Caveat: 말이 많으면 쓸말이 적다

There are some workmen doing work on the “staff” bathrooms that I had been in the habit of using.  Actually I have no idea if they’re officially “staff” bathrooms, but they’re across from the Principal’s office so I that what I think of them as.  Anyway, because of that, I started using the bathroom across the little courtyard to the west of my classroom.  Why am I telling you this, you might be wondering?
In this bathroom, someone has posted little Korean aphorisms and proverbs over each urinal.  So while I use the urinal, I get a Korean language lesson – if I can sort out the vocabulary.  I try to choose different urinals, to get some variety.
The above aphorism (말이 많으면 쓸말이 적다 = mal-i manh-eu-myeon sseul-mal-i jeok-da) seemed to make sense – the only word that puzzled me was “쓸” but I guessed it meant “wise,” which would give the meaning of the phrase as “there are many words but few wise ones” which makes sense.  But it turns out (according to my coteacher) that it means “will-be-used” (roughly).  That gives “there are many words but few that will be used.”  I don’t understand this quite as well, but it’s not impossible.
Yesterday, I had a sudden “aha!” moment in thinking about serial verbs in Korean.   Serial verbs are where several different verbs get strung together, each with a finite ending, with only the last bearing all the extra endings (marking politeness, etc.).  A simple example would be “공부해 봤어요” (gong-bu-hae bwass-eo-yo = I tried to study).  I suddenly thought that maybe these serial verbs are the Korean language analogue of periphrastic verbs in English (periphrastics are also sometimes called two-part verbs, like “get up” “get down” “get in” “get out” etc.), not syntactically (obviously), but definitely in terms of what you might term “semantic pragmatics”  – they’re what the language turns to when it needs a new meaning.  I’ll think about this.
In other news:  I am learning a lot from my coteachers.  Ms Ryu, with whom I teach the 3rd graders, is a very patient and kind teacher, and she has an amazing focus on positivity and the kids behave amazingly well for her.  I need to learn to emulate her tricks and style.  She spends a lot of time explaining to the kids what will happen.  This is not a trick I can use effectively, given I’m supposed to be speaking English and that my Korean is so bad that I doubt I could get my ideas across very well anyway.  But it does underscore the importance of being consistent and predictable, which is something I CAN do, and which helps the kids to know what will happen.  She always writes what the lesson objective will be, on the board, and sometimes even has the students read it.  I could do this, in English, too.  [e.g. “Students learn to say:  I like __ / I don’t like __”]
My other coteacher (the “main” one), Ms Lee, with whom I teach the fourth graders, is generally quite focused on keeping things “fun,” and she is a more kid-centered, western-style teacher.  The consequence, with Korean kids, is that there are more moments when the classroom seems out of control, but I think if you can tolerate this state of affairs, it can be good for learning, too.  It’s a fine line between “seems out of control” and “really is out of control.”