The animals were gathered there
discussing their sad fate.
They knew they were illusions all
and conjured up too late.
– a quatrain in ballad meter. The picture was a whimsical creation of a few boring moments at work. I had been interviewing new prospective students, earlier, and I often have the students draw an animal (“follow instructions in English” / “Describe a picture in English”). These animals are mine, but inspired by first-grade student-drawn animals.
"Nuclear honey jam" means "extremely fun," according to my HS1T cohort.
My students taught me this expression, which follows a trend I've noticed among my middle-schoolers of developing new slang by very literally translating Korean slang terms into English – i.e. just looking up each syllable in the dictionary separately. Thus, this expression derives from the Korean slang phrase "핵꿀잼" [haek.kkul.jaem]. The last syllable I was already familiar with - 잼 [jaem] is a slang abbreviation for 재미있다 [jae.mi.it.da = to be fun, to be interesting], and a pun with the homonymous Korean borrowing from English 잼 [jaem = jam]. The kids use this a lot. They then also use 노잼 [no.jaem = not fun], using the English negative "no." I've heard this for years. However, I'd never learned 꿀잼, where 꿀 [kkul = honey] seems to mean something like English speakers use "sweet" in a slang way to mean "cool" or "nice" or "awesome." So, "sweet fun." Then 핵 [haek = nuclear] is short for 핵무기 [haek.mu.gi = nuclear weapon], which is deployed something like "the bomb" in English, and seems to be an intensifier.
I have this one middle-school cohort which as been losing students. It is now down to exactly two.
Both the remaining students are morbidly shy 8th grade girls. They are afraid to talk – not just in English: their Korean teachers report that they are just as wordless in Korean. They simply don't want to talk. This kind of painful shyness is not uncommon in Korean students, but generally I don't see it in middle-schoolers because it's rare for such shy kids to make it to the advanced levels.
They will sit and shake their heads or nod – no or yes. Sometimes they will point to what they've written in their book or on whatever worksheet. They're not stupid, and their other English skills are not poor – after all, they placed into my class, and I only teach advanced middle-schoolers. But the placement test has no speaking component.
One girl in particular, Eunjae, has excellent listening skills, and she frequently makes these wry smiles or even laughs (silently) at some joking thing or another that I might say, in my never-ending classroom "teacher-patter."
I have been struggling to figure out ways to move forward in getting them to speak. Either that, or give up on the speaking component of my course and just work to their strengths – comprehension and grammar. Those are the strengths that serve them best for the Korean exams, anyway, so I really can't begrudge them that. The only constraint is that they are ostensibly enrolled in a TOEFL cohort, which is supposed to include the "4 skills" (reading / listening / speaking / writing). I've discussed with their home teacher that I might alter the curriculum.
Last night, we had a listening class, but even that is a little bit hard with two mutes. There was a section in our book where they had to make a decision between two possible interpretations, which were to the left and right on the page. So I innovated, and wrote "Choice 1" and "Choice 2" on the extreme left and right of the board, and told them to point. They seemed to find this vaguely entertaining.
But when we got to a section where they had to actually say some words they heard, it was difficult. I kind of hammed my way through. Eunjae actually whispered a few answers, for those cases where she felt very confident. I would lean close, and she would whisper, and I would repeat it, and make a big deal of the fact she'd done that.
Eunjae was wearing one of those heavy, long, black, quilted nylon winter coats that are so much in vogue right now with Korean youth (they all look like contemporary Chicago gangsters on a winter's day). She shifted in her seat, and her movement rustled the coat. The sound of the coat drowned out her voice completely.
I said, somewhat wryly, "Eunjae! Wow! Your coat is louder than you are."
She burst out laughing. Genuine laughter. She dropped her face to the desk in embarrassment, but when she looked up, she was still smiling. "It's OK," I added, in reassurance. "Just sit still when you talk."
A week or two ago, I learned an interesting expression at work: 야자타임 [yajataim]. This is a slang term that means “A time when normal formalities, especially deferential language, can be temporarily suspended.”
I was excited to learn this term, because it could actually be useful with my students, in the event they are being too formal, which is sometimes an issue with certain socially awkward kids. It isn’t normally a problem if they’re speaking English, since Korean students are taught, erroneously, that English utterly lacks levels of formality. Of course English has lots of levels of formality, it’s just that we don’t use verb-endings and noun substitutions to pull it off, generally speaking. There tends to be a lot of just periphrastic substitution, e.g. “Gimme that” vs “Could you hand that to me, please?”
The etymology isn’t very clear to me on the first part of the term, but the second part -타임 [taim] is transparently the fully nativized borrowing from English, “time,” which is used in for a variety of meanings and contexts, some of which are similar to the English semantics, such as this one, and others where it has acquired new, weirdly different semantics – as in e.g. its broad use as one of the “noun counter particles” for listing the numbers of class periods at schools.
Anyway, the first part I can’t quite figure out, but I’d say the 야 [ya] is probably the vocative particle used for addressing inferiors (“Hey, you!”), which makes sense in context. As a guess, the 자 [ja] might be the verb propositive ending, i.e. “Let’s….” It all fits together neatly, in semantic terms: “Let’s [have] ‘hey you’ time,” but the grammar seems like an unholy mess. [daily log: walking, 7km]
I was teaching my beginning phonics class the difference between the words "ugly" and "pretty." I had them draw two columns on a piece of blank paper, and brainstorm their own ugly things and pretty things.
Evan (1st grade) did a nice job, I thought. At least, he channeled my cartoon alligator's spirit well.
Yesterday in my advanced TOEFL cohort of 8th graders, called HS2B, we were doing a listening unit. The book is structured so that along with the multiple-choice questions, there are fill-in-the-blanks dictation scripts of the listening passages. I do a kind of low-key "game show" format as we go through the dictations. The scripts are pretty hard, and the blanks span full phrases, not individual words, so the chances of getting the individual blanks filled in correctly aren't that good. Sometimes I go from student to student, as we work out the the exact wording. The Korean students get hung up on the differences between "a" and "the" (indistinguishable in rapid, natural speech in many phonological contexts), on the presence or absence of past-tense marking, on plurals, etc. I'm a total stickler, because the points determine pay out at the end of the class. If the speaker says "He walked to the office," and the student says "He walk to the office" (phonologically identical in normal speech because of the following /t/ phoneme), they don't get the point.
We were doing a particularly hard phrase. I don't actually remember the phrase – I didn't take note of it.
Several students guessed and gradually they got closer. We went all the way around the room, and Seunghyeon (who insists his English name is Señor Equis i.e. Mr. X – I think the Spanish is a tribute to me, specifically, which is appreciated) finally got it right. I got pulled off topic by some question, so I didn't write the point on the board immediately. When we resumed the dictation passage, I asked the class, "Who's point was that?"
Seunghyeon and Gijun both raised their hands. They argued as to who got the point. Gijun was more plausible, since he is quite good at these exercises, while Seunghyeon is not. But I said, "I think it was Seunghyeon."
Gijun protested. "I should still get the point."
"Why?" I queried.
"Because my wrong answer made it possible for Seunghyeon to get the right answer," he explained. He was referring to the process of elimination of wrong possibilities that we go through for these.
I was dumbfounded by such clever sophistry. I laughed. "I should give you a point for such a clever argument," I told Gijun. "But I guess I shouldn't encourage you."
Gijun acquiesced. He's actually a very nice kid, but sometimes too smart for his own good.
By “collateralized,” I’m referring to the concept of “marketing collateral,” a concept I became familiar with in my years working at Paradise Corporation (my private pseudonym for ARAMARK). For a person to be collateralized means for a person to be used for marketing purposes, I guess. I have been “collateralized” twice before, in 2009 at LBridge, and in 2012 at Karma. So recently Curt hired a new marketing service for his hagwon, and a very dorky picture of me was used in some newpaper advertising copy.
One of my students saw it and gravely shook her head, saying, “Don’t be too proud of that picture, teacher.”
I’m inclined to agree. I look like a doofus with an alligator fetish. Maybe that’s not so far from the truth.
Here is a scan of the newspaper page in question – it’s one of those local newspaper advertising circulars that are one of the most common ways for hagwon to adverstise. [daily log: walking, 7km]
I have an elementary 2nd grade student who goes by the English name of Alisha. She is a bit behind her peers in social development, with a lot of pre-elementary age behavior (i.e. “babyish” or young for her age), but she is plenty smart. She doesn’t really know what to make of my “alligator bucks” – the “dollars” I give to students as a kind of reward points system. She destroys them systematically, when she receives them, rather than saving them like other students do. But she derives a great deal of pleasure from destroying them, so perhaps they still serve as a kind of reward.
She has pretty good comprehension of my English output. She’s good at following instructions, and has a recognition vocabulary higher than some of her peers in the same class. On the other hand, she mostly never writes anything using English letters. She “sounds out” the English words she wants to write using the Korean alphabet, hence her name 알리샤 [allisya], or 캣 [kaet = “cat”], etc. And even her hangul is full of misspellings and variants from Korean orthography. She suffers some substantial dyslexia – she cannot differentiate ‘d’ and ‘b’, and I’ve seen her writing hangul with reversed glyphs, too.
She also is quite defiant, at times. She will refuse to answer questions. But mostly, she simply doesn’t talk at all – in Korean or English. She gestures and has a very expressive face, to compensate.
On Monday, she was more talkative than usual. “No no no no no” she announced, upon entering the classroom. Later, when we were doing flashcards, she described each card as “No.” I appreciated the English, but was a little bit frustrated by the defiance. I turned the card so I could see it – a cat – and said, “That’s not a ‘no’, is it?”
“No,” she agreed.
OK, that was a badly phrased question, wasn’t it?
“What is it?” I tried again. She shook her head, and tried a different type of defiance. She waved her hand, with a kind of stop-motion style, and said, firmly and with excellent intonation, “Bye!”
I moved on to other students, who get impatient when I spend too much time with Alisha. Later, it was back to “No.”
But then, we took our quiz. Often, on quizzes, she leaves her paper blank, or just scribbles on it. Other times, she’ll diligently transcribe all the words in hangul. Without direct supervision and letter-by-letter guidance, she will almost never write a word in English letters.
On Monday, she wrote, using a fat orange marker she’d taken from my basket:
No
No
No
…
I was impressed. “Wow, you’re writing English! That’s excellent,” I praised. Small steps, right? I gave her an alligator dollar, which she promptly began to gleefully destroy, peeling off the laminated backing.
Then she pointed proudly at the wall. There, in large, orange-colored letters, she’d also written “No.”
“Oh, well… ” I was so torn. On the one hand, I was happy with her finally expressing her sincere feelings in English letters. It was, truly, her first such success. On the other hand, I felt that doing so on the classroom wall was problematic. I ran from the room and fetched a bottle of spray cleaner.
“I am so happy you’re writing English letters. There’s ‘N’, there’s ‘O’… ‘no.’ Great job. But we need to clean that up. No writing on the wall, OK? 그렇게 하지마 [don’t do like that],” I said, gesturing at the wall and shaking my head.
I paused and took a picture, to document the event. I knew this would end up in my blog.
“OK!” she said, grinning.
“Let’s clean that up,” I urged. The other kids were feeling entertained by all this, so I wasn’t too worried about them. I let her wield the spray cleaner bottle against the wall, and we tried to clean up the word. Now there’s a white stain on the wall.
The problem was mostly resolved. Several times more during the class, she sad “No,” but she also said several other words, including “car” and “cat.” And she wrote “alligator” at the bottom of her quiz paper – copying the word from the board, where that particular word is always written, for my lowest-level classes. Given how much I use alligators as a kind of mascot in my classes, kids often feel a need to write this long, difficult word.
On Wednesday (yesterday), Alisha went up to another teacher, Helen, before class started. Apparently, in Korean, she whispered to Helen, emphatically, that she really liked her phonics class with Jared. Helen reported this to me. Helen asked me what I’d done to earn her endorsement. I really have no idea. Perhaps just trying to validate her efforts? Not exploding in anger and violence at her writing on the wall? [daily log: walking, 7km]
This note appeared unsolicited in my basket after my Newton1 cohort class yesterday.
It reads,
HI! My name is Jared's green white monkey, I think my friend colorful monkey is very pretty. I want meery colorful monkey! Newton-1M June♡
I should note that the Minneapolitan rainbow monkeys were recently supplemented by additional magnetic monkeys, two of which are pale green in color. I think meery here means 'marry.' I have always been quite deliberately ambiguous as to the monkeys' genders, so I found this interesting.
I had a student who expressed an interest in English-language poetry, after it came up in some TOEFL-style listening passage we were working on. This is so rare as to be almost sui generis.
I said, "You really read English poetry?"
"Sometimes," she said. This was just barely plausible – she attended an international school when her family lived in China, for a while. "So I had to read it."
"OK. Did you like it?"
"Sometimes. I had to make a poem."
I showed a lot of enthusiasm for this. She asked, "Do you want me to write a poem?"
"Sure," I said. "That would be great."
"I will write it on the whiteboard," she announced. This is what she wrote.
The moral of this story: when a seventh-grader offers to write a poem for you, use caution.
The scene: my afternoon "phonics" class with 1st and 2nd grade elementary students. This is very beginning English. I've been working on teaching them how to respond to the question, "How do you spell it?" Most of the words are of the "C-A-T" variety. I decided to try a much harder word.
I held up the flashcard showing a chicken to an obstreperous boy who goes by Jake.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Chicken," he said. Koreans know this, because Koreans have adopted the English word "chicken" (치킨), which they use mostly to refer to chicken prepared for eating (cf pork vs pig, in English), but they also know it refers to the animal.
"How do you spell it?" I asked. I expected him to be stumped.
Instead, without pause, Jake spelled, "J-A-R-E-D."
I really wasn't expecting that. I guess at some point, in a previous class, I'd taught them to spell my name (an important thing, maybe, knowing how to write your teacher's name, right?). And he decided rather than admit not knowing how to spell chicken, he'd fall back on something he knew.
It was pretty funny. I think only after he'd said it, did he realize he was equating me to a chicken. I pointed at the flashcard, and at myself: "Same, right?"
I was assigning some homework to my student, Michelle, who is starting 7th grade. With typical early teenage hyperbole and a kind of breathless enthusiasm, she snapped, “I hate you.” But then, in the same breath, she added, in Korean, “근데 잘하시네.” [keunde, jalhasine]. This means, more or less, “But you’re doing well,” or “But you’re doing a good job.” And she smiled to herself, as she wrote down the assignment.
In fact, this shows an interesting contrast in the student’s mind. On the one hand, she hates me for giving homework. On the other hand, she seems to be acknowledging that that’s my job – to give homework. I actually felt like a very successful teacher in that moment, and I took the whole paired phrase, English plus Korean, as a kind of complement to and summary of my efforts.
Michelle is one of several students who are always trying to get me to play music videos in class. They point out to me various English language pop music videos, which I keep bookmarked for “reward times” (e.g. see below).
Today is one of those frigid days when I’m reminded of Minnesota. It was only -10 C (14 F), this morning as I walked to work, which is pretty mild by Minnesota standards, but with a brisk breeze, it starts to induce that crisp, snot-freezing vigor.
What I’m listening to right now.
Katy Perry, “Roar.” I like the song and its empowering message, though it’s a bit simplistic. The video is silly garbage, however.
Lyrics.
I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath
Scared to rock the boat and make a mess
So I sit quietly, agree politely
I guess that I forgot I had a choice
I let you push me past the breaking point
I stood for nothing, so I fell for everything
[Pre-Chorus:]
You held me down, but I got up (HEY!)
Already brushing off the dust
You hear my voice, you hear that sound
Like thunder gonna shake the ground
You held me down, but I got up (HEY!)
Get ready ’cause I’ve had enough
I see it all, I see it now
[Chorus:]
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire
‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
You’re gonna hear me roar
Now I’m floating like a butterfly
Stinging like a bee I earned my stripes
I went from zero, to my own hero
[Pre-Chorus:]
You held me down, but I got up (HEY!)
Already brushing off the dust
You hear my voice, you hear that sound
Like thunder gonna shake the ground
You held me down, but I got up (HEY!)
Get ready ’cause I’ve had enough
I see it all, I see it now
[Chorus:]
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire
‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
(You’re gonna hear me roar)
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
(You’ll hear me roar)
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
You’re gonna hear me roar…
Ro-oar, ro-oar, ro-oar, ro-oar, ro-oar
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire
‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
(You’re gonna hear me roar)
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
(You’ll hear me roar)
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
You’re gonna hear me roar…
I was explaining the term "speed demon" to some students this morning. I drew a pink "speed demon" on the whiteboard." Later, a student amended the drawing, adding glasses and the name "Teacher" to the speed demon, and adding "scared" to the student.
I asked if the teacher was me. She said no, it was just an average teacher.
I had an unexpected experience on Monday, the first work day of the new year, and first official day of the Korean school year's long winter "vacation" – meaning no public school, but hagwon still run full-tilt.
I was looking for a certain fellow teacher, for what was, at that moment, an urgent matter – I needed to know something about a student. I didn't know where that teacher was, so I was popping my head into various classrooms. I popped my head into the large "Seminar Room" (really not a seminar room, just our largest classroom, generally used by the high school section). This wasn't a likely spot to find a middle-school teacher, but I was just covering all the possibilities.
When I looked into the classroom, a girl named Yeonju, who had been my student some years ago in middle school, stood up from where she sat at the front. It's not unusual in the high school section to see a student sitting in the front of the class, in a "teacher" position – I assume this has something to do with the pedagogical style of Pete (the chief high school teacher). I hadn't seen Yeonju in quite a while, and she stood and approached me, saying hello. I asked if she'd seen the teacher I was looking for, which she hadn't.
Her English has always been quite good – she was a star student in middle school, and part of one of my best-loved cohorts of students – that cohort is the only one that sent me get-well cards when I had my cancer surgery.
Since there was no teacher present, I jokingly asked, "are you in charge of this class?"
Quite unexpectedly, she answered, simply, "Yes." She grinned mischievously, and I realized she was serious.
It turns out that Yeonju has been hired for the period of the winter vacation to be a part-time teacher's helper at Karma. Later, she was getting trained on the mysteries of the printer/copy machine, and was tasked with stapling some handouts, sitting next to me at the empty desk in the teachers' room.
This is the first case of a student becoming a colleague, in my teaching experience. I feel a strange pride and gratification. She is in her last vacation prior to starting university, and in my limited observation, many students get some kind of low-level part-time job for that vacation period, since it is, in fact, the one time in a Korean student's career when there is no upcoming exam hanging over them (they're accepted to university, but haven't started yet). It tends to be a university-bound Korean student's first job, ever – unlike American high school students, Korean students almost never get jobs if they are university-bound – studying is deemed too important, and they do it year-round. I also learned, later, that Yeonju has been accepted at the prestigious Korea University. That's pretty major, in Korea – kind of like "Ivy League" – what they call "SKY." It also happens to be my boss and friend Curt's alma mater.
I feel kind of old, having a former student whom I remember as a 7th grader, working here. I guess I am. At the least, with respect to Karma and the fairly tightly-knit Hugok neighborhood English hagwon universe, I am an old-timer.
Since we start all new classes in January, I have had a series of "last classes" with various cohorts of students. As a kind of tradition, I typically buy them pizza and we have a little party. I had quite a number of these over the last several days. A few classes where they wanted to, we played some games, too. Anyway, I will be sad about the students I won't likely see again (because they're moving up to 9th grade, where I no longer teach).
The Pizza Days have ended. Monday is all-new classes. A lot of work, but for now, I will do nothing until next year.
This is normally not encouraged during class. It was 9:30 – halfway through the last hour of class.
"Can't this wait until after class ends?" I asked.
"I need to call my mom," she explained.
"Um… why do you need to call your mom?"
Pause. "I have to tell to get a ride home."
"I see. Well, I guess that's important," I acquiesced.
A moment later, after fishing around her backpack, she said, "I can't find my phone. Can I use my iPad to send a text message?"
I shrugged. "One way, or another. But can you get it done? So we can continue with class?"
She fiddled with her iPad for a moment, then looked up. "Actually, uh… I just remembered, I rode my bike."
"So you don't need to call your mom?"
She nodded. It's worth noting that this girl, finishing up the 7th grade, is the absolute highest-scoring student at Karma, right now. And although she speaks with a noticeable Korean accent, in terms of grammar and vocabulary I'd give her the lead in a comparison with any US teenager. But she's a bit of an airhead.
Last Friday, my TQ phonics class merged with Grace's CS "post-phonics" class and had a caroling competition. These are 2nd and 3rd graders. Grace's class have been studying English for two years but the TQ kids (last group singing) have had less than a year of English, just a few hours a week. So I was proud of them.
One of my coworkers was reduced to tears, yesterday, by the academic intransigence of one of her students, who is also a student I know well. He has appeared several times in the blog, though typically I don't always name my students here, or if I do, I name them inconsistently, which protects their identity.
I like this student, but I understand my coworker's frustration too. He is almost unteachable, at least in a conventional sense. Stubborn and unmotivated, and somehow both smart but incapable of remembering what seem like elementary bits of information. The other day he asked me how to spell "Karma" – the name of our academy and something you'd expect a 2-years-plus student to have mastered.
I was trying to reassure my coworker, who was suffering quite a bit of embarrassment about her overly emotional response. Finally, somewhat unintentionally, I stumbled on a bit a feedback that I'm willing to stand by: I told her that the fact that she was reduced to tears is not an embarrassment but rather a sign that she is a teacher to be respected, as it indicates she genuinely cares about what she is trying to do. I added that there has been more than one teacher who has passed through Karma who would never have reacted to a student in such a way, but that perhaps that only signifies that they were less interested in the results they are able to achieve.
I suppose this anecdote doesn't have much of a deeper purpose, except just to share that I think teachers should be emotionally invested in their students, even if that makes for rough going sometimes. I have argued with Curt and others about this – sometimes I feel like he only wants robots teaching. I understand that view point – as a manager of an education business, he wants replicable and scalable results, not emotional individuals. Nevertheless, I think there can be ways to allow both.
The rhythms of hagwon life are pretty well understood by me, now. December is a tough month – it’s the de facto end of the hagwon school year (the Korean school year officially ends at the end of February, but the hagwon business, getting a jump on things, seems to be driven to move the kids up a grade a few months in advance).
So we have a kind of “open house,” called 설명회, every year around this time. That means coming to work early, and for a foreigner peon such as myself (and don’t get me wrong, I am a peon entirely by choice, at this point), it mostly means standing around trying to look competent while others make their presentations.
So that’s what happened, this morning.
There’s a lot of unsurprising end-of-year work to get done: new curricula being laid out (such as they are); level testing for the kids (such as it goes). Nevertheless, in the Korean way, which I find so amenable to my personal inclinations, I shall procrastinate.
Therefore, just now I have some time to kill at work. Not enough time to go home and come back later for class, so just sitting here. I wish my mind was feeling more dynamic, these days, but it’s not. Still coming off the nasty flu thing I had.
It’s a frigid day outside. I guess it’s about -5° C – but bright and sunny. [daily log: walking, 7km]
Two weeks ago, a former student of mine who is now finishing the 9th grade departed Karma. I knew she was leaving, but since I don't regularly see the 9th graders, I didn't get to say goodbye. She'd been my student for 4 years.
She left me a note on my desk, which included a touching message and an alligator sketch. I was very pleased.
Yesterday, an impeachment process was started against the president of Korea, Park Geun-hye (박근혜).
Perhaps not coincidentally, during my Newton1-M cohort class (4th and 4th graders), after allowing several students to use the Korean-English dictionary on my phone, I found the following message written on the dictionary's search window:
박근혜하야하라 [pak.geun.hye ha.ya.ha.ra]
This means "Park Geun-hye, resign!" (in a very informal register, as used in the recent public demonstrations against the president).
Note that we were not, in any way, discussing the political events – I tend to confine my political class discussions to my middle schoolers. This was essentially a kind of surreptitious message entered for no particular reason.
I asked the kids, "who wrote this on my phone?"
Eric raised his hand, sheepishly. "Park Geun-hye, hiya," he said, waving a hand and exaggerating an "English" pronunciation of the name, making it sound like he was "just saying hi."
Last year for Halloween we had a mummy-making game. It was successful, so we had it again for our Halloween party last night. It went well.
This year, a coworker and I were mummified, too. Can you tell which ones are us? [daily log: walking, 7km]
Since the unexpected and unplanned departure of one our teachers at Karma two weeks ago, I have been teaching some of the so-called "CC" classes that I haven't done for quite a while. These classes are essentially a kind of "pop music" listening class – have the kids listen to pop songs and make an effort to compel them to sing (not necessarily a very rewarding exercise with middle schoolers, especially since I have a lot of sympathy for their position).
So I have been trying to come up with songs where I can actually teach something about the song's meaning, and not just focus on the mechanics of capturing the lyrics.
I did NWA's old rap song, "Express Yourself" (which I've blogged before but which for some weird reason I can't seem to find in google – google is great but it has mysterious holes sometimes, when it comes to googling my own blog).
And then I did this song by Avicii, a weird kind of Celtic-influenced Technopop, I guess – I'm not great at genre classifications. The song is not quite as shallow as it seems at first, although it's fairly conventional. The kids like the video, anyway. So we went through the lyrics in detail, line by line.
What I'm listening to right now.
Avicii, "The Nights."
Lyrics.
Hey, once upon a younger year When all our shadows disappeared The animals inside came out to play Hey, went face to face with all our fears Learned our lessons through the tears Made memories we knew would never fade
One day my father—he told me, "Son, don't let it slip away." He took me in his arms, I heard him say,
"When you get older Your wild heart will live for younger days Think of me if ever you're afraid."
He said, "One day you'll leave this world behind So live a life you will remember." My father told me when I was just a child These are the nights that never die My father told me
[Instrumental]
When thunder clouds start pouring down Light a fire they can't put out Carve your name into those shining stars He said, "Go venture far beyond these shores. Don't forsake this life of yours. I'll guide you home no matter where you are."
One day my father—he told me, "Son, don't let it slip away." When I was just a kid I heard him say,
"When you get older Your wild heart will live for younger days Think of me if ever you're afraid."
He said, "One day you'll leave this world behind So live a life you will remember." My father told me when I was just a child These are the nights that never die My father told me
These are the nights that never die My father told me Hey, hey
We are basically finished with our current Speaking class textbook. We can't bother ordering a new book, since in December they'll be transitioning to the next year-level (i.e. HS3), which will involve a new book – getting a new book for just a month and a half is impractical. Obviously, I didn't do very well budgeting out the progress in the book, which was meant to last a full year.
"So, what are we going to do?" I asked.
Most classes of 8th graders would desultorily propose something in the vein of "play" or"nothing" - and it would be left up to me to come up with something more academic.
These kids, however, proposed, "Let's have debate class." Most them had me for debate in prior years, but the 8th grade curriculum as currently defined doesn't include much debate.
"Wow, so you guys like debate?" I asked.
They did.
"So what should we debate about?" I asked.
Most classes of 8th graders, presented with this choice, would immediately suggest debating something pretty banal: who is the best current pop idol on the k-pop scene, or something in the vein of my absurd debate topics.
One girl, however, proposed, "Let's debate about president Park and the Choi Soon-sil thing." I was, in fact, pretty ignorant about this. I was vaguely aware that some new scandal was exploding around the South Korean President, but I didn't know the details. So we spent some time with them filling me in on what was going on.
Once I understood what was going on, I offered some possible debate propositions.
The one we settled on was: "President Park's recently revealed behavior is impeachable." We had to make a digression while I tried to explain the concept of impeachment, but, to my surprise, they knew what this was – I guess it's something they cover in civics class in their public school.
They're pretty sharp 8th graders – I already knew this. But what I like most about those kids is that they are so interested in learning stuff and thinking about their world. This is what I strive for when I talk about student-driven learning.
Of course, once we'd settled the debate proposition and I assigned some speeches for the next speaking class, they wanted to play. So I let them do that for the last 15 minutes. They're clever - they know if they please me with showing interest in academic topics, they'll get latitude on free time during class, too.
Sometimes in my debate classes, if I need to lighten the mood or want to give a reward, I have the kids do an "absurd debate." I have a list of a whole bunch of different possible absurd debate topics, and I'll let the students choose one to do. I posted a short list of topics some years ago, but the list has since grown longer. Here is my current absurd topics list, for the sake of documentation.
1. "Santa Claus is a criminal." 2. "Black is the best color." 3. "Aliens make the best friends." 4. "Unicorns are better than zebras." 5. "A smartphone is smarter than a dog." 6. "The moon is made of green cheese." 7. "The earth is flat." 8. "The teacher is a ghost." 9. "This debate is boring." 10. "Women are smarter than men." 11. "Barack Obama is a robot." 12. "All cars should be the same color." 13. "Monkeys make the best soccer players." 14. "Alligators are better than crocodiles." 15. "Mars should be destroyed." 16. "Rice is dangerous." 17. "The capital of South Korea should be moved to Ulleung-do." 18. "Zombies are harmless." 19. "Baseball should be outlawed." 20. "This class is a waste of time." 21. "Soccer is better than basketball." 22. "League of Legends is better than Starcraft." 23. "Homer Simpson is a perfect father." 24. "Cheating is OK if no one knows." 25. "Men should be allowed to wear dresses too." 26. "Vampires are scarier than werewolves." 27. "Chickens came before eggs." 28. "Iron Man should fight Batman." 29. "School is useless." 30. "Beauty is the only important thing." 31. "Pirates can beat ninjas in a fight." 32. "The world would be better if Harry Potter was never invented." 33. "It is easier to fight one horse-sized duck than to fight fifty duck-sized horses." 34. "Marriage is bad." 35. "Park Geun-hye would be a better president if she wore a hat." 36. "The North Pole is more interesting than the South Pole." 37. "E-Mart is better than HomePlus." 38. "The Lake in Lake Park is too small." 39. "The word 'the' is useless." 40. "Boogers are more disgusting than spit." 41. "It is better to be a dragon than have a dragon."
One of the most popular propositions with the students is "A smartphone is smarter than a dog" – which often gets simplified to "A smartphone is better than a dog." Today we had a debate on that topic in my special 7th grade debate class.
One student, Finn, said that smartphones were better, because dogs can hurt people, for example by biting them.
Henry had an excellent rebuttal, that made everyone laugh. He said, simply: "Note 7."
This is a reference to the recent difficulties Samsung has been having with their Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, which has a tendency to explode, and which has been recalled.
This has been a quite busy week at work. Basically, I have spent the week crafting a textbook for a special debate class that will start next week for middle-schoolers who are not participating in the full 내신 (test-prep) schedule, due to the always-changing vagaries of parental demand.
I have made my own debate textbooks before, but this one is being driven by Curt's desire to see me integrate better with the other teachers who will also be teaching the same cohorts.
Textbook-making is a lot of work. I long ago gave up on vague ambitions to make an actually-publishable debate textbook, although for my middle-school Karma debate classes I have been using variations of my own book, in print-out format, for many years now. And I still get "writing team" emails periodically from Darakwon, the Korean EFL textbook publisher with which I'd started a tentative relationship that never amounted to anything. This tends to keep the textbook-writing concept always floating around in the periphery of my consciousness.
So I'm tired. And I haven't even started the special classes yet. That's next week.
Yesterday, in the Newton2 elementary cohort, a boy who goes by Jhonny (the mispelling is deliberate and he's quite adamant about it) announced to the class that he had a girlfriend. He's always a bit of a clown, so this interruption wasn't completely inconceivable.
"That's nice," I said, blandly. "What's her name?"
"I don't know," he said, sheepishly.
"You might want to find out her name," I suggested. "Girls like it when you know their names."
"I can't," he protested.
He's not great with English, and it was clear he wanted to explain more. He explained, in Korean, to the boy, Jerry, next to him, who is better at English.
Jerry said, "A girl gave him a note. Secret note."
"Aha," I said. "That makes sense. So you don't know her name."
Jhonny nodded, vigorously. The girls at the front of the class tittered. "It's so horrible," Jhonny complained, burying his face in his palms dramatically.
As I’ve written before here, I sometimes use my Tarot cards in my classes, as a kind of cross between communicative listening exercise and entertaining reward. Many (maybe most) of my students are fascinated to have me “read their future” about some question. They ask about their upcoming test scores, their health or the health of family members, about their careers and future prospects for marriage. I keep my readings pretty generic, and of course, like any Tarot reader, I use clues in their questions and things I know about my students to make the answers more interesting and relevant.
Last night, I had a confident fifth-grader, Soyeon, insist that it was her turn to “read” the cards for me, instead. This doesn’t happen often – the kids are intimidated by the 30 pages of printed out “card meanings” that I use with the cards, to lend some legitimacy to my interpretations and to find plausible meanings – I don’t have the 178 possible meanings memorized. Most of the kids understand the principle that an inverted (reversed) card would have an opposite meaning, too, so I can play with that when it happens.
Soyeon was happy to lay down the cards and page through my printout of meanings, however. She told me to ask a question. Keeping to a nice, “safe” topic, I asked about my future health. Most of my students know about my cancer saga – it’s been the background of many a spontaneous classroom discussion. So that gave her something interpret against, too.
She laid down three cards: a past card, present card, and future card. She turned over the past card, and it was “The World.” She looked at the printout, but she didn’t just read it out loud. The printout, to be honest, has a lot of difficult vocabulary. I made it that way on purpose – it gives me a chance to teach something when I read the cards, and it also allows me to “hedge” meanings when I feel like things are too gloomy or creepy or anything else. Soyeon thought about what she read for a moment, and complained she didn’t understand it. I told her to just look at the picture on the card and use the words she did understand to come up with her own idea.
“You traveled everywhere the world. It was good.”
Not bad, right? Next, she turned over the present card. It was the 9 of wands. This was one of those eerie moments when random Tarot hits really close to accuracy. The meaning of this card, as I’d put on my printout, is something like “a warrior has won a battle but now must rest.”
She said something like, “You got sick and it was like a battle. Now you’re tired.”
Then she turned over the final card. It was “Death,” but reversed (upside-down).
She laughed. She only glanced at the printout, before saying, triumphantly, “You should be dead, but you keep refusing.”
That seemed really clever, and exactly the right way to read a card like that.
It was a successful class. [daily log: walking, 6.5km]
손발이 잘 맞다
son.bal.i jal mat.da
hand-foot-SUBJ well be-in-balance
“Hands and feet are in harmony.”
This seems like something a sports coach would say, but I could see it being a business buzzwordy type of expression, too, which is clearly how Curt used it. I was trying to think of how best to translate the intended pragmatics. Maybe something like, “the team is a smoothly functioning machine.” He was intending it as a goal, rather than description of the current state. In fact, he was lecturing the staff room bemoaning the lack of teamwork.
I have no idea how many Korean businesses experience this kind of “in sync” teamwork, despite it being the highest ideal of Korean business. I suspect very, very few actually get there. [daily log: walking, 7km]
