's been giving me so much frustration recently.
But at least I would still prefer to have to option to make this decision. Instead, I was left out, which is altogether a different feeling.
I found out about it because it was announced, in Korean, on the Kakaotalk app [ka-tok] Karma discussion channel on my phone (Kakaotalk is the most popular Korean chat chat platform, a bit like facebook messenger or the old yahoo messenger app). This is a thing I try to watch, too, like the whiteboard in the staff room. I'd even been aware there had been some discussion posted while I was in class. But it was a bunch of dense Korean text, and I didn't even scan it while I was still at work. Instead, once home, changed for bed, eating some dinner, I thought, Oh, I should see what that ka-tok was about. I will do a thing where I drop the text from ka-tok into my email drafts, then I can open the email draft in my browser on my computer and get a google-translate of it, which is a place for starting to sort out what it's about. And there it was – we were having a hweh-sik. Presumably, they were there as I read it.
I don't know how I could have necessarily known about it even if my Korean were perfect – I would have had to have checked the ka-tok app as if it were potentially urgent, which is not how it's typically used, except in contexts where something is already in progress – i.e. where are we meeting? meeting tomorrow moved from 3:00 to 2:30… that kind of thing.
My student left this next to the monkey on my desk.
"Trash monkey" is another name for the Minneapolitan rainbow monkey (and/or his neon green friend). The idea is that the monkeys like trash – which I tell my students because it compels them to pick up their trash and put it like an offering on a free desk where the monkey "collects" their trash. This aids in cleaning the classroom at the end of the period, since for whatever bizarre Korean cultural reason, classrooms don't have individual trashcans.
We were doing a speaking book task, where there is a "set up" situation, and students have to then explain what they will say in the given situation.
In this particular set up, it described a situation where the student has borrowed a friend's phone, only to drop it and break the screen accidentally.
So the students had to, presumably, say something to the effect of: "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I broke your phone. I feel so terrible. I will buy you a new one… "
Anyway, this is actually a really hard task for these students – the book is a bit too hard for their ability level. They just don't have the fluency or active vocabulary to make this happen smoothly. So to make it easier, I spend a good portion of each class describing the situation, acting it out in detail, writing down possible response fragments.
I try to solicit possible words, ideas, and such from the students. One boy, a bit of a contrarian, likes to imagine being a jerk in such situations. So he said, "I feel happy."
I ran with it.
"Right! What if you don't like your friend?" I brainstormed.
"I feel happy. I broke it, so what?" I wrote on the board. The boy scribbled this down diligently. He knew what his speech would look like, now.
I added some more fragments. "It's your phone, deal with it." I spent some time explaining the expression "deal with it."
One girl, normally completely silent, suggested. "I feel joy."
"Joy?" I said, pleased to see her participating. "Not just happy, but joy? You hate your friend?"
She nodded.
"So then what?" I asked. "What if your friend calls a lawyer?"
I spent about 5 minutes explaining what a lawyer was. I explained the concept of "small claims court" – without trying to introduce the vocabulary. The kids were more or less familiar with the idea – there are cheesy courtroom reality shows in Korea, just like in the US.
Without missing a beat, the normally silent girl said, almost inaudibly but clearly, "OK. Call the lawyer with your broken phone."
Andy is a fifth grader who is in an Honors cohort otherwise made up of sixth graders, because of his high ability. It was a bit problematic placing him there, because he ended up in the same class with his older sister, Julie. I suspect the direct competition isn't helping the younger boy.
Last night, we took a month-end speaking test. Julie scored 99%. Andy, on the other hand, only managed 71%. Their ability levels are similar and normally they score similarly. Andy moaned and made a sad expression. "It is my destiny!" he exclaimed.
"In Karma, it is your destiny," his older sister intoned, with mock seriousness. On the one hand, I think they were imitating the famous Darth Vader line, "It is your destiny." But I realized they both are also probably quite aware that one possible meaning of "Karma" is in fact "destiny" – certainly the fine semantic differences between them is lost, since both words are often translated 운명 [unmyeong] in Korean. I suspect they have a running joke between them.
Today in my "CC" listening class, we were listening to the American pop song "Blank Space," by Taylor Swift. The students' job is to listen to the song (line by line and over and over, if necessary), and fill in a cloze version of the lyrics (i.e. words missing). So we were filling in the blank spaces in the song "Blank Space.
One student, Kevin, when confronted with the line "I can read you like a magazine," decided, confidently, that it was "I can read you like a banana." For whatever reason, I started trying to explain how this might work. I held up an imaginary banana, and pretended to "read" it. I looked at Kevin, and tried to "read" him in the same way. The students understood the absurdity of the interpretation. Anyway, I found it entertaining, as often happens with absurdity.
What I'm listening to right now.
Taylor Swift, "Blank Space."
Lyrics.
Nice to meet you, where you been? I could show you incredible things Magic, madness, heaven, sin Saw you there and I thought Oh my God, look at that face You look like my next mistake Love's a game, wanna play?
New money, suit and tie I can read you like a magazine Ain't it funny, rumors fly And I know you heard about me So hey, let's be friends I'm dying to see how this one ends Grab your passport and my hand I can make the bad guys good for a weekend
So it's gonna be forever Or it's gonna go down in flames You can tell me when it's over If the high was worth the pain Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane 'Cause you know I love the players And you love the game
'Cause we're young and we're reckless We'll take this way too far It'll leave you breathless Or with a nasty scar Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane But I've got a blank space, baby And I'll write your name
Cherry lips, crystal skies I could show you incredible things Stolen kisses, pretty lies You're the King, baby, I'm your Queen Find out what you want Be that girl for a month Wait, the worst is yet to come, oh no
Screaming, crying, perfect storms I can make all the tables turn Rose garden filled with thorns Keep you second guessing like "Oh my God, who is she?" I get drunk on jealousy But you'll come back each time you leave 'Cause, darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream
So it's gonna be forever Or it's gonna go down in flames You can tell me when it's over If the high was worth the pain Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane 'Cause you know I love the players And you love the game
'Cause we're young and we're reckless We'll take this way too far It'll leave you breathless Or with a nasty scar Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane But I've got a blank space, baby And I'll write your name
Boys only want love if it's torture Don't say I didn't say, I didn't warn ya Boys only want love if it's torture Don't say I didn't say, I didn't warn ya
So it's gonna be forever Or it's gonna go down in flames You can tell me when it's over If the high was worth the pain Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane 'Cause you know I love the players And you love the game
'Cause we're young and we're reckless We'll take this way too far It'll leave you breathless Or with a nasty scar Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane But I've got a blank space, baby And I'll write your name
I've been facing some challenges with my current curriculum set-up with my middle-schoolers, because the newly re-arranged cohorts of middle school students have a wider diversity of ability levels. Thus, my traditional Speaking/Writing/Listening classes on the TOEFL-prep style don't entirely "work" – the lower ability levels in the classes are frankly not quite able to take on the productive tasks (Speaking and Writing) – at least not in the books I'm currently using. Also, the social feel of several of these classes is altered, with the higher level students resenting the lower level students, and the lower level students feeling intimidated.
I honestly don't know what to do, but I'm feeling pretty frustrated. I feel like I wasn't really consulted about how the students were re-arranged – if I had been, I would not have opposed the newly diverse groups, but I would have definitely insisted on a changed curriculum – a move away from TOEFL and toward something like my old debate curriculum, perhaps. I suppose I'm going to have to do that, anyway, but with the students having all been provided with the existing curriculum's TOEFL books, there will be parental resentment if those books don't get used. I'm going to have to get creative in how I use those books. I'm having trouble thinking of ideas, at the moment.
My student who goes by Sandy, in 2nd grade elementary, dislikes speaking English. She's a pleasant and well-focused student, but she seems to suffer a kind of panic attack whenever I ask her to speak directly. Sometimes she cries, or hides under her desk. So I have taken to kind of asking her permission to ask her something. I don't want to stress her out – I want her to see learning English as a positive experience.
We are doing a roleplay based on the Jack and the Beanstalk story. We were playing a kind of game yesterday, and Sandy, between participating (sort of) in the game, used her "Hello Kitty" stationery to convey to me, without words, her own interpretation of substantial parts of the story. I thought it was quite interesting, as it gave me some insight into her intelligence despite her shyness about participating.
I've really been struggling with a certain class, known as HS1-T. It's making me feel like I'm a bad teacher.
The reconfigured cohorts of the new term which started with July has joined together a group of kids that seems to have led to some bad chemistry. The changes are subtle, and really it boils down to me feeling disappointed with the emerging lack of motivation of otherwise talented students. I realize I don't see the whole picture – these kids have their lives, and things going on, and who knows why a given kid or group of kids decide that working hard at learning English is not a thing they want to focus on anymore.
Nevertheless, I wonder what I could or should be doing differently. I have my insecurities, too. So I spend more time dwelling on this problem than I should, and without any clear resolution.
Last night, I faced the five students – arguably among them are several of the most talented students at Karma in absolute terms. None of them had done homework. I pushed down my anger and tried to shrug it off, saying only that they were harming themselves. Being the "angry" teacher doesn't achieve anything – I tried that last week to horrendous effect. Anyway, I refuse to become the constantly haranguing, nagging creature some of my colleagues devolve into. But being the happy-go-lucky "fun" teacher hasn't been working either. I'm at a loss.
Last night I tried to be "boring teacher" – mostly due to lack of ideas, but I suppose I saw it as a kind of punishment I was imposing on them. It was boring and depressing.
Curt found Jae-il wandering around the halls at Karma during class time. He demanded, "Why aren't you in class? Who is your teacher?"
Jae-il, somewhat surprised, but with his typical aplomb, said, "You're my teacher. You weren't there. So I came out."
In fact, it turned out that Curt had been so busy with his duties related to being the hagwon director that he'd forgotten that he was scheduled to be teaching the class.
Unrelatedly… you know why I love donuts? They’re not self-centered.
Yeo-eun has been my student for more than 6 months. I think more like approaching a year, now.
We were preparing a debate scheme last night. Because it is a very small class, I had allowed all the students to form a single team, and I would "be" the other team, by myself. I wrote out the debate scheme on the whiteboard, and beside my CON team speeches, I wrote my name.
With utter sincerity, Yeo-eun asked, "Teacher! Who is Jared?"
The other students laughed.
"You don't know?"
She shook her head, clearly having no clue.
We've even had extensive in-class discussions about my name, and about cultural differences in the way students address their teachers or other adults. I have explained that in fact, from my casual American perspective, addressing me as "Teacher!" is less polite than, say, using my name. Some students even have sometimes tried out the awkward "Mr Way." But the use of "Teacher!" to address one's teacher is culturally in-grained: it's just a simple direct translation of "선생님" [seon-saeng-nim], which is completely universal. Many students never bother to learn their teachers' names, as they're not allowed, culturally, to use them.
Yeo-eun had decided knowing my name was unimportant information, and had purged it from her brain.
My middle school HS1T cohort happens to be populated by only girls. Sometimes these coincidences arise – there is another middle school cohort, that I don't teach, that is all boys.
Last night they were all giggly and distracted, talking about Idols, I guess – "Idols" means kpop music stars of various types. I got grumpy and serious. I yelled loudly and made them quiet down and we worked very productively and with great focus on some TOEFL-style speaking questions. I was pleased enough that during the last 15 minutes of class, I asked them what they wanted to do. Normally they ask to play a game – card games are currently popular.
This time, however, they wanted to watch music videos. I am somewhat hesitant to turn over control of the internet to my students – it ends up being hard to find anything pedagogically redeeming. So I said if we watched videos they had to be in English. One girl said she knew just the one. I guess there is an "American Idol" style competition show where these boys are competing to become a typical kpop "boy band." They danced and lip-synced to several songs in English.
The girls didn't really listen to the music – I'm not sure they're even interested in the music. They were focused on swooning over their various favorites of the boys in the video, discussing fine points of their appearance and personalities. One girl said about her particular favorite, "I don't actually like him, but he's too handsome."
The boys are just lip-syncing – the show seems to be more a dance and beauty competition than a singing competition. That's in line with what these typical over-produced kpop groups do. They very rarely are involved in making the actual music involved – they're just a performance medium. So in the cases the girls were looking at, these are American pop songs.
In general, "dance covers" are a HUGE thing in Korean youth culture. They're all over the internet, and I have more than once come across kids literally dancing in the halls (both boys and girls), very clearly practicing moves related to one or another of these types of covers.
What I'm listening to right now.
프로듀스 101 시즌2, "Shape Of You." I think this song is originally by Ed Sheehan.
Lyrics (abbreviated as performed on Produce 101).
The club isn't the best place to find a lover So the bar is where i go Me and my friends at the table doing shots Drinking fast and then we talk slow And you come over and start up a conversation With Just me and trust me I'll give it a chance Now take my hand stop Put van the man on the jukebox And then we start to dance And now I'm singing like Girl you know I want your love Your love was handmade for somebody like me Come on now follow my lead I may be crazy Don't mind me Say boy let's not talk too much Grab on my waist and put that body on me Come on now follow my lead Come on come on now follow my lead I'm in love with your body (Shape of you) Every day discovering something brand new I'm in love with the shape of you (Shape of you) Every day discovering something brand new I'm in love with the shape of you Come on be my baby come on
프로듀스 101 시즌2, "Get Ugly." This song is originally by Jason Derulo
Lyrics (full lyrics, I think they're performing only a part of these on Produce 101)
Girl, ladies, let your hurr down Let your hurr down We's about to get down
Oh my, oh my, oh my god This girl straight and this girl not Tipsy off that peach Ciroc Like la la la Ching-a-lang-lang, ching-a-ling-a-lang-lang Jeans so tight I could see loose change Do your thang, thang, girl Do that thang like la la la
Tell them pretty faced girls tryna grabs each other And them undercover freaks who ain't nun' but trouble Baby, I'mma tell you some' only 'cause I love ya People all around the world sexy motherfuckers
Get ugly Yeah, get ugly, baby Get ugly You're too sexy to me Sexy to me You're too sexy to me Sexy to me So sexy Damn, that's ugly
Bruh, I can't, I can't even lie I'm about to be that guy Someone else gon' have to try me La la la Bang-a-rang-rang, bang-a-ring-a-rang-rang Bass in the trunk, vibrate that thang Do your thang, thang, girl Do that thang like la la la
Tell them pretty faced girls tryna grabs each other And them undercover freaks who ain't nun' but trouble Baby, I'mma tell you some' only 'cause I love ya People all around the world sexy motherfuckers
Get ugly Get ugly, baby, woo hoo And everybody say la la la Get ugly You're too sexy to me Sexy to me You're too sexy to me Sexy to me So sexy Damn, that's ugly
Ay, Ricky This beat give me that ugly face, man Everybody lose control Let's get ugly, dysfunctional Everybody lose control Let's get ugly, dysfunctional
Tell them pretty faced girls tryna grabs each other And them undercover freaks who ain't nun' but trouble Baby, I'mma tell you some' only 'cause I love ya People all around the world sexy motherfuckers
Light them up then pass that, pass that La la la Everybody lose control Let's get ugly, dysfunctional Get ugly You know what I'm talking about You're too sexy to me Sexy to me You're too sexy to me Sexy to me So sexy Damn, that's ugly
Here is another incident in the seemingly growing category of “7th graders making unnecessary random announcements.”
It was a few days ago.
I think we were talking about parables and allegories. Completely out of the blue, Sally’s hand shot up, and, before I could even acknowledge her desire to speak, she said, “Teacher! I don’t need a boyfriend.”
“Well… good,” I responded, cautiously. Then I asked, “Why are you telling me now?”
If there had been some boy in the class, just then, pestering her in some way, I could almost have seen it as a kind of oblique comment intended to discourage that kind of thing, but in the event, there were only 3 girls in the classroom just then.
Sally shrugged. “It’s important information.”
Another girl, Michelle, nodded knowingly. I suspect this was just the conclusion to some discussion between the two girls that had been proceeding in Korean some time earlier.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that many of these inexplicable “announcements” made by students are most likely much more explicable to their peers, who are in a different, broader social context – the kids have their ongoing, not-during-class interactions, mostly in Korean, with each other. I should feel that it represents a kind of success in language teaching, that they choose to “code switch” into English to express these off-topic thoughts.
Regardless, as the clueless adult in the room, they are often mildly entertaining. [daily log: walking, 7km]
In the wake of last week's talent show, we had some "market day / game day" events with the elementary students this week. Yesterday, I was with our relatively small and not terribly talented Tuesday/Thursday cohort, and we were playing a "picture game" that is popular with the kids – it's a bit like charades, but instead of acting, you draw a picture on the whiteboard, they have to guess the word. The vocabulary involved can be as simple or complex as necessary for the given group. This group can handle "dog" and "television" but not "parachute" or "tears."
It was this last word that led to a kind of entertaining result. A student drew a face with tears on the board, with a little arrow to a tear drop. It was a respectable representation. I knew the kids knew what it should be, because they were saying it in Korean. But they lacked the word in English. The word "tears" was simply not part of their vocabulary.
One kid got innovative, though. The Korean for tears is "눈물" [nun.mul, literally "eye-water"]. But the first element, "눈" [nun "eye"], is a homonym in Korean: "눈" [nun] also means "snow." So when I rejected "eye water" as unacceptable as a possible word meaning "tears," he tried "snow water," grinning triumphantly at his cleverness. Unfortunately, puns don't translate.
For some reason, this seemed quite funny and poetic at the same time.
I'm sure this pun has been quite productive over the years in Korean symbolism and poetry.
A few days ago, my oldest surviving Minneapolitan Rainbow Monkey underwent a traumatic experience. Two kids were fighting over the monkey. He fell on the floor. I stepped in (literally), by placing my foot on the monkey, and told them, stop fighting over the monkey. The kids were adamant, however. One boy, Jack, tugged on one of the monkey's arms. I pressed harder with my foot. A diminutive girl named Amy tugged on another of the monkey's arms.
Suddenly, the arm ripped off. She staggered back, and held up the arm, looking stunned. I think she thought I would be angry. I was a bit annoyed, but this seemed like an inevitable consequence the monkey had long managed to avoid through sheer luck.
"Oh my god," I said, in surprise. "My monkey! You broke my monkey."
"I didn't do it," she protested, with a disarming grin.
"You both did it," I asserted. "I helped, too, I guess," I added, stooping to retrieve the remainder of the monkey from under my shoe.
I took the arm, and used an alligator clip (a "binder clip") to attach the arm, ad hoc, to the monkey's shoulder area. I held him up for the class. "Look! Still smiling! What a crazy monkey."
The kids laughed, probably relieved that I wasn't angry.
When I told the teachers in the staff room, later, they were angry. "How can you let kids behave like that?"
"They're just kids," I said. "The monkey seems to be OK."
At right: a picture of my monkey, awaiting surgery (aka needle and thread). He's almost 5 years old – I think he's held up pretty well.
Justin, a seventh-grader, made a rather random, unmotivated announcement today in class. He raised his hand.
Justin: I'm a normal person.
Teacher: Really?
Justin: Yes, I am.
Teacher: Why do you say that?
Justin: I have ten fingers, two hands, two feet, one head.
Teacher: That's good.
Justin just grinned.
Annie, sitting in the front of the class, looked back at Justin, and back at me, and shook her head, rolling her eyes – but she refrained from commenting. I had no idea why he felt the need for this conversation, but you take what you can get, right?
We are doing last-minute prep for our talent show. Grace is doing some stage practicing with a group of her students, and she tells me, "I really need a fart sound for this play."
The play she's doing, the "Farting Lady," is a Korean classic tale adapted to grade-school EF, with songs, too. I may have mentioned it before on this blog – it's a perennial favorite of Korean students, because they know the story already, and because elementary children have fundamentally scatalogical senses of humor.
I can't use my laptop, because it's been repurposed as the main computer for all the projections, sound and powerpoint slides for the show.
The solution:
So I take my little USB memory stick and I go to one of the computers in the computer lab. I go to google, and I type in "free download fart sounds." I have a plethora of choices. First choice, try out some sounds, and download a half dozen.
I save them onto my USB, and return to the seminar room where Grace is practicing. I hand her the USB. "The internet is a great thing," I say.
"It is," she agrees, as she tries out the files, to the entertained giggles of 15 or so elementary kids.
Today is our big day, the annual Karma English Academy talent show. As is typical, I feel utterly unprepared. But thus it goes – that's life in the Karmic Korean Kingdom of Chaotic Quasi-Confucian Contingency.
Meanwhile, what I'm listening to right now.
Elton John, "Rocket Man." The video is brand new, but has been declared "official." I found the video, by Iranian refugee Majid Adin, quite stunningly beautiful and sad, and it manages to take a melancholic, classic song almost half a century old, now, like John's "Rocket Man," and imbue it with intense new meaning vis-a-vis the contemporary, never-ending global refugee crisis.
Lyrics.
She packed my bags last night pre-flight Zero hour nine AM And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then I miss the earth so much I miss my wife It's lonely out in space On such a timeless flight
And I think it's gonna be a long long time 'Till touch down brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long long time 'Till touch down brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids In fact it's cold as hell And there's no one there to raise them if you did And all this science I don't understand It's just my job five days a week A rocket man, a rocket man
And I think it's gonna be a long long time 'Till touch down brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long long time 'Till touch down brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Three simple songs were sung among
the faces going by.
I knew these songs in passing, then,
though all the years did fly.
A song of patient worrying
came first, a princess true.
The second song had deep kindness,
but understandings, few.
The third song had the boldest heart,
but passions rather wild.
These songs departed. But today,
a song returned... and smiled.
– three quatrains in ballad meter. This poem is not just a hallucination or metaphor, unlike as is the normal case with most of my poetry. Rather, it has a fairly important and specific subtext, which will make the meaning quite clear.
I had a class last night with my highest-level students, the TOEFL 8th graders, that was close to an ideal type of class, in my opinion.
Nominally, we were working on the TOEFL speaking questions. But before class, one of the students, Sumin, had asked me if I knew anything about the "Mpemba Effect" (see wikipedia – I'll not try to replicate the explanation found there). She had to make a speech about it, in Korean, for her Korean-language class. In researching it online, she'd found more materials in English than Korean, and, being an ambitious and motivated English student, she decided these were legitimate sources for putting together her speech. She was checking with me mostly to make sure she understood some of the technical aspects and the fairly specialized vocabulary of chemistry and physics involved.
So we carried on our conversation about it into the start of class. The other students overheard and were curious, and so I started explaining. And then I said, "Actually, this is exactly the kind of topic that they put into a Type 6 TOEFL speaking question." You listen to some complicated lecture on a difficult topic, and then you have to summarize.
Somewhat jokingly, I asked them if they wanted to do a speaking question practice on the Mpemba Effect. To my surprise, they were enthusiastic about this idea. So I pulled up the wikipedia article, scanned through it to make sure I understood it, and then proceeded to give a 10 minute lecture, more or less, on the Mpemba Effect. This included digressions to explain concepts such as convection, insulation, dissolved gases, crystallization and "seeding" crystals (i.e. catalysts), and several other things that occurred to me. Then their job was to give a one minute summary, in the TOEFL style, of my lecture.
In his summary, David even included the expression, "The Karma professor explains…," a joking reference to my sometimes being identified by both students and coworkers as a "professor." It's a moniker that seems to follow me regardless of career.
The class was ideal. We covered what we needed to cover – which is to say, we did TOEFL speaking practice on a particular instance of what are always essentially random topics. Yet the students themselves selected the topic, out of interest, and they more or less led the class in terms of what was expected of them. I was just a kind of resource, an on-call "professor" that they could hit "play" on for various aspects of the topic in question.
By this, he meant he was finished. Jack is not a high level student. He's a low-level student, even in the context of a low-level class. I think he's a fifth grader. I looked down at Jack's quiz. He'd answered maybe 6 of the 20 questions. So his maximum possible score was 6/20 – if there were no mistakes, which I couldn't be confident of.
I said, "This is terrible."
Jack said, fairly quickly, "I am terrible because you teach me that way."
He was grinning up at me as he said it. I knew immediately that he meant it as a joke.
And it blew me away. Not because it was effectively an insult. I have a pretty casual class, anyway, and in the spirit of communicativeness, the kids know I overlook what Korean teachers would not tolerate. No, I was blown away because it was probably the first fully formed, coherent English sentence I'd ever heard Jack articulate.
In fact, I felt quite pleased, because it vindicated exactly that open spirit of communication I tried to foster. Once he had something he wanted to say, he decided to say it.
My student was tasked with a typical "Type 1" TOEFL speaking question which prompted (roughly), "What is the most remarkable book you have read?"
He spoke coherently and in detail, for the allotted 45 seconds about a book entitled "The Diaries of Mr X."
Apparently, this book is about a student who makes many mistakes. It sounded a bit picaresque, as he described it. It has a tragic ending (suicide), but it is also uplifting because it presents things humorously. My student said he learned a lot from the book about what sorts of mistakes a middle school student should avoid, during the difficult years of puberty.
The thing is, this "book" was invented by the student on the spot.
In fact, I have many times told my students that on an "opinion question" on the TOEFL Speaking section, it is probably quite okay to lie, if it is the easiest thing to do in the moment, as long as the lie is plausible. Clearly one shouldn't lie on the summary of facts presented in other types of questions – that would cost points – but when it's a matter of opinion, one should definitely take the path of least resistance.
Indeed, in discussing this issue, I have often given the example of the quite similar prompt, "What is is your favorite book?" I try to expalin that if I were taking the test, I would never answer my true favorite book (Persiles by Cervantes), because that book is not commonly known, it's not in English anyhow, and it would be hard to explain anything about it in 45 seconds allowed. Instead I would speak broadly and generically about some anodyne prototype that would be familiar to just about anyone, such as Harry Potter. But with respect to the issue of lying specifically, I say that if one is "stumped" in the moment, don't be afraid to fudge the facts of your beliefs and preferences. Fluency counts for more than "truth," anyway. There is no way a test evaluator can know if the book being spoken about is real or not – it's not as if that person is going to go search the internet and try to verify the book's existence or compare its plot to the one presented by the test taker. They are doing a job of evaluating your spoken English, and probably are on a tight schedule (I have heard less than 2 minutes allowed per question response scored).
My advanced students have always understood the point I'm trying to make, but most of them are uncomfortable with that kind of creative improvisation.
Until last night. Certainly, I never had a student use this strategy quite so skillfully. It was downright Borgesian, in a kind of stumbling, accented, Korean-middle-school way.
I have a 7th grade student who goes by Lisa. She's pretty smart but she's a bit of a space cadet, and she will often seem to forget she's in class, and do odd things: burst into song, stand up out of the blue, that kind of thing.
At one point, she'd grabbed my collection of board markers from the tray on the whiteboard, and began arranging them in order by color, in a row on her desk. I didn't comment.
But then she was hitting some index card she held in her hand against the edge of her desk. Thwack, thwack. A seemingly pointless exercise, and bit annoying.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
For no clear reason whatsoever, she remarked, barely missing a beat: "Traditional Korean Culture."
This was a kind of joke, I suppose. The other kids found it amusing. And then it became a running gag in the class. Every time a student did something strange or annoying, I would say, "What are you doing?" and they would answer, "Traditional Korean Culture."
Justin leaned back in his chair, balancing on the back two legs, precariously. A very common activity among students of that age. "What are you doing?" "Traditional Korean Culture."
Julie lay her head on the desk, because she was suffering one of her fits of giggles. "What are you doing?" "Traditional Korean Culture."
My students taught me this phrase the other day. I always learn the best Korean from my students.
Actually, they taught me the positive version: 띵가띵가놀은다 [tting.ka.tting.ka.nol.eun.da], which seems to mean, roughly, “goof off”, ” “play around”, or, as I pointed out, “dink around” as in to work completely unproductively. I wonder at the sound symbolism, because of that. Anyway, the term joins my long list of phenomimes and psychomimes. The term is not in the standard online Korean dictionaries, but I noticed that the googletranslate gets it right.
The negative phrase, 띵가띵가놀지마 [tting.ka.tting.ka.nol.ji.ma], I managed to use quite successfully, later in the same class. The kids were duly impressed. Lisa had been playing around with my collection of whiteboard markers, and not really paying attention. She gets easily distracted – a bit of a space cadet. So I said that: “띵가띵가놀지마!” She looked up, surprised.
Annie, who keeps trying to be my Korean coach, raised a thumb in broad approval. “Oh, nice, teacher. Good Korean!” [daily log: walking, 7km]
I have a certain student, whom I've written about many times before. She's been at Karma for a long time – I think at least 3 years now. She goes by Sophia. She is a very voluble girl, and talks with me, in English, almost continuously whenever she's around me. Also, she's the only student I've ever had who ever had any kind of interaction with any members of my family – she bonded to my niece Sarah when my sister Brenda and her kids visited a few years back (I have no idea if that bonding was mutual, but anyway, she still mentions that visit). For these reasons, I've perhaps come to think of her like she was a bit of a surrogate child in a way I don't typically feel for students.
Anyway, I have been feeling singularly depressed about Sophia, lately. She's in the sixth grade, now, and if she's always been a bit emotionally immature and academically unmotivated, recently she's become gloomily but quite declaratively unambitious, too. With alarming regularity, these days, she says things like, "I don't want to learn anything," and "I'm going to get married and only be a mom."
I don't really want to begrudge anyone their passion or heart's desire – and there's a place in the world for "just gettting married and being a mom" – it's not like that isn't a really important role for society.
The problem is that Sophia is possibly one of the smartest students I have ever taught. I would expect that if she took an IQ test, she'd be a genius. At the least, she's without a doubt some kind of savant in the realm of language: without ever having lived or studied abroad, her spoken English is better than most other students'. She's been entirely autodidact in this – she actively resists formal instruction of any kind, and always has. But she soaks up vocabulary and grammar effortlessly. I think she mostly learned English by watching TV shows and movies in English.
She will correctly use a new word that I have used in class in front of her, after hearing it just one time. She has a stunning memory. She can memorize the words (English-Korean translation lists of 20 words) for her in-class vocabulary quizzes in the 3-4 minutes right before the quiz. She can memorize songs in Korean and English flawlessly, and has a huge repertoire of song lyrics floating around her head. She even memorized a fairly passable rendition of a stanza of a song in Spanish, which she sang for me one time simply to impress me. She said she had no idea what it meant – she found it on youtube.
I would be so happy to see her show some intellectual ambition about life. I have tried to encourage various pursuits that match her expressed interests, including suggesting things like acting, linguistics and recently, songwriting or just writing. But my seeing her only 1-2 hours a week really isn't going to give me much influence over the choices she makes.
I suspect these loud declarations of anti-intellectualism are rooted in some kind of rebellion against parental pressure – I sense her mom pushes hard. There's nothing I can do about that. But I feel sad. Hopefully she'll find a different way to rebel against mom that is less self-defeating for the long term.
What I'm listening to right now.
U2, "Numb."
Lyrics.
Don't move Don't talk out of time Don't think Don't worry Everything's just fine Just fine
Don't grab Don't clutch Don't hope for too much Don't breathe Don't achieve Or grieve without leave
Don't check Just balance on the fence Don't answer Don't ask Don't try and make sense
Don't whisper Don't talk Don't run if you can walk Don't cheat, compete Don't miss the one beat
Don't travel by train Don't eat Don't spill Don't piss in the drain Don't make a will
Don't fill out any forms Don't compensate Don't cower Don't crawl Don't come around late Don't hover at the gate
Don't take it on board Don't fall on your sword Just play another chord If you feel you're getting bored
I feel numb I feel numb Too much is not enough I feel numb
Don't change your brand Don't listen to the band Don't gape Don't ape Don't change your shape Have another grape
Last night in the HS1-T cohort, Dayeon was getting annoyed and jealous because her classmate Hyein was being very diligent and was giving excellent, well-prepared answers.
So I said to Dayeon, "You could be doing the same. Why don't you focus, and do the same?" Dayeon is quite smart, but she lacks the singular focus that Hyein has.
Dayeon surprised me with her very straightforward and self-aware answer to my suggestion.
"I can't," she said. "Because I am a person who likes to waste time."
I was impressed by the precision and correctness of her English, too. And how could I argue with that?
I let her waste some time. At the end of class, Dayeon had homework, but Hyein had none.
Nevertheless, I have sympathy for Dayeon – I too, am a person who likes to waste time.
On Friday, as a special "last class before test-prep" with my 8th graders, we played a game called Bohnanza. I had played this game before, but I had forgotten the rules. Fellow teacher Grace was kind enough to visit my class for 15 minutes, since she had some free time, and she explained the basic rules. Since I only have four students in the class, currently, I joined as a player, too.
The basic idea is to plant "bean cards" and after collecting a certain number, you can "harvest" them for coins. The winner has the most coins at the end. The main attraction to playing the game in an English class is that the game requires the players to aggressively negotiate the trading of beans. This can be fun if you place a requirement that they do this negotiating in English.
The game can last for a pretty long time, so it went on for a while. The kids were having fun with it, but they weren't really negotiating that much – they were just going with the luck of the draw on each of their turns. And I was winning. Maybe they had been a bit slow on "getting" the game.
So on each of my turns, I kept lowering the terms of offered trades, against my own interest, until I was just giving away bean cards to other players. One student asked me why I was doing that, and I said, well, I was winning anyway and they weren't negotiating much.
But then a strange thing happened. All of the students started just giving beans to each other, wherever they perceived a need. Soon everyone was maximizing their harvests. There was no negotiation going on, really, but there were a lot of cards being passed around: "Do you need this coffee bean? OK, here."
It was as if the capitalist model that serves as the game's fundamental presupposition had broken down, being replaced by some weird communitarian model.
I've seen this before with my Korean students, as when they start to keep their Alligator Bucks in a common pool where they make withdrawals based on need, but I'd never seen it quite so explicitly and in such contrast to the intended model as during this game.
It was quite interesting.
In the end, I still won, but I shared the victory with another (in a tie), and the other students had caught up.
I do fine when the kids are behaving well, but I have some issues with consistency when they behave badly. I vacillate between two approaches. One is a kind of laissez-faire approach where I try to show kindness and broad tolerance for minor infractions of classroom rules (e.g. speaking out of turn, having "off channel" conversations with friends, getting up and moving about). The other is to be fairly rigid about it, and "exile" students (ask them to leave the classroom and go sit at the front desk for a time out) who misbehave repeatedly.
My dreaded, worst situation, however, are those times when I ask students to leave the classroom, and they simply refuse. They sit like a stone and do nothing. That turns into a showdown, which always leaves me with an awkward situation. Do I forcibly remove the child, so as to be consistently applying my "exile" rule? Or do I back down and try to take a different approach, which makes me inconsistent and where I worry the kids take the lesson that I can be "out-waited"?
It's a horrible situation, that simply seems to have no good solution. And I'm not consistent in how I deal with it, either. So I just feel like a really crappy, inconsistent teacher when these situations arise.
And then after dealing with it, in whatever way I did, I feel guilty that I did the wrong thing, afterward.
