10 AM: My first-period class was cancelled, which is great for my lesson-planning ability, but bad in way because I was really looking forward to seeing the boys of 2-7, 2-8 A, though they gave me grief last week.
(Boys in that class: Peter-Pan-Taehoon, Grumpmaster-Jiwoong,
Diamond-in-the-Rough-Seonghyun (all are my afterschool boys), Sparkly-Daehoon and Kind-Jihyuk, and Tanned-Helpful-Ikgwang. Last week, Ikgwang went without playing a fun game himself so he could help me keep score. I was rather tired and the boys were loud, so Ikgwang's kind gesture earned him chocolate, as well as many verbal thanks from me.)
It's October! I spent the entire month of September in a country that is not the US! On September 18th, I'd been here for one month, but now I've lived through one entire calendar month, here.
It's been good. I still get nervous over how lessons will go, but I've got a routine going. I still don't know how to get everywhere, but I haven't been lost in three weeks, I know my city's downtown area pretty well, I can take a taxi whenever I need to, and I have a good understanding of the train system and a shadowy understanding of the subway system.
I worked and earned my first fulltime teaching paycheck.
I met about 80 boys I can smile at and call by name in the hallways.
I made friends with O-Teacher, JY-Teacher, Y-Teacher, and KBR-Teacher, and many more co-workers have shown me kindness at every opportunity. My Vice-Principal is patiently teaching me Korean. Mr. B is like an uncle to me, helping me with class discipline.
I found a church that might be the place I want to attend for the duration of my stay here.
So far, it's all been worth it. The endless language study, the mounds of paperwork, the travel stress and uncertainty of living in a new place while constantly wondering if I'll measure up and be a proper teacher...I'm so glad the Lord put it in my heart to do this. I have no idea why I'm supposed to be here, but for this year, I definitely believe that this is my place.
And to think that the most adventurous thing I'd ever previously wanted to do was maybe visit London for a week.
---------------------------------
10:45 AM Went over to O-Teacher's room and talked to some of the regular students who were hanging out there. This morning, I wore my hair in...pigtails/dog-ears? Don't know what to call it, but it's two ponytails. One kid said, "Cute, so cute!" Then Inha, Jaehyung's friend who is a 2nd-grade A-class, saw my hair and said "Sailor Moon!" naming a popular Japanese anime character who has long blonde hair in pigtails. Then he said "Barbie!" and "Cinderella!" I forget how many iconic cartoon characters have blonde hair.
_____________________________
1 PM 1-5, 1-6 B went awesomely! This is what the document O' Kids says about who'd in there: Hyunshik-Pig, Munsu-Octopus, Jinho-Puppy,
Acapella-Hyunho, Frontrow-Heekyu, Reserved-Cool-Kid Minjong
(left side of room, sits by wall).
They loved the game at the end, and I managed to engineer opportunities so that my favorites didn't win the game, but they still got chocolate if they practiced English with me after class. Gameplay in the classroom seems to thrive on sudden reversal--if you set up a game where the smartest kids can win through their smarts, it's no fun. But if you make winning one part skill, two parts chance, suddenly everyone has a chance and everyone is invested.
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3 PM: 2-5, 2-6 B went well! Except for one activity I chose which was too difficult for them, things went nicely and JY-Teacher was in there with me. Kids are: Jonghoon, Big-Eyes Injae,
Dongjun (sits behind Seongsu, looks like Sooncheon), Yoopil (sits behind
Dongjun).
We had a good time and I got to feel their enjoyment of the final game. Team 2 kept losing so bad. They'd bet all their points every time, sinking their chance of winning against decisions they weren't sure of. But they found their perpetual failure to be hilarious, too.
Met Shion, the other huge kid who's even huger than Shotputter Jinseong. Shion is in 3rd grade and I've seen him in one of my classes. He's so big, when I first saw him one week into school, I thought he was a P.E. teacher I'd just failed to meet. He seems to have a kind nature.
First-graders in the halls are calling me "Julia". This is obviously a reference to a cartoon or comic book or line of toys I'm not familiar with.
Jaehyung's out of school, apparently getting his wisdom teeth removed, if Inha's miming act is to be believed.
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6 PM The final class of 3rd-graders---the worst 3rd-graders of my week, in fact, were fine. We got through everything just dandy. They were sweet. Gyujeong is the loner in that class--I've yet to see anybody sit by him.
Afterschool was not awful, but was a little sad because I decided to just give up on the boys in the back. I talked with and gave chocolate to the twelve boys in the front and just let Jiwoong, Taehoon, and the other dudes play their phones in the back. It seems like I can I either have a barely-mediocre class where everyone is involved, or a good class where I only teach the front of the room.
Jiwoong tried to intrude on the spelling game I was doing with the boys in the front, then I told him, "You're not even part of this game. You're playing on your phone." Which was incredibly immature and was just my hurt feelings talking. Jiwoong-ah was making an attempt to answer--I should have let him do so. At the beginning of class, I did give him chocolate when he said his favorite movie, though. And when I pulled my chair up by him, he just laid his head down--he didn't scoot his chair away. He wants to be fussed over, to be sought out. But I don't. have. time. Don't you see that, Jiwoong?
I don't know when I started loving this kid and worrying about whether he gets enough attention. Probably shortly after I stole 3 of his jackets.
Cardsharp-Minsu had a great day, which was nice after our tug-of-war yesterday. He paid attention to the spelling game and he won chocolate for correctly guessing "Vietnam". He also had the time of his life "stealing" the chocolate bag from me. He moved himself to the front row, just so he could keep grabbing the bag and pretending to stuff it away in his backpack. I would laugh and scold him, and he was enjoying it tons. Is this the way to keep him happy--create opportunities for him to tease me and pull pranks? He loves being just a little bit bad.
Clever-Sunwoo was having fun, too. The other day, I walked up to him to compliment him on his English and his good sportsmanship in the game we played that day, and he looked 300% non-plussed, as if he couldn't possibly care whether I was proud of him. Ooo-kay, I thought. Forget about saying nice things to Sunwoo. But he's no beyond having fun.
Diamond-in-the-Rough Seonghyun said he had actually been the first to guess "Vietnam," but Minsu was just louder.
Letter-Byeonghyun was so good at the spelling game, I had to disqualify him. Then he said HE wanted to write a word and have the other kids guess how to spell it. It was a food, some incredibly complex Korean holiday food that not even the other boys could guess. Byeonghyun is quite simply an amazing person.
Sanghwa was out at the "hospital," but since I never get a proper doctor's excuse from him it's likely that he's just skipping class. I mark him absent, and everybody's even. But when he told me his stomach was hurting and made a massive put-on hurt face, I opened my arms and said "Do you want a hug?" with overblown sympathy. Sanghwa doubled over laughing, which was my intent, then went skipping down the hall, sing-songing, "Bye, Sem! See you tomorrow, see you tomorrow!" Fuzzy cutie-pie.
Seongsu's friend, S-Line-Kid, is named Dongjin. The smart guy who looks like Seohyung but isn't Seohyung is Yeongju.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Sunday, September 29, 2013
9-30-13 Betting Games, Minsu the Cat, and Judgin'
10:45 AM: First class went well! Oh, for the first time ever, I started out the first grade lessons by being not-boring. The small beautiful people of 1-7, 1-8 B had a good time.
Who's in there: Hyo, Hyunmin, Cutiepie BFF's Chanjin & Mingyu, Cool-Hyunjoon, Smart-but-Stubborn-Hyukjae, Sleepy-Front-Row Moonshik, Next-to-Hyo-Minjoon, Sits-Behind-Hyukjae-Hyunwoo, Poet-Necktie-Jangyeop.
It's chock full of kids I know, which doesn't mean I'm devoid of nervousness when it comes to their lesson. But! I played a fun video while I drew up a spelling game for the boys and I put a "Team Points" grid on the board at the start of class. Team 1, 2, 3, and 4, all with $20 written under them. We were learning about money, so the points came in the form of dollars.
We listened to a song about money and did a worksheet. For every pair of kids who finished their worksheet, I drew "+$5"on their paper, then increased their team's score on the board. It was a great motivator--unless you're interested in English, there's no reason to do the whole worksheet, but you'll produce plenty of language when you're working to get your team points--points which lead directly to chocolate. :-)
After the worksheets were all done (and for the first time in recent memory, they were all done-- SmartStubborn-Hyukjae even woke up Hyunwoo, the sleepy kid behind him, to make Hyunwoo do the worksheet and thereby get 5 more dollars for their team), we played a comparatives game with a betting element.
Example: The kids guess which is taller, a famous Korean building or the Eiffel Tower? After they choose which they think is higher, I ask them how many dollars they want to bet. If you have $25 dollars in your team's account and you bet $5, you could rise to the highest-ranking team if you're right, or plummet to the lowest. Early on, the bets were conservative ($1), until they got in the swing of things. Then Team 3 went all out and bet their whole $25 dollars, getting them up to a total of $50.
You could argue that it's teaching children gambling, but I like it as an intellectual exercise, making a person wonder, "How certain are you of your decision? What do you stand to gain if you're right, and what do you stand to lose if you're wrong?" Logic games are always fun. In this case, nothing was lost because no one had chocolate; you merely gained a chance at future chocolate if you chose well and took measured risks.
They loved it. At the end, my adorable troublemaker Hyunmin's team won (I was hoping they would because Hyunmin has very low interest in English), and I also gave chocolate to Smart-Stubborn-Hyukjae because in our final spelling game, he guessed the word "Tiger" with only the clues of "animal" "five letters" and "middle letter is a G". Hyukjae's really close to being A-class, I think.
Any-hoodle-poodle, it was a lovely morning class and the kids were happy, and I'm hopefully putting together something really nice for my 3rd-graders, coming up soon.
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1 PM: Well, I thought 3-5, 3-6 B was going well, but then Mr. B stopped the class and made the boys stand up for two minutes with their eyes closed and their hands on their heads while he lectured them, presumably about the proper way to treat me. He told me, "They're not listening to you, let me talk to them." And sure, plenty of them weren't listening, but that's par for the course. I was just going to explain in all to each kid individually, anyway, so this caught me by surprise.
So I wound up feeling kind of failure-y again because I couldn't even tell that things were going badly. But the boys learned the expressions, "How long does it take you to?" and "I takes me about____minutes," and we watched 2 fun videos and played the betting game I used with the 1st-graders because I need their attention.
It was definitely more interesting than usual. I really, really tried to make it good. And they were mostly bright. Teacher's Pet Jeongmin was his usual adora-bratty self, telling me to hurry up in English, then apologizing profusely. Yeonghyo told me he'd seen me Saturday night, which was true--I was the one to greet him. Seongjae wanted me to write a smiley face on his hand for doing a good job, as always. Hyunjoon got a new haircut and when I told him it looked nice he said, "Thank you. I know." Hyunjoon's pretty funny.
I want to pick my mood up for the next 2 classes. I'm a little down about 3-5, 3-6 B's apparent discipline problem, but as far as I can tell, the boys and I still get along nicely, which is what I really must have.
------------------------------------------------
1:30 PM Got a fresh pickup line from a first-grader who was being piggyback-carried by Snappy-Seongsu: "Pretty girl! Wow! Oh, pretty girl date! I, you, date GO!" I told him he was cute, because he was. There's just no way you can feel objectified by a 13-year-old being laboriously transported by his buddy.
____________________________________________
9:30 PM My two classes of B-level 2nd grade went fine. One of my darling afterschool boys, Jinseop, is int the first class (2-9, 2-10 B I think?), and he gives his best effort at everything. On a day when a lot of boys couldn't give a care, I wanted to hug him for his dedication.
In 2-7, 2-8 B, I have three new names:
Chansu wears a red sweater and looks like a first-grader. He's quite cute but at first I though he was mocking me because he spoke English in a very high, super-perky voice. Nope. Chansu just has a high-pitched voice and a penchant for saying things with enthusiasm. After I sat next to him and told him he was smart, he visibly brightened and he was my boy for the rest of class, waving his hand and trying to answer every question.
Jeongbok wears glasses, is intelligent, and is friends with my afterschool boy Cardsharp Minsu, and when Jeongbok doesn't understand a question, he asks me in Korean to explain it in Korean. And then I try to do so. Thanks for your faith in my tenuous grasp on my 2nd language, sweetheart! When I wrote his name on my hand, he corrected the spelling--he wants to be known as Jungbok, with a u. And so he shall be.
Third kid is Jolly-Looking-Sanghyeop, who I met in the hallways before because I mistook him for one of the Jeongmins. Sanhyeop has one of those faces that, even when sad and tired, looks as if he's about to bust out the gingerbread cookies and Christmas presents to enliven the classroom.
So I had some right nice boys in 2-7, 2-8 B, but I nearly felt like the class was a failure because I came close to losing a confrontation with Cardsharp-Minsu. Bless his heart, he's one of the boys I can't push. Most kids, you nudge them and they give in, you insist that they perform feats of language and they do. Not so, Minsu. My desire to have Minsu do stuff is but a speck compared to the mountain that is Minsu's desire to Not Do Stuff.
I still hadn't learned my lesson about him, because when he put his head on his desk while I was talking to him, I rubbed his hair to get him to sit up. He reached for a jacket to pull over his head and I tugged it away from him after a while, but it was an utterly unprofessional tug of war for a few seconds. Why did I do that? Who cares if Minsu puts a jacket over his head? And why did I think that taking it away was going to go well? Because it worked on Peter-Pan-Taehoon and Grumpmaster-Jiwoong, that's why. But those two boys, oddly enough, can be charmed by me and Minsu cannot.
How to win over Minsu? More praise, less pressure? I've said before that he's like a cat, and good luck training a cat to do tricks. Rewards and punishments are meaningless to an entity who doesn't see the point in the whole exercise anyway.
But speaking of Taehoon and Jiwoong, they came by the class at the end, while I was handing out chocolate to the winners of the final game, and they know the routine--in exchange for a little English, they can wheedle their way into some good chocolate. Jiwoong pleasantly said, "I want chocolate," then waited to be told how he could get it. This time I asked him to tell me the name of his favorite movie. He replied, "My favorite movie is The Hobbit," nice as you please.
Taehoon also walked up: "Teacher. I want chocolate. Give me chocolate." It's more polite than it sounds--in Korean there is no word for "please"--the politeness of a question comes from the formality of the verb ending you choose for your sentence. So in English you go to a cafe and say, "I'd like a coffee, please" but in Korean you just say "give me coffee". But you add a verb ending (요 'yo') that makes the demand polite. With the boys, sometimes they forget to say please, but the politeness is evident (or not) from their tone of conversation. Taehoon's favorite movie is the Avengers, and he got his chocolate, too.
I went to a meeting downtown for judges for an upcoming English competition, and since I'm a middle school teacher, I'll be judging the elementary skits. Which is good, because I couldn't even pretend to be an unbiased judge if I had to judge my boys in a middle school speech competition. As it is, I get to help them prepare for the competition and then step aside and judge in a different room when crunch time comes.
Went out for dinner tonight and one of the students came running out of a building. I knew it was one of mine from the, "Whup! Huh?!" sound he made. When kids at my school see me, they often make a wordless exclamation of surprise, like they've just been tackled in a football game. This boy who I didn't recognize happily chattered, "____Jung-hakyo!" I smiled and said yes, I worked there, did he go to school there? Yes, he said in Korean, he's a third-grader. I didn't recognize his face, so I asked "A-ban?" thinking he might be higher than the level I teach (I only get the B-level 3rd grades), but he said no, he's C-ban. But he was brave enough to talk to me in all Korean, and it was good to have someone who was happy to see me.
Some child in the backseat of a minivan said "hello!" to me as I walked back to my apartment, but it was too dark for me to see which one it was. Again, it was nice to have a kid care enough to roll down their window and say howdy. :-)
-----------------------------------
Who's in there: Hyo, Hyunmin, Cutiepie BFF's Chanjin & Mingyu, Cool-Hyunjoon, Smart-but-Stubborn-Hyukjae, Sleepy-Front-Row Moonshik, Next-to-Hyo-Minjoon, Sits-Behind-Hyukjae-Hyunwoo, Poet-Necktie-Jangyeop.
It's chock full of kids I know, which doesn't mean I'm devoid of nervousness when it comes to their lesson. But! I played a fun video while I drew up a spelling game for the boys and I put a "Team Points" grid on the board at the start of class. Team 1, 2, 3, and 4, all with $20 written under them. We were learning about money, so the points came in the form of dollars.
We listened to a song about money and did a worksheet. For every pair of kids who finished their worksheet, I drew "+$5"on their paper, then increased their team's score on the board. It was a great motivator--unless you're interested in English, there's no reason to do the whole worksheet, but you'll produce plenty of language when you're working to get your team points--points which lead directly to chocolate. :-)
After the worksheets were all done (and for the first time in recent memory, they were all done-- SmartStubborn-Hyukjae even woke up Hyunwoo, the sleepy kid behind him, to make Hyunwoo do the worksheet and thereby get 5 more dollars for their team), we played a comparatives game with a betting element.
Example: The kids guess which is taller, a famous Korean building or the Eiffel Tower? After they choose which they think is higher, I ask them how many dollars they want to bet. If you have $25 dollars in your team's account and you bet $5, you could rise to the highest-ranking team if you're right, or plummet to the lowest. Early on, the bets were conservative ($1), until they got in the swing of things. Then Team 3 went all out and bet their whole $25 dollars, getting them up to a total of $50.
You could argue that it's teaching children gambling, but I like it as an intellectual exercise, making a person wonder, "How certain are you of your decision? What do you stand to gain if you're right, and what do you stand to lose if you're wrong?" Logic games are always fun. In this case, nothing was lost because no one had chocolate; you merely gained a chance at future chocolate if you chose well and took measured risks.
They loved it. At the end, my adorable troublemaker Hyunmin's team won (I was hoping they would because Hyunmin has very low interest in English), and I also gave chocolate to Smart-Stubborn-Hyukjae because in our final spelling game, he guessed the word "Tiger" with only the clues of "animal" "five letters" and "middle letter is a G". Hyukjae's really close to being A-class, I think.
Any-hoodle-poodle, it was a lovely morning class and the kids were happy, and I'm hopefully putting together something really nice for my 3rd-graders, coming up soon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 PM: Well, I thought 3-5, 3-6 B was going well, but then Mr. B stopped the class and made the boys stand up for two minutes with their eyes closed and their hands on their heads while he lectured them, presumably about the proper way to treat me. He told me, "They're not listening to you, let me talk to them." And sure, plenty of them weren't listening, but that's par for the course. I was just going to explain in all to each kid individually, anyway, so this caught me by surprise.
So I wound up feeling kind of failure-y again because I couldn't even tell that things were going badly. But the boys learned the expressions, "How long does it take you to?" and "I takes me about____minutes," and we watched 2 fun videos and played the betting game I used with the 1st-graders because I need their attention.
It was definitely more interesting than usual. I really, really tried to make it good. And they were mostly bright. Teacher's Pet Jeongmin was his usual adora-bratty self, telling me to hurry up in English, then apologizing profusely. Yeonghyo told me he'd seen me Saturday night, which was true--I was the one to greet him. Seongjae wanted me to write a smiley face on his hand for doing a good job, as always. Hyunjoon got a new haircut and when I told him it looked nice he said, "Thank you. I know." Hyunjoon's pretty funny.
I want to pick my mood up for the next 2 classes. I'm a little down about 3-5, 3-6 B's apparent discipline problem, but as far as I can tell, the boys and I still get along nicely, which is what I really must have.
------------------------------------------------
1:30 PM Got a fresh pickup line from a first-grader who was being piggyback-carried by Snappy-Seongsu: "Pretty girl! Wow! Oh, pretty girl date! I, you, date GO!" I told him he was cute, because he was. There's just no way you can feel objectified by a 13-year-old being laboriously transported by his buddy.
____________________________________________
9:30 PM My two classes of B-level 2nd grade went fine. One of my darling afterschool boys, Jinseop, is int the first class (2-9, 2-10 B I think?), and he gives his best effort at everything. On a day when a lot of boys couldn't give a care, I wanted to hug him for his dedication.
In 2-7, 2-8 B, I have three new names:
Chansu wears a red sweater and looks like a first-grader. He's quite cute but at first I though he was mocking me because he spoke English in a very high, super-perky voice. Nope. Chansu just has a high-pitched voice and a penchant for saying things with enthusiasm. After I sat next to him and told him he was smart, he visibly brightened and he was my boy for the rest of class, waving his hand and trying to answer every question.
Jeongbok wears glasses, is intelligent, and is friends with my afterschool boy Cardsharp Minsu, and when Jeongbok doesn't understand a question, he asks me in Korean to explain it in Korean. And then I try to do so. Thanks for your faith in my tenuous grasp on my 2nd language, sweetheart! When I wrote his name on my hand, he corrected the spelling--he wants to be known as Jungbok, with a u. And so he shall be.
Third kid is Jolly-Looking-Sanghyeop, who I met in the hallways before because I mistook him for one of the Jeongmins. Sanhyeop has one of those faces that, even when sad and tired, looks as if he's about to bust out the gingerbread cookies and Christmas presents to enliven the classroom.
So I had some right nice boys in 2-7, 2-8 B, but I nearly felt like the class was a failure because I came close to losing a confrontation with Cardsharp-Minsu. Bless his heart, he's one of the boys I can't push. Most kids, you nudge them and they give in, you insist that they perform feats of language and they do. Not so, Minsu. My desire to have Minsu do stuff is but a speck compared to the mountain that is Minsu's desire to Not Do Stuff.
I still hadn't learned my lesson about him, because when he put his head on his desk while I was talking to him, I rubbed his hair to get him to sit up. He reached for a jacket to pull over his head and I tugged it away from him after a while, but it was an utterly unprofessional tug of war for a few seconds. Why did I do that? Who cares if Minsu puts a jacket over his head? And why did I think that taking it away was going to go well? Because it worked on Peter-Pan-Taehoon and Grumpmaster-Jiwoong, that's why. But those two boys, oddly enough, can be charmed by me and Minsu cannot.
How to win over Minsu? More praise, less pressure? I've said before that he's like a cat, and good luck training a cat to do tricks. Rewards and punishments are meaningless to an entity who doesn't see the point in the whole exercise anyway.
But speaking of Taehoon and Jiwoong, they came by the class at the end, while I was handing out chocolate to the winners of the final game, and they know the routine--in exchange for a little English, they can wheedle their way into some good chocolate. Jiwoong pleasantly said, "I want chocolate," then waited to be told how he could get it. This time I asked him to tell me the name of his favorite movie. He replied, "My favorite movie is The Hobbit," nice as you please.
Taehoon also walked up: "Teacher. I want chocolate. Give me chocolate." It's more polite than it sounds--in Korean there is no word for "please"--the politeness of a question comes from the formality of the verb ending you choose for your sentence. So in English you go to a cafe and say, "I'd like a coffee, please" but in Korean you just say "give me coffee". But you add a verb ending (요 'yo') that makes the demand polite. With the boys, sometimes they forget to say please, but the politeness is evident (or not) from their tone of conversation. Taehoon's favorite movie is the Avengers, and he got his chocolate, too.
I went to a meeting downtown for judges for an upcoming English competition, and since I'm a middle school teacher, I'll be judging the elementary skits. Which is good, because I couldn't even pretend to be an unbiased judge if I had to judge my boys in a middle school speech competition. As it is, I get to help them prepare for the competition and then step aside and judge in a different room when crunch time comes.
Went out for dinner tonight and one of the students came running out of a building. I knew it was one of mine from the, "Whup! Huh?!" sound he made. When kids at my school see me, they often make a wordless exclamation of surprise, like they've just been tackled in a football game. This boy who I didn't recognize happily chattered, "____Jung-hakyo!" I smiled and said yes, I worked there, did he go to school there? Yes, he said in Korean, he's a third-grader. I didn't recognize his face, so I asked "A-ban?" thinking he might be higher than the level I teach (I only get the B-level 3rd grades), but he said no, he's C-ban. But he was brave enough to talk to me in all Korean, and it was good to have someone who was happy to see me.
Some child in the backseat of a minivan said "hello!" to me as I walked back to my apartment, but it was too dark for me to see which one it was. Again, it was nice to have a kid care enough to roll down their window and say howdy. :-)
-----------------------------------
Friday, September 27, 2013
9-27-13 Open Class Was Barely A Thing, Misspelled Names, and KBR-Teacher is the Best
4 PM: This is the first time I've really had a moment to write.
Today was fine! The open class was no thing and was fine!
1-3, 1-4 B was totally bored with me. I had the attention of 5 kids out of 25, regardless of what I tried. *minor pity party*. Walk-to-School-Mingi was a doll, though. He chose invisibility as his designated superpower so that he could go see his favorite female singers in concert for free.
2-1, 2-1 B has Shotputter Jinseong in it, and he tried to sleep through most of the class, but he would work on his paper with me when I went over and patted his back. It was rather like making friends with a drowsy bear. You hope the bear is in a cuddly mood, not an eat-you mood. But things went fine. This morning, Jinseong greeted me at the school doors with a "Hi, Teacher," and in class I told him in Korean that he was a cool person. One of the kids---Minseop?--thanked me for class when we done. Darling.
2-3, 2-4 B has Sanghwa in it and he behaved fine.
Then it was time for 3-7, 3-8, 3-9 B, the triple-third-grade class that was scheduled to have parents in it and to have no Mr. B. But! Mr. B was there after all! And the parents came by for a grand total of 2 minutes! I had prepared a greeting speech, but they came toward the end, during the fun bit of class when the boys were playing the minecraft game.
AND the reason I was so worried about class was that the previous 2 3rd-grade classes I taught had been dead boring. Seriously hardcore dullsville, like, for real. But last night I took 90 minutes and converted the game the 2nd-graders had loved so much in a game for the 3rd-graders, using their target expression--"you should have". It was lovely. The cool dudes in the back who didn't want to do anything were suddenly all up in the game. The yelled loud enough to wake the dead. Byeongseon, a 3rd-grader I really like, is in there. He has a really beautiful smile and he writes well and speaks well. A little concerted effort is probably all that stands between him and A-class.
An entirely different kid in the 3rd-grade class was mocking my laugh and pretty much everything I said. Poor young'un clearly does not get enough positive attention.
After class, I was swarmed by fifteen 3rd-graders wanting chocolate, but I only gave it to boys who would tell me their favorite song in the following format: "My favorite song is___" You'd be surprised how rattled they get when the pressure is on and they're competing to be heard. It was good for them. Some kids not even in my class got chocolate, including my well-liked lunch companions Intensity-Insung and Secret.
From Y-Teacher, I learned that Secret's real name is Daeho. He seemed happy that I'd discovered it on my own. To get chocolate, he said "My favorite teacher is Leigh-Teacher," and several other boys tried flattery, "you're so beautiful!Chocolate, please!"Nice try, guys, but to get chocolate you have to give me something I want--not compliments, but clear English sentences. But it's all in fun and I really enjoy the commotion of having them all talking. :-)
--------------
5:30 PM: I got a return letter to my letter to HH, which he passed to me in the hallway. He said he'd never gotten a letter from a teacher before and thanked me for helping him with his poem and story. He also corrected me on the English spelling of his name. See? Words-person. If his name is spelled wrong, he's not going to let it go, he's going to make sure it's written the right way. And the note was written on Hello Kitty paper, making it all the more darling.
Ran into Jeongin, one of the middle school girls from Saturday class, at the convenience store. She's going to text message me a good time to meet the girls and help with their speech.
I want to buy an acoustic guitar and learn to play, but I'll have to get one from another city, looks like. We're low on music shops.
I got paid, but my bill-paying ability is still not existent, because I need to ask Co-Teacher how to do it.
Last night, I had coffee with KBR-Teacher and we talked for over an hour! She got me the cutest little presents--peaches, darling socks that I'm wearing now, hard candy from Hong Kong, and stickers with bible verses on them in Korean. Every item was something she knew I'd like, because I have a penchant for cute socks, I love fruit, and I put stickers on everything and I'm a Christian.
Hanging out with KBR-Teacher, I realized how much I missed being around another woman who loves God. Most of my female friends from the past 6 weeks have been on the worldly side, and I love them dearly, but they can't tell me the Lord's truth to me the way KBR-Teacher can. She's three years older than me and we have similar personalities, and we both care for the students very much.
My heart felt refreshed after time with KBR-Teacher.
---------------------------------------------------------------
11 PM: Went shopping downtown with a friend, now that we've been paid and feel like grown-ups. We kept going into stores saying, "We might as well just look, but I don't think I want anything," then coming out, after having purchased half the shop. Exaggeration, but we did buy an inordinate number of animal-themed socks and cute headbands.
Ran into Japanese-Soccer-Kid at the 7-11 two blocks from my apartment. It seems that he knows the cashier and just hangs out there. We said hi and he had some mini-discussion with the cashier about who I was, which always happens when I greet one of my boys when anyone not from our school is around.
As my friend and I stood outside a store, contemplating going in, I heard, "Hi, hi, hello, haiiiiaaiiiiii!" It was one of my third-graders from today, walking by with his girlfriend. She looked as thrilled as he was to see me--no idea why, but spotting me in the street is really exciting for some of the kids, sort of like solving the puzzle on a "Where's Waldo?" page. "Where's Teacher? At the dollar mart! Alert the presses!"
Also ran into I-Love-You-I-Need-You downtown. He yelled his traditional phrase while sprinting past me and flailing his arms in the air, muppet-style. Boy does not care about his image, not one bit. Then he doubled back and ran by in the other direction, with one of his friends chasing him, telling him to be quiet.
Today, my Vice-Principal mentioned to me that he thought that I thought that one of our older male teachers (the oldest of all, in fact) was rude. True, this teacher teases me and embarrasses me by calling me "Big Brother" in Korean, but I think he's sweet and funny. After that, I knew that I needed to smooth over my relationship with Oldest Teacher. Vice-Principal would not have said anything unless he was worried that I was put off by Oldest Teacher.
So I sat down and wrote Oldest Teacher a letter, in English then in Korean, telling him that I thought he was "a very cool person". I put a butterfly sticker on the paper, then taped a piece of chocolate to it, because before Chuseok he had jokingly asked for chocolate from me because he saw me give a bar to the Vice-Principal. I delivered it to his cubicle, and he seemed to appreciate the gesture. Oldest Teacher talks to Vice-Principal all the time, so I knew that action speak louder than words and VP would now know that I have no discomfort around Oldest Teacher.
Today was fine! The open class was no thing and was fine!
1-3, 1-4 B was totally bored with me. I had the attention of 5 kids out of 25, regardless of what I tried. *minor pity party*. Walk-to-School-Mingi was a doll, though. He chose invisibility as his designated superpower so that he could go see his favorite female singers in concert for free.
2-1, 2-1 B has Shotputter Jinseong in it, and he tried to sleep through most of the class, but he would work on his paper with me when I went over and patted his back. It was rather like making friends with a drowsy bear. You hope the bear is in a cuddly mood, not an eat-you mood. But things went fine. This morning, Jinseong greeted me at the school doors with a "Hi, Teacher," and in class I told him in Korean that he was a cool person. One of the kids---Minseop?--thanked me for class when we done. Darling.
2-3, 2-4 B has Sanghwa in it and he behaved fine.
Then it was time for 3-7, 3-8, 3-9 B, the triple-third-grade class that was scheduled to have parents in it and to have no Mr. B. But! Mr. B was there after all! And the parents came by for a grand total of 2 minutes! I had prepared a greeting speech, but they came toward the end, during the fun bit of class when the boys were playing the minecraft game.
AND the reason I was so worried about class was that the previous 2 3rd-grade classes I taught had been dead boring. Seriously hardcore dullsville, like, for real. But last night I took 90 minutes and converted the game the 2nd-graders had loved so much in a game for the 3rd-graders, using their target expression--"you should have". It was lovely. The cool dudes in the back who didn't want to do anything were suddenly all up in the game. The yelled loud enough to wake the dead. Byeongseon, a 3rd-grader I really like, is in there. He has a really beautiful smile and he writes well and speaks well. A little concerted effort is probably all that stands between him and A-class.
An entirely different kid in the 3rd-grade class was mocking my laugh and pretty much everything I said. Poor young'un clearly does not get enough positive attention.
After class, I was swarmed by fifteen 3rd-graders wanting chocolate, but I only gave it to boys who would tell me their favorite song in the following format: "My favorite song is___" You'd be surprised how rattled they get when the pressure is on and they're competing to be heard. It was good for them. Some kids not even in my class got chocolate, including my well-liked lunch companions Intensity-Insung and Secret.
From Y-Teacher, I learned that Secret's real name is Daeho. He seemed happy that I'd discovered it on my own. To get chocolate, he said "My favorite teacher is Leigh-Teacher," and several other boys tried flattery, "you're so beautiful!Chocolate, please!"Nice try, guys, but to get chocolate you have to give me something I want--not compliments, but clear English sentences. But it's all in fun and I really enjoy the commotion of having them all talking. :-)
--------------
5:30 PM: I got a return letter to my letter to HH, which he passed to me in the hallway. He said he'd never gotten a letter from a teacher before and thanked me for helping him with his poem and story. He also corrected me on the English spelling of his name. See? Words-person. If his name is spelled wrong, he's not going to let it go, he's going to make sure it's written the right way. And the note was written on Hello Kitty paper, making it all the more darling.
Ran into Jeongin, one of the middle school girls from Saturday class, at the convenience store. She's going to text message me a good time to meet the girls and help with their speech.
I want to buy an acoustic guitar and learn to play, but I'll have to get one from another city, looks like. We're low on music shops.
I got paid, but my bill-paying ability is still not existent, because I need to ask Co-Teacher how to do it.
Last night, I had coffee with KBR-Teacher and we talked for over an hour! She got me the cutest little presents--peaches, darling socks that I'm wearing now, hard candy from Hong Kong, and stickers with bible verses on them in Korean. Every item was something she knew I'd like, because I have a penchant for cute socks, I love fruit, and I put stickers on everything and I'm a Christian.
Hanging out with KBR-Teacher, I realized how much I missed being around another woman who loves God. Most of my female friends from the past 6 weeks have been on the worldly side, and I love them dearly, but they can't tell me the Lord's truth to me the way KBR-Teacher can. She's three years older than me and we have similar personalities, and we both care for the students very much.
My heart felt refreshed after time with KBR-Teacher.
---------------------------------------------------------------
11 PM: Went shopping downtown with a friend, now that we've been paid and feel like grown-ups. We kept going into stores saying, "We might as well just look, but I don't think I want anything," then coming out, after having purchased half the shop. Exaggeration, but we did buy an inordinate number of animal-themed socks and cute headbands.
Ran into Japanese-Soccer-Kid at the 7-11 two blocks from my apartment. It seems that he knows the cashier and just hangs out there. We said hi and he had some mini-discussion with the cashier about who I was, which always happens when I greet one of my boys when anyone not from our school is around.
As my friend and I stood outside a store, contemplating going in, I heard, "Hi, hi, hello, haiiiiaaiiiiii!" It was one of my third-graders from today, walking by with his girlfriend. She looked as thrilled as he was to see me--no idea why, but spotting me in the street is really exciting for some of the kids, sort of like solving the puzzle on a "Where's Waldo?" page. "Where's Teacher? At the dollar mart! Alert the presses!"
Also ran into I-Love-You-I-Need-You downtown. He yelled his traditional phrase while sprinting past me and flailing his arms in the air, muppet-style. Boy does not care about his image, not one bit. Then he doubled back and ran by in the other direction, with one of his friends chasing him, telling him to be quiet.
Today, my Vice-Principal mentioned to me that he thought that I thought that one of our older male teachers (the oldest of all, in fact) was rude. True, this teacher teases me and embarrasses me by calling me "Big Brother" in Korean, but I think he's sweet and funny. After that, I knew that I needed to smooth over my relationship with Oldest Teacher. Vice-Principal would not have said anything unless he was worried that I was put off by Oldest Teacher.
So I sat down and wrote Oldest Teacher a letter, in English then in Korean, telling him that I thought he was "a very cool person". I put a butterfly sticker on the paper, then taped a piece of chocolate to it, because before Chuseok he had jokingly asked for chocolate from me because he saw me give a bar to the Vice-Principal. I delivered it to his cubicle, and he seemed to appreciate the gesture. Oldest Teacher talks to Vice-Principal all the time, so I knew that action speak louder than words and VP would now know that I have no discomfort around Oldest Teacher.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
9-26-13 Love Languages, Letters, and Seonghoon Does Not Need Plastic Surgery
11 AM: First two classes went well!
2-1, 2-2 A has Byeonghyun in it, and I gave him his letter of appreciation, telling him that even though I never get to talk to him as much as I want, I always appreciate his support and his kindness in class.
And I gave HH a letter also, telling him how awesome a writer he is--that his poem about that temple was great, and his magic story written with Daehoon was great too. I told him that he was very talented.
I loved reading a book called the 5 Love Languages, once upon a time. There's a million books on personality, but this one made sense to me. It said that there are 5 big, obvious ways that people express love and receive gestures of love: Words, Gifts, Quality Time, Physical Touch, and Acts of Service. The way you most want to receive love is probably also the way you tend to give it...
For instance, people who feel most loved when they get small Gifts are likely to give chocolates and flowers and knick-knacks on a regular basis, not just for birthdays and holidays. People who feel love through Words are likely to write encouraging notes and to verbally praise friends.
Physical Touch is the one that's most misunderstood and can most easily go wrong, but it's one of my love languages. If no one hugs me for a week, I feel starved. Fortunately, the other female teachers here are getting used to my hugs and O-Teacher even offers hugs on her own!
For the boys, I never know which love language makes them feel cared for, so I try a mix of everything I can, to see what sticks. Everyone likes candy, but some of the boys seem to go over the moon when they get a piece of chocolate, so I mentally file those kids as Gifts people.
I pat shoulders and pat heads all the time, and the ones who seem to appreciate it most are the boys who are always hugging or hanging on their friends--their love language is Touch. If you don't ruffle their hair or pat their shoulder, they will not feel cared for.
Words-kids are harder to help, because of the language barrier. But I try to constantly give out praise and good words, so that it will strike home for some of them.
Quality Time is hard to come by for any kids but my afterschool boys, and Acts of Service is semi-included in the task of teaching them and helping them with their papers.
In short, I'm trying every avenue I can think of to be loving to my students.
-------------------------
1-9, 1-10 B was great. They were more responsive than any other 1st-grade class, and I had polished the lesson up better for them. Laryngitis-Seonghoon was there, voice on the mend and cuter than ever. Governor Yunho was there, and surprisingly quiet. Teddybear Deokryeong was there, and he had already struck up a conversation with me this morning about how cold it was. He said, "wear vest AND jacket!" referring to his own system of layers.
Deokryeong was teased by the other boys again. They remembered what I said last week, and they said "Teacher, he's a handsome boy!" but in a half-mocking way. Deokryeong responded not with fists but with hand gestures. There's so much upsetedness in that boy, but he's always an angel to me.
When asked whether he would rather be rich, smart, or handsome, beautiful little Laryngitis-Seonghoon said he wanted to be rich so he could have plastic surgery. He said he needs to have his nose fixed because he has a flat nose and he wants a nose that sticks out. I told him in mangled Korean that his nose was cute and he doesn't need surgery, but I don' t think he believed me. And Seonghoon's the cutest kid, honestly. It may be a stretch to call Deokryeong handsome--he needs a few years to grow into his face, which is a bit too manly too soon for a 12-year-old--but no one could look at Seonghoon's face and think he needed changing. That child needs Words of affirmation, for sure.
One more class, then lunch, then lesson planning for tomorrow! I have a good game idea for my open class. :-)
---------------------
1 PM: I finally know America the 3rd-grader's name! It's Hyunkyeong. He's been really willing to engage me in conversation, which I really appreciate.
At lunch, I sat with O-Teacher and the special needs boys, and Baby-Deukhee came up and sat by me, him and his best friend Sanggyu, which was really brave. Normally only the 3rd-graders have the guts to do that, but Deukhee loves me in that pure-of-heart-golden-child way, and I return the love.
Today, what we had for lunch was hard for me to eat. It was a soup of wire-thin noodles and the noodles were uncut. They were hard to cut with a spoon and elusive to grasp with chopsticks. For the first time in this country, I was wishing for a fork. And I'm positioned toward the lunch line, so the kids are watching me cut up and eat my noodles like a baby; a very unsuccessful baby. Not that I care when I look uncool! No sirree, not me.
America-Hyunkyeong even paused in the lunch line to tell me I was eating my grapes wrong. They were seed-filled grapes and Koreans eat them by pulling off the skins, but I was eating them whole because they were the only thing I could eat easily. He mimed the correct way to eat them, but I just shook my head, indicating that I was a grape maverick, ready to ingest these fruits in new, unheard of ways.
And some 2nd-graders ganged up to embarrass me in the lunch line....well, it wasn't so much that they were aiming for that; it was more of an en masse love confession. It's mainly just one kid who has been shouting "I love you, I need you," and he was proclaiming it loudly from the lunch line, which prompted Snappy-Seongsu from 2-5, 2-6 B (which I just taught) to say "pretty!", then I-Love-You-I-Need-You-Kid got even more vehement in his praise, and a couple others joined in. Fortunately, Shotputter-Jinseong sensed my discomfort and gave I-Love-You-I-Need-You a quick one-armed push that landed him about 4 feet away from his original position.
I said thank you to Jinseong. Who knew that this giant kid would protect me from discomfort? This morning in the hall outside the teachers' office, he was kneeling and writing sentences for over an hour as penance for something. I made sure to speak to him in Korean each time I walked by, and he seemed to repay the kindness by making the other boys quiet down.
------------------------------------------------
2:30 PM Well, Byeongyoon's reign as the only kid at school to hold my hand was short-lived. I was walking down the stairs when I-Love-You-I-Need-You decided to kick things up a notch by taking my hand while professing his love. I kept walking and he let my hand go, but my face must have been five shades of red. I've decided that being embarrassed at this behavior is not helping matters--it just makes the braver boys do more so they can see what reaction they'll get.
Perhaps sarcasm is the way to go? Just roll my eyes at them instead of ducking my head? I don't know why I'm more bashful in Korea than I ever was at home, but I am. Anyhoo, the older boys still aren't threatening--it's cute more than anything, but I'd rather have actual discussions with them than bear up through unending rounds of appearance-based compliments. It's less problematic to be told my lessons are boring, as Joonki did yesterday--boring lessons, I can alter. Overzealous middle-schoolers are tougher to figure out. But I think real, genuine conversation is the way to go; getting to know them as people instead of as periodic annoyances.
Went walking with JY-Teacher again, basking in her aura of awesomeness. And tonight, I have plans to meet KBR-Teacher for coffee. Girl-bonding time!
--------------------------------------------
3:50 PM Just 40 more minutes in the office, then I can go. I've been looking up EFL (English as a Foreign Language) games, so I can change things up in the class. The Powerpoint game format I've been using is called a "bomb game" and the kids love it, but I don't want to do it every week. Maybe this specific format would work better when used once a month. I can still use Powerpoint games of other varieties, just not the "4 teams compete, and you can steal other teams' points" type.
Many of the games I've seen online will not work with any of my B-level boys because you can't get them to leave their seats. A.k.a, there can be no "race to the whiteboard one by one to write answers" games. You'd think they'd welcome the chance to move about, but in fact they welcome the chance to be comfortable. So I have to work around my boys' tendencies and what they're likely to agree to do. That's part of why bomb games are so fun--they can do it while sitting down and yelling.
But I will find other things they like, as well.
-------------------
5 PM Back home, eating dinner. I realized that a "connect with the kids" activity that had been failing all week finally succeeded today.
I turned it into a classroom game where the kids could say a word in English, then I would write it in Korean. I wanted the boys to see me trying to learn their language, and to see me making mistakes. The first couple days I tried this it was a non-starter. For one thing, I was asking them to come up and write on the board, and that's just unspeakably high-pressure, or so I found out. But when I asked them for an English word and wrote it myself, that was different. Suddenly, the boys were finding words.
1-9, 1-10 B really loved it. I intentionally spelled the Korean word for "paper" wrong, just to hear them shouting out instructions for how to change it. I felt a difference in the affection I got from 1-9, 1-10 B after that--no matter what, they know I'm on their side. I met another boy in that class, Seonghyun, who wears cool glasses designed to look like they're rendered in chunky pixels. I remembered seeing him at the movie theater over Chuseok, so I said, "I saw you at the yeonggwagwan!" He beamed and said, "Yes. Percy Jackson!"
In 2-1, 2-2 A, Letter-Byeonghyun was doing a "make a surprising dialogue" exercise with his friend and it went as follows: "Did you know that Leigh-Teacher hit B-Teacher with her hair? Yes. He's in the hospital, now." I died laughing. Byeonghyun's one of the few kids with enough creativity and English to come up with that.
In the same class, when Poet-HH had to come up with a famous person to write clues about, he wrote them about a French contemporary science fiction novelist whose book he's currently reading, translated into Korean. Needless to say, I could not guess his famous person, but it does indicate something about HH's level of avante-garde artsiness. Speaking of whom, when I walked home from school, HH was waiting for me not at the bus stop but at the corner where I turn toward my side of town. He said "thank you so much for your letter," and I got another high five.
On the way home, I also got a tiny little "hello!" from Baby-Deukhee's best friend Sanggyu, who lit up with a sunny smile when I remembered his name and showed him where it was written on my hand. America-Hyunkyeong was also gratified to hear me call him by name on the way home, and Loner-Artist Joohyun from 2-1, 2-2 A felt the same when I ran into him on the 2nd-floor teacher's office. Names matter.
-------------------------------------------------------------
2-1, 2-2 A has Byeonghyun in it, and I gave him his letter of appreciation, telling him that even though I never get to talk to him as much as I want, I always appreciate his support and his kindness in class.
And I gave HH a letter also, telling him how awesome a writer he is--that his poem about that temple was great, and his magic story written with Daehoon was great too. I told him that he was very talented.
I loved reading a book called the 5 Love Languages, once upon a time. There's a million books on personality, but this one made sense to me. It said that there are 5 big, obvious ways that people express love and receive gestures of love: Words, Gifts, Quality Time, Physical Touch, and Acts of Service. The way you most want to receive love is probably also the way you tend to give it...
For instance, people who feel most loved when they get small Gifts are likely to give chocolates and flowers and knick-knacks on a regular basis, not just for birthdays and holidays. People who feel love through Words are likely to write encouraging notes and to verbally praise friends.
Physical Touch is the one that's most misunderstood and can most easily go wrong, but it's one of my love languages. If no one hugs me for a week, I feel starved. Fortunately, the other female teachers here are getting used to my hugs and O-Teacher even offers hugs on her own!
For the boys, I never know which love language makes them feel cared for, so I try a mix of everything I can, to see what sticks. Everyone likes candy, but some of the boys seem to go over the moon when they get a piece of chocolate, so I mentally file those kids as Gifts people.
I pat shoulders and pat heads all the time, and the ones who seem to appreciate it most are the boys who are always hugging or hanging on their friends--their love language is Touch. If you don't ruffle their hair or pat their shoulder, they will not feel cared for.
Words-kids are harder to help, because of the language barrier. But I try to constantly give out praise and good words, so that it will strike home for some of them.
Quality Time is hard to come by for any kids but my afterschool boys, and Acts of Service is semi-included in the task of teaching them and helping them with their papers.
In short, I'm trying every avenue I can think of to be loving to my students.
-------------------------
1-9, 1-10 B was great. They were more responsive than any other 1st-grade class, and I had polished the lesson up better for them. Laryngitis-Seonghoon was there, voice on the mend and cuter than ever. Governor Yunho was there, and surprisingly quiet. Teddybear Deokryeong was there, and he had already struck up a conversation with me this morning about how cold it was. He said, "wear vest AND jacket!" referring to his own system of layers.
Deokryeong was teased by the other boys again. They remembered what I said last week, and they said "Teacher, he's a handsome boy!" but in a half-mocking way. Deokryeong responded not with fists but with hand gestures. There's so much upsetedness in that boy, but he's always an angel to me.
When asked whether he would rather be rich, smart, or handsome, beautiful little Laryngitis-Seonghoon said he wanted to be rich so he could have plastic surgery. He said he needs to have his nose fixed because he has a flat nose and he wants a nose that sticks out. I told him in mangled Korean that his nose was cute and he doesn't need surgery, but I don' t think he believed me. And Seonghoon's the cutest kid, honestly. It may be a stretch to call Deokryeong handsome--he needs a few years to grow into his face, which is a bit too manly too soon for a 12-year-old--but no one could look at Seonghoon's face and think he needed changing. That child needs Words of affirmation, for sure.
One more class, then lunch, then lesson planning for tomorrow! I have a good game idea for my open class. :-)
---------------------
1 PM: I finally know America the 3rd-grader's name! It's Hyunkyeong. He's been really willing to engage me in conversation, which I really appreciate.
At lunch, I sat with O-Teacher and the special needs boys, and Baby-Deukhee came up and sat by me, him and his best friend Sanggyu, which was really brave. Normally only the 3rd-graders have the guts to do that, but Deukhee loves me in that pure-of-heart-golden-child way, and I return the love.
Today, what we had for lunch was hard for me to eat. It was a soup of wire-thin noodles and the noodles were uncut. They were hard to cut with a spoon and elusive to grasp with chopsticks. For the first time in this country, I was wishing for a fork. And I'm positioned toward the lunch line, so the kids are watching me cut up and eat my noodles like a baby; a very unsuccessful baby. Not that I care when I look uncool! No sirree, not me.
America-Hyunkyeong even paused in the lunch line to tell me I was eating my grapes wrong. They were seed-filled grapes and Koreans eat them by pulling off the skins, but I was eating them whole because they were the only thing I could eat easily. He mimed the correct way to eat them, but I just shook my head, indicating that I was a grape maverick, ready to ingest these fruits in new, unheard of ways.
And some 2nd-graders ganged up to embarrass me in the lunch line....well, it wasn't so much that they were aiming for that; it was more of an en masse love confession. It's mainly just one kid who has been shouting "I love you, I need you," and he was proclaiming it loudly from the lunch line, which prompted Snappy-Seongsu from 2-5, 2-6 B (which I just taught) to say "pretty!", then I-Love-You-I-Need-You-Kid got even more vehement in his praise, and a couple others joined in. Fortunately, Shotputter-Jinseong sensed my discomfort and gave I-Love-You-I-Need-You a quick one-armed push that landed him about 4 feet away from his original position.
I said thank you to Jinseong. Who knew that this giant kid would protect me from discomfort? This morning in the hall outside the teachers' office, he was kneeling and writing sentences for over an hour as penance for something. I made sure to speak to him in Korean each time I walked by, and he seemed to repay the kindness by making the other boys quiet down.
------------------------------------------------
2:30 PM Well, Byeongyoon's reign as the only kid at school to hold my hand was short-lived. I was walking down the stairs when I-Love-You-I-Need-You decided to kick things up a notch by taking my hand while professing his love. I kept walking and he let my hand go, but my face must have been five shades of red. I've decided that being embarrassed at this behavior is not helping matters--it just makes the braver boys do more so they can see what reaction they'll get.
Perhaps sarcasm is the way to go? Just roll my eyes at them instead of ducking my head? I don't know why I'm more bashful in Korea than I ever was at home, but I am. Anyhoo, the older boys still aren't threatening--it's cute more than anything, but I'd rather have actual discussions with them than bear up through unending rounds of appearance-based compliments. It's less problematic to be told my lessons are boring, as Joonki did yesterday--boring lessons, I can alter. Overzealous middle-schoolers are tougher to figure out. But I think real, genuine conversation is the way to go; getting to know them as people instead of as periodic annoyances.
Went walking with JY-Teacher again, basking in her aura of awesomeness. And tonight, I have plans to meet KBR-Teacher for coffee. Girl-bonding time!
--------------------------------------------
3:50 PM Just 40 more minutes in the office, then I can go. I've been looking up EFL (English as a Foreign Language) games, so I can change things up in the class. The Powerpoint game format I've been using is called a "bomb game" and the kids love it, but I don't want to do it every week. Maybe this specific format would work better when used once a month. I can still use Powerpoint games of other varieties, just not the "4 teams compete, and you can steal other teams' points" type.
Many of the games I've seen online will not work with any of my B-level boys because you can't get them to leave their seats. A.k.a, there can be no "race to the whiteboard one by one to write answers" games. You'd think they'd welcome the chance to move about, but in fact they welcome the chance to be comfortable. So I have to work around my boys' tendencies and what they're likely to agree to do. That's part of why bomb games are so fun--they can do it while sitting down and yelling.
But I will find other things they like, as well.
-------------------
5 PM Back home, eating dinner. I realized that a "connect with the kids" activity that had been failing all week finally succeeded today.
I turned it into a classroom game where the kids could say a word in English, then I would write it in Korean. I wanted the boys to see me trying to learn their language, and to see me making mistakes. The first couple days I tried this it was a non-starter. For one thing, I was asking them to come up and write on the board, and that's just unspeakably high-pressure, or so I found out. But when I asked them for an English word and wrote it myself, that was different. Suddenly, the boys were finding words.
1-9, 1-10 B really loved it. I intentionally spelled the Korean word for "paper" wrong, just to hear them shouting out instructions for how to change it. I felt a difference in the affection I got from 1-9, 1-10 B after that--no matter what, they know I'm on their side. I met another boy in that class, Seonghyun, who wears cool glasses designed to look like they're rendered in chunky pixels. I remembered seeing him at the movie theater over Chuseok, so I said, "I saw you at the yeonggwagwan!" He beamed and said, "Yes. Percy Jackson!"
In 2-1, 2-2 A, Letter-Byeonghyun was doing a "make a surprising dialogue" exercise with his friend and it went as follows: "Did you know that Leigh-Teacher hit B-Teacher with her hair? Yes. He's in the hospital, now." I died laughing. Byeonghyun's one of the few kids with enough creativity and English to come up with that.
In the same class, when Poet-HH had to come up with a famous person to write clues about, he wrote them about a French contemporary science fiction novelist whose book he's currently reading, translated into Korean. Needless to say, I could not guess his famous person, but it does indicate something about HH's level of avante-garde artsiness. Speaking of whom, when I walked home from school, HH was waiting for me not at the bus stop but at the corner where I turn toward my side of town. He said "thank you so much for your letter," and I got another high five.
On the way home, I also got a tiny little "hello!" from Baby-Deukhee's best friend Sanggyu, who lit up with a sunny smile when I remembered his name and showed him where it was written on my hand. America-Hyunkyeong was also gratified to hear me call him by name on the way home, and Loner-Artist Joohyun from 2-1, 2-2 A felt the same when I ran into him on the 2nd-floor teacher's office. Names matter.
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Tuesday, September 24, 2013
9-25-13 Walking With JY-Teacher, and Finding Out About Open Class
11:00 AM: Hahaha, it's been a good morning.
I didn't recognize any of the kids in 1-1, 1-2 B, to the extent that I wondered if I was in the wrong classroom. But we had some shining moments, despite hardly any of them being up to the task of paying attention to anything I said.
Met a crazy kid called Seongmin who is the first child to openly question my...sanity? Intelligence? Hearing? When I couldn't understand him speaking in Korean, he said, "Seonsaengnim...." and gestured toward his ear/head in a swirling motion. I gave him a bit of a glare, and Co-Teacher let him have it for saying whatever it was he said.
But Rude-Seongmin got all kinds of invested in English class when I tried out the new Connect 4 "Would You Rather?" game I got to liven up class. Seongmin was the only child on his team producing clear, fully realized sentences after every question, and at the end he asked me, through Co-Teacher, "What is the best way to win this game?" He wanted an advantage, because his team was losing Connect 4 since they'd fallen behind early in the game when they didn't want to try. I gave Seongmin's team an extra turn, but the bell rang.
The class went better than the last one. Even if the boys weren't paying attention, I connected with a couple of them and didn't bore them.
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2-3, 2-4 A was awesome.
This is what my Word Document of Kids says about who's in there: Sunbin and Hyun (afterschool), Joon and Jeongmin (afterschool), Yoonjae (Tall), Minwoo (introduced me to BY), BY (Fluent), Shinhyuk (necktie), Inha (Hyungjae’s friend).
1 PM And it is now post-lunch and I only have one class left before afterschool! 2-9, 2-10 B has Afterschool-Jinseop in it, as well as Huge-Eyes-Jeonghee, a real sweetheart. Again, they wouldn't hardly do anything, but they loved the minecraft game.
And it only occurred to me after the BY Show was over that showing off the card tricks was never the point of the exercise--flirting was the point of the exercise. Even after he told me that he uses this act to get girls, I wasn't making the connection that I was a girl. And I went right along with everything, laughing at his jokes and being appropriately impressed with his coolness while 2 other students watched. He is the first boy at school to hold my hand (well, both hands, actually), and I did. not. notice. it was happening.
I thought I was humoring him, giving a student a chance to be important, to encourage them in their hobbies and build up their self-esteem. But the kid was three steps ahead of me! I better watch this kid.
I'm putting together an incident that I think happened on Monday. One of the autistic students, Joonseong, strangled a teacher. I didn't see it, but O-Teacher told me that he put his hands around the nutrition teacher's throat and shook and squeezed. For no reason. She had not upset him at all. But O-Teacher told me that Joonseong's friends had been hitting him before class, and maybe his hurt feelings or his aggressive impulses were still on the surface.
I didn't know who the nutrition teacher was. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was our Lunch Co-Ordinator. She has a special, official title that I can never recall, and I wondered if perhaps she actually teaches nutrition as a class. I remembered that she always feeds me extra food, but on Monday when I said I was full, she backed off unlike her normal self and didn't insist on feeding me.
Today, I walked into the lunchroom and she guided me into the lunch line, pushing aside boys so I could get food. She explained each food item to me, then tugged me toward a table. She was wearing a conspicuous scarf around her neck, and then I knew it was her.
I left my lunch tray and ran down the hall to my cubicle, where I had a couple of chocolate bars, bought this morning in case I needed to give someone something special. I wrote her a note saying, "Thank you for being so nice to me. You are the best!" Then I said thank you in Korean and signed my name in Korean and English. I added pink and sky-blue crayon drawings, then attached a butterfly sticker to the note and taped the note to the chocolate bar. When I went back to the lunch room, I presented it to her with two hands, like you're supposed to, and she looked perfectly proud of me.
I didn't recognize any of the kids in 1-1, 1-2 B, to the extent that I wondered if I was in the wrong classroom. But we had some shining moments, despite hardly any of them being up to the task of paying attention to anything I said.
Met a crazy kid called Seongmin who is the first child to openly question my...sanity? Intelligence? Hearing? When I couldn't understand him speaking in Korean, he said, "Seonsaengnim...." and gestured toward his ear/head in a swirling motion. I gave him a bit of a glare, and Co-Teacher let him have it for saying whatever it was he said.
But Rude-Seongmin got all kinds of invested in English class when I tried out the new Connect 4 "Would You Rather?" game I got to liven up class. Seongmin was the only child on his team producing clear, fully realized sentences after every question, and at the end he asked me, through Co-Teacher, "What is the best way to win this game?" He wanted an advantage, because his team was losing Connect 4 since they'd fallen behind early in the game when they didn't want to try. I gave Seongmin's team an extra turn, but the bell rang.
The class went better than the last one. Even if the boys weren't paying attention, I connected with a couple of them and didn't bore them.
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Random bits:
After finishing my 1st grade class, a 1st grade boy I don't know appeared in the doorway while I was erasing and said, "Cute Sem! Cute, cute, Sem is so cute!" I ducked my head in utter embarrassment and he laughed. Gosh, I loved being called Sem. It's the friendliest thing a student can call you.
I saw Sanghwa sitting on a bench outside the nurse's office, and I asked in Korean if he was hurt. He said yes, and I asked in Korean if it was his head. He said no, his stomach. I sat beside him and dug a coffee-flavored candy out of my purse to give to him. I patted his back and left. Just one moment in the day, but Sanghwa is my boy and I couldn't walk past and see him hurting without making an effort to help.
------------------------------------------------2-3, 2-4 A was awesome.
This is what my Word Document of Kids says about who's in there: Sunbin and Hyun (afterschool), Joon and Jeongmin (afterschool), Yoonjae (Tall), Minwoo (introduced me to BY), BY (Fluent), Shinhyuk (necktie), Inha (Hyungjae’s friend).
So I know a lot of these boys. And what's more, I like them. I tried a few different things with the lesson today, and they worked out pretty well. I had candy rewards for the game winners, and that was popular as always. I don't want classtime to be a work-for-candy interaction, but they look so happy when they get something nice.
Then after class, Fluent-BY pulls out a deck of cards and asks if I want to see a card trick. Of course I do! I was all the more interested because Grumpmaster-Jiwoong and Peter-Pan-Taehoon had come into the empty room, even though they weren't scheduled for class there. They hung around, watching me watch BY's card tricks. I was insanely glad to have my boys around, proving that we could spend time together even after a craaaazy day on Monday.
So Taehoon and Jiwoong sat on desks while I was being totally charmed by BY's antics. He introduced each card trick in English, getting the patter down perfectly. It was very professional.
He said, "Cut the deck and choose a card please. Don't let me see it." Then we put the card back in and cut the deck several more times. He said, "Now I'm going to choose your card. Send me a mental picture of it." Okay, that was darling. I'm really enjoying his whole production, here...he's selling the magic of it, making me believe in the trick through the way he sets it up.
Then he said, "Okay, keep thinking about your card. Now hold my hands. Now look into my eyes." I kept obeying, because this is part of the magic act, following the magician's instructions. He let go of my hands, flipped through the desk and said, "Was this your card?" Yep, sure enough, BY had picked the right one. It was awesome. Jiwoong and Taehoon were impressed, but they seemed most impressed by the fact that BY was doing the whole act in flawless English.
We played it two more times, and at the end he showed me how he did one of the tricks. Then BY says, "Actually, I use these card tricks to attract people. To get girls. I used to have a girlfriend." I asked, "And this is how you won her over? With card tricks?" -"Yeah. Pretty much." I told him that girls also love when you play acoustic guitar, but he said he's bad with music.
We spent 10 minutes on these tricks and he was going to do more before I thought to ask, "Wait, don't you have class?" -"Yes, I do, but it doesn't matter." -"No, BY, we're stopping. You've got to go to class." He reluctantly left, and I gave candy to Jiwoong and Taehoon, to show them I loved them. It was important for me to re-establish to them that they are special.
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1 PM And it is now post-lunch and I only have one class left before afterschool! 2-9, 2-10 B has Afterschool-Jinseop in it, as well as Huge-Eyes-Jeonghee, a real sweetheart. Again, they wouldn't hardly do anything, but they loved the minecraft game.
And it only occurred to me after the BY Show was over that showing off the card tricks was never the point of the exercise--flirting was the point of the exercise. Even after he told me that he uses this act to get girls, I wasn't making the connection that I was a girl. And I went right along with everything, laughing at his jokes and being appropriately impressed with his coolness while 2 other students watched. He is the first boy at school to hold my hand (well, both hands, actually), and I did. not. notice. it was happening.
I thought I was humoring him, giving a student a chance to be important, to encourage them in their hobbies and build up their self-esteem. But the kid was three steps ahead of me! I better watch this kid.
I'm putting together an incident that I think happened on Monday. One of the autistic students, Joonseong, strangled a teacher. I didn't see it, but O-Teacher told me that he put his hands around the nutrition teacher's throat and shook and squeezed. For no reason. She had not upset him at all. But O-Teacher told me that Joonseong's friends had been hitting him before class, and maybe his hurt feelings or his aggressive impulses were still on the surface.
I didn't know who the nutrition teacher was. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was our Lunch Co-Ordinator. She has a special, official title that I can never recall, and I wondered if perhaps she actually teaches nutrition as a class. I remembered that she always feeds me extra food, but on Monday when I said I was full, she backed off unlike her normal self and didn't insist on feeding me.
Today, I walked into the lunchroom and she guided me into the lunch line, pushing aside boys so I could get food. She explained each food item to me, then tugged me toward a table. She was wearing a conspicuous scarf around her neck, and then I knew it was her.
I left my lunch tray and ran down the hall to my cubicle, where I had a couple of chocolate bars, bought this morning in case I needed to give someone something special. I wrote her a note saying, "Thank you for being so nice to me. You are the best!" Then I said thank you in Korean and signed my name in Korean and English. I added pink and sky-blue crayon drawings, then attached a butterfly sticker to the note and taped the note to the chocolate bar. When I went back to the lunch room, I presented it to her with two hands, like you're supposed to, and she looked perfectly proud of me.
You never know when someone needs a little love.
At lunch, JY-Teacher asked me if I wanted to go walking with her, and I jumped at the chance. We walked a couple of laps around the giant soccer field where the boys were having P.E., and we chatted and had fun. I love JY-Teacher because she's thoughtful and cool. She's big sister material, if I could adopt a big sister.
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5:30 PM Final 3rd-grade class was awful. I changed the lesson up a lot, to make it better for them, and they were made of concrete, immovable in their indifference. I had my first kid, Super-Loud-Joonki, tell me that English was boring. Thanks, sugar. And Mr. B wasn't there for the first 15 minutes of class, so the boys were less than less than invested. But Yoonseop tried. How I remember Yoonseop is...he looks like Sooncheon, but he's not Sooncheon. This is how far my memorizing ability has degraded by final period.
I ended class with 2 funny Youtube videos and a 10 Questions game where they could win chocolate. Ugh. 29-million percent bad teaching. But they would not do the regular "learning past participle phrases" part of the lesson.
And I have something called an "Open Class" on Friday...where parents of the students can come in and watch me teach a 3rd-grade class. And Mr. B will not be there. And both variations of the lesson I've tried have not worked. And it's a triple-class, full of more loud, hormonal 15/16-year-olds than the usual class.
But...
But....at least they can't fire me? Performance reviews can't affect my salary, and I can't be fired unless I commit a crime or stop coming to work or something. So. It'll just be 45 very very very difficult minutes, then I can rest for the weekend. I'm going to not stress about the lesson. It is what it is--I can't change the open class or change the fact that I'll be teaching it solo without the disciplinary help of Mr. B.
The walk home was full of love. Literally full of 3rd-graders shouting, "I love you every day! I need you!" and variants thereof as I walked by. Funny how loving me does not translate into paying attention in class. But I love you too, guys. You temperamental weirdos. I had a nice conversation in mostly-Korean with Japanese-Soccer-Kid and America...don't know America's name yet, but when we meet he shouts "America!" America asked if I lived at _____apartments, and I said no. He inquired further, but I told him that where I lived was a secret, which seemed to delight him, 'cause secrets are awesome.
Teddybear-Deokryeong came by my cubicle to chitchat in mostly-Korean about how tired we both were. I told him that I had an open class on Friday, and he made sympathetic noises. I gave him candy. His arm is sometimes in a soft cast and sometimes not, but today it was in an actual sling. Is this boy ever going to heal? Not if he keeps getting in fights, that's for sure.
JY-Teacher invited me to her house for dinner. That's one home I feel comfortable going to.
From the Korean-American couple I met at church last week, I got the number of a female professor who goes to an English church nearby. I called her and I'll be going to church with her, her husband, and her three kids on Sunday. Whee!
My Vice-Principal continues to teach me Korean. Today, it was "how is the weather today?" I knew enough to comprehend the question, but not enough to say that it was cool and windy. Then he asked me how my "hakgyo saenghwal" was going, my "school life". I told him honestly that I was very happy here, but he saw enough to say that he guessed my life here must be difficult. He said that it must be hard for me because the school structure is so loose, and the boys are so rude. I told him that I have some hard classes, but I am mostly happy and I will keep trying my hardest. My Vice-Principal is a good man. He's one of my favorite people at school.
I didn't have afterschool because of...something with the parents. I think we're having open classes all this week, so the school is rather bustling with taking care of that. I was glad for the break, but I missed my afterschool boys. I really wanted to see Jiwoong today (of all people), and I wanted to write a letter for Byeonghyun to tell him that I appreciate all his goodness and his efforts to help me, while I'm far off, tending to the prodigals in the back of the room, not engaging him like I should.
But I can write his letter tomorrow, because I teach him in regular class. And I should probably write one for HH too, since HH's in the same class and will probably not take it kindly if Byeonghyun gets yet another in-class personalized letter while he doesn't.
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At lunch, JY-Teacher asked me if I wanted to go walking with her, and I jumped at the chance. We walked a couple of laps around the giant soccer field where the boys were having P.E., and we chatted and had fun. I love JY-Teacher because she's thoughtful and cool. She's big sister material, if I could adopt a big sister.
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5:30 PM Final 3rd-grade class was awful. I changed the lesson up a lot, to make it better for them, and they were made of concrete, immovable in their indifference. I had my first kid, Super-Loud-Joonki, tell me that English was boring. Thanks, sugar. And Mr. B wasn't there for the first 15 minutes of class, so the boys were less than less than invested. But Yoonseop tried. How I remember Yoonseop is...he looks like Sooncheon, but he's not Sooncheon. This is how far my memorizing ability has degraded by final period.
I ended class with 2 funny Youtube videos and a 10 Questions game where they could win chocolate. Ugh. 29-million percent bad teaching. But they would not do the regular "learning past participle phrases" part of the lesson.
And I have something called an "Open Class" on Friday...where parents of the students can come in and watch me teach a 3rd-grade class. And Mr. B will not be there. And both variations of the lesson I've tried have not worked. And it's a triple-class, full of more loud, hormonal 15/16-year-olds than the usual class.
But...
But....at least they can't fire me? Performance reviews can't affect my salary, and I can't be fired unless I commit a crime or stop coming to work or something. So. It'll just be 45 very very very difficult minutes, then I can rest for the weekend. I'm going to not stress about the lesson. It is what it is--I can't change the open class or change the fact that I'll be teaching it solo without the disciplinary help of Mr. B.
The walk home was full of love. Literally full of 3rd-graders shouting, "I love you every day! I need you!" and variants thereof as I walked by. Funny how loving me does not translate into paying attention in class. But I love you too, guys. You temperamental weirdos. I had a nice conversation in mostly-Korean with Japanese-Soccer-Kid and America...don't know America's name yet, but when we meet he shouts "America!" America asked if I lived at _____apartments, and I said no. He inquired further, but I told him that where I lived was a secret, which seemed to delight him, 'cause secrets are awesome.
Teddybear-Deokryeong came by my cubicle to chitchat in mostly-Korean about how tired we both were. I told him that I had an open class on Friday, and he made sympathetic noises. I gave him candy. His arm is sometimes in a soft cast and sometimes not, but today it was in an actual sling. Is this boy ever going to heal? Not if he keeps getting in fights, that's for sure.
JY-Teacher invited me to her house for dinner. That's one home I feel comfortable going to.
From the Korean-American couple I met at church last week, I got the number of a female professor who goes to an English church nearby. I called her and I'll be going to church with her, her husband, and her three kids on Sunday. Whee!
My Vice-Principal continues to teach me Korean. Today, it was "how is the weather today?" I knew enough to comprehend the question, but not enough to say that it was cool and windy. Then he asked me how my "hakgyo saenghwal" was going, my "school life". I told him honestly that I was very happy here, but he saw enough to say that he guessed my life here must be difficult. He said that it must be hard for me because the school structure is so loose, and the boys are so rude. I told him that I have some hard classes, but I am mostly happy and I will keep trying my hardest. My Vice-Principal is a good man. He's one of my favorite people at school.
I didn't have afterschool because of...something with the parents. I think we're having open classes all this week, so the school is rather bustling with taking care of that. I was glad for the break, but I missed my afterschool boys. I really wanted to see Jiwoong today (of all people), and I wanted to write a letter for Byeonghyun to tell him that I appreciate all his goodness and his efforts to help me, while I'm far off, tending to the prodigals in the back of the room, not engaging him like I should.
But I can write his letter tomorrow, because I teach him in regular class. And I should probably write one for HH too, since HH's in the same class and will probably not take it kindly if Byeonghyun gets yet another in-class personalized letter while he doesn't.
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Sunday, September 22, 2013
9-23-13 Tough Classes, Wearing All the Jackets, and Jiwoong Does Not Hate Me
9 AM: Getting my lessons together, still, and planning out the day. :-)
In the hallway this morning, Peter-Pan-Taehoon greeted me in English. I hello-ed back, then tried out a Korean greeting I had learned this week: "Eodi-ga?" or "Where are you going?" It's the kind of question the other person doesn't have to answer, but he said in English, "classroom," which made me happy because I'd said the phrase right and he understood it.
Compiling student lists of the classes I'll teach today, with names gathered from searching my own blog for previous posts.
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10:40 AM 1-7, 1-8 A was dull, but that was my fault, not the kids'. The Powerpoint on "Would You Rather?" was okay, but just going around to each kid as they wrote "I would rather be (rich, handsome, smart) because..." or "I would rather (fly, be invisible) because..." wasn't quite interesting enough. So I played a Hot Seat game for the last 15 minutes.
An English word and a picture would appear on the screen behind each boy and they would try to guess it. The game went really fast and I gave a Cars-franchise pencil to each kid that guessed their word (thanks for sending them, Mom!), going through about 12 kids. At first, I could barely drag any kids up. Sometimes I'd have to debate with the toughies for 30 seconds before they came up, but they always did.
New kids' names are getting underlined.
Now in 1-7, 1-8 B I know Minjoon who sits next to Hyo and agonizes over every decision. It took him 10 minutes to decide whether he would rather be rich, handsome, or smart. Not 10 minutes to comprehend the question in English, 10 minutes to decide. I like Next-to-Hyo-Minjoon.
Speaking of Hyo, I wrote him a note in English and gave it to him before class, just thanking him for being a sweet student and for being such a good artist. I drew a flower on his note in crayon, and I put a butterfly sticker on it. Hyo's a visual child, so I thought he'd like it. It's my first serious attempt at writing thank-you notes to students, though I've done it once for Letter-Byeonghyun and once for Saturday-Jeongmin.
I also re-met Hyukjae in 1-7, 1-8 B. He's brainy and thoughtful and has original ideas, but won't be pushed into something he doesn't want. I need to recall Hyukjae this time, because I wrote him on my hand last week and forgot.
Sitting behind Hyukjae is Hyunwoo, who is quiet and contemplative and like Minjoon, took an eternity to decide whether it was better to be invisible or to fly.
Jangyeop wears a necktie and is poetic. He wrote "I would rather fly because then I can be free" in lovely handwriting.
Chanjin and Minkyu were best buddies and cutie-pies as usual.
Sleepy-Front-Row-Moonshik wrote well.
Hyunmin the Cool Kid decided that I was paying sufficient attention to him and his crew. I had to wheedle with him for half a minute to get him to play my guessing game, but after Hyunmin went, everything was smoother. After somebody went, I often let them choose the next kid to guess, so that got them interested.
Hyunmin guessed "rabbit" instantly because one his buddies said "Lee Seulgi!" or some name like that. When I asked what the significance was, Hyunmin tried to explain that one of the 1st-graders in another class was nicknamed Rabbit. Then I was packing up my bag after a really dull class, Hyunmin happily walks up to me with another kid in tow. He claps his hands around his friend's noggin, framing the child's face and presenting it for my perusal.
"Teacher, he, he, him, he Lee Seungri (or something like that), face, he face!" And bless the kid's heart, Hyunmin is holding the face of a lovely 1st-grader whose innocent-eyed extended-toothed visage can only be described as rabbity. But it was done affectionately--the rabbit child was clearly used to such presentations. And Hyunmin cared enough to show me something. I should fuss over him even more, though it's difficult because he has the least English of any boy in class.
I feel sorry that 1-7, 1-8 B are my Monday morning guinea pigs and that every class I teach gets better because I learn from the mistakes I make with them, but I will make things good for them in the future, and I know more of their names than any other 1st grade I teach.
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1 PM: Gyah, 3-5, 3-6 B was dull, too, and it wasn't even the same lesson!
But first, the new names.
Sooncheon has a broken leg, braces, and beautiful eyes. If I ask it of him, he can do a lot of writing.
Jangwon is a kid I'm already forgetting. He sits behind Teacher's Pet Jeongmin.
Junhee wears a red jacket and has a complacent world-weary look on his face like he's been schlepping pro bono cases at a charity lawfirm for 30 years. But when I noticed his schoolwork and how well he writes, he smiled in a way that made the whole class worthwhile.
Taegyu isn't even in the class. He's Japanese-Soccer-Kid, the one I punched in the back for squeezing a kid's face, the one who brought me the dead bat. He's close buddies with Sungjae, and he seems to love me despite (or because of?) the fact that I hit him. He wrote his real name in Japanese characters, then English. He's a sweet boy.
The boys didn't understand the second game we played, so I had 6 kids actively playing and 14 not. Nobody caused trouble. My poor Teacher's-Pet-Jeongmin kept his head on the desk for the whole class because he says he's sick. He actually does look quite sick and I wanted to fuss over him, but I talk to the same 5 boys every week in that class and the favoritism was starting to show pretty strong. I made myself go talk to new kids, and Jeongmin got left out. Sad times.
I-Love-You-Seongjae wanted to know why he's not written on my hand and other boys are. I explained that he was written in my brain and my hand was for kids I didn't know yet. That seemed to make him happy.
After lunch, I went to the special needs room and played piano with Jaehyung, meeting his regular-student friends Inha and Sangwon. Inha leans a bit toward bulllying and Sangwon seems to bear the brunt of it.
Oy. Now I have to try two 2nd-grade lessons back to back, then a double afterschool, hoping against hope that 2nd-grade lesson at least is not awful. I want to do well for them.
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6 PM: THANK GOODNESS WE HAVE TOMORROW OFF.
The two 2nd-grade classes were interesting at least, and the first one went way better than the second, which was full of swear-to-goodness the loudest kids on earth. And KBR-Teacher says half of them are her homeroom students, so she has to deal with them every day.
Then after the exhaustifrying back-to-back 2nd Grade A-classes (which you would think would be less trouble than the B classes but aren't), I get back-to-back afterschool.
What a perfect bunch of hellions they were.
And yet, I loved them more than I ever have. I don't know how it's possible to simultaneously feel so bad and so good about a class period, but today's afterschool left me drained but mostly happy.
We did the unstructured thing from last week where we played a few games, then every time they won, they could get something, like the Youtube video of their choice or 3 minutes on their cell phones. Nobody learns anything, but it's right good fun and we bond and I'm desperate for bonding.
I realized that I had been expecting compliance from Grumpmaster-Jiwoong without really loving him or even knowing anything about him or caring in the slightest who he is. So today I decided I'd do at least one exercise designed to get to know something about my afterschool boys--I'd write their name and something they're "good at" on the board.
They weren't severely interested in this activity, but it showed them that I was interested in them. When Jinseop couldn't think of anything he was good at, I wrote for him "Good at keeping Leigh-Teacher from the computer" and reminded him of last week, when he was a human barrier between me and the "off" button for the violent cartoon. Jinseop later showed that he felt my effort, because he presented me with a prime view of his phone wallpaper, a picture of his beloved dog. It's a white creampuff of a dog...maybe a bichon frise? And he says that Bingo is it's name-o. Sooooo cute.
They couldn't pick a video, so I made them sit through an inane yet catchy k-pop song, which they pretended to be annoyed at but which had their toes tapping. Next time, they were ready with a video choice.
Cardsharp-Minsu is feeling the love, too. He wouldn't play the "what I'm good at" game, but another kid said he was good at basketball, so I wrote it down. Then I said, "Of course Minsu is good at basketball! Because he's so tall. Tall people are good at basketball." Blatant flattery always wins over cats, and Minsu is all cat. After I said that, he never once tried to sleep or hide his head in class, and he was just in general My Boy for the day. This is not to say that he was always good--but he was my boy, pranks and all.
Then. Then there was Jiwoong. I prayed that I'd love him, and I did. I did love and do love that little brat-scoundrel, and he feels it. He would not answer a single question or write a single response for me, but I let him know I cared.
I don't know, but I have had a suspicion that Jiwoong envies the amount of attention I shower on Taehoon, his close buddy and my obvious favorite. I could be wrong--I'm a person who likes being liked, so naturally I'm going to interpret people's behavior to mean that they want me around more. But today I barely spoke to Taehoon who has a handsome baby-face and a charming personality so that I could focus on Jiwoong, who has neither but who is still valuable.
Jiwoong closed his eyes and put his head down on the table to ignore me every time I went over to ask him a question. So I petted his hair and said, "Wake up, Jiwoong-ah.....wake up." He would open his eyes sometimes, and he would never truly comply, but the corners of his mouth were smiling. It's the closest I've seen this bad-tempered boy to being happy. The times he would not open his eyes, I'd stare at his sleeping face for 30 seconds, smiling at him where Taehoon could see. Taehoon would yell at him in Korean, "Open your eyes already, she's just sitting here waiting!" But whether he complied or not was not important--I wanted Jiwoong to feel himself being adored, and for there to be witnesses.
And while his eyes were closed, I saw not a mostly-grown adolescent with a penchant for giving me headaches, but a little boy like my younger brother; someone worth protecting.
And now Jiwoong is my boy, too.
Again, not to say that Jiwoong was one whit well-behaved, but it became a game with us to see how bad they could try to be and how I'd react creatively.
Which leads me to all the jackets....
9 PM: Went out for coffee with O-Teacher and now I'm back for the rest of the story.
Jiwoong kept putting his jacket over his head, to use his phone or generally to ignore me. So I whipped it away and tied it around my waist. Game on, Jiwoong-ah. Next time I came by, His head was covered by his white dress shirt, which goes on top of the school polo. Whip. Now I'm wearing his jacket and his white shirt. Taehoon spreads his shirt over both their heads in a little while, so I get that one, too.
Before the class is through, I've got Jiwoong's red jacket and three white long-sleeved shirts belonging to Jiwoong, Taehoon, and Sanghwa tied around my waist, I'm wearing Taehoon's white jacket regular-style with my arms through the sleeves, and I've got Jiwoong's backpack on my back because he was sticking his head in it. I tied my hair back in a bun, and over the course of 10 minutes, I've grown to look as much like an oddly-layered middle school boy as a grown woman can.
They whined, but they were happy, too. I've seen the boys angry over losing their property, and this was a far cry from anger. Jiwoong would protest faintly, "That is my shirt..." and I would reply, "But it looks cuter on me," and I would do a half pirouette, modeling my weird student-fashion. They would inevitably cave and collapse into boy-giggles.
I still don't know what Jiwoong is good at or what he likes, but I know he secretly loves cutesy adorableness because when he refused to answer my question, wrote on the board, "Jiwoong--good at being cute" and he yelled protests for a few seconds before settling into pleased silence. And every time I did something stereotypically cute, he couldn't fight it. I have no idea what he and Taehoon were saying to each other when I'd blink and smile at them wide-eyed while telling them "no," but it sounded like, "how can you stay mad at her when she's doing that?" Just a guess. They could be cursing me out in Korean for all I know, but I got enough smiles to think they were not truly upset at any point.
And also, there's the "ah" and "-yah" ending I've been adding to their names. In Korean, if you know a kid well, you just sort of add a random extra syllable to their name at the end, an "ah" if their name ends in a consonant and a "yah" if it ends in a vowel. No clue why. But I had heard this on so many K-dramas, and sure enough, the other teachers do it with students they know by name.
So without even meaning to, I started calling Taehoon "Taehoon-ah". But he was the only kid I did this with, and I thought I heard Jiwoong mocking it, once. So today Jiwoong was "Jiwoong-ah" all class long. And Cardsharp-Minsu was Minsu-yah, again without my having to think about it. His name just came out that way. Sanghwa was Sanghwa-yah, but Joon is Joonie for whatever reason.
And during break, I asked Stoic-Seonghak to play his soccer videos, so that made him and Jinseop happy, and it showed Seonghak I remembered his interests.
During break, Hyun had no phone to play with, so I told him he could play with mine, so I let him download an app called "Cookie Run" and I watched him and Sunbin and Cardsharp-Minsu play it. Minsu didn't want to stop playing when break was over, then he remembered it was MY phone he was playing, so Minsu was as bashful as Minsu ever gets when he handed it over.
Minsu also showed his love by stealing my whiteboard eraser. We were playing one last round of 10 Questions and the boys didn't want to lose, so Minsu kept hopping up and wiping answers off the board, so that they still had plenty of questions left to lose. I wrote the words back, then when I leaned over to hear something Keundeok said, Minsu grabbed the eraser and ran up to erase them again. When I lunged for the eraser, he pivoted out of my reach and hid behind the projector sheet. I couldn't even deal with him properly because Jiwoong and Taehoon started an all-out fistfight in the back of the classroom, like stomach punches with an audible thwack.
So Minsu's way of showing that we're close is by causing me trouble. Being loved by a cat is just as unproductive as being hated by a cat--there's still precisely nothing getting done, but at least both you and the cat are happy.
And I'm trying to teach with all this going on. The boys actually got through several small games of 10 Questions, a powerpoint game called Rorschach Test, and the "What Are You Good At?" questionnaire at the beginning. I do hope and pray that some bright day I can teach them a real thing, a genuinely solid language thing that makes them smarter and shows that I can actually teach, but today I gained Minsu and I loved Jiwoong and Sanghwa's fuzzy noggin didn't get into any trouble, so. It was pretty nice.
And tomorrow I can sleep and sleep and figure out how to sparkle up those 1st and 3rd-grade lessons. Onward we go. :-)
----------------------------
In the hallway this morning, Peter-Pan-Taehoon greeted me in English. I hello-ed back, then tried out a Korean greeting I had learned this week: "Eodi-ga?" or "Where are you going?" It's the kind of question the other person doesn't have to answer, but he said in English, "classroom," which made me happy because I'd said the phrase right and he understood it.
Compiling student lists of the classes I'll teach today, with names gathered from searching my own blog for previous posts.
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10:40 AM 1-7, 1-8 A was dull, but that was my fault, not the kids'. The Powerpoint on "Would You Rather?" was okay, but just going around to each kid as they wrote "I would rather be (rich, handsome, smart) because..." or "I would rather (fly, be invisible) because..." wasn't quite interesting enough. So I played a Hot Seat game for the last 15 minutes.
An English word and a picture would appear on the screen behind each boy and they would try to guess it. The game went really fast and I gave a Cars-franchise pencil to each kid that guessed their word (thanks for sending them, Mom!), going through about 12 kids. At first, I could barely drag any kids up. Sometimes I'd have to debate with the toughies for 30 seconds before they came up, but they always did.
New kids' names are getting underlined.
Now in 1-7, 1-8 B I know Minjoon who sits next to Hyo and agonizes over every decision. It took him 10 minutes to decide whether he would rather be rich, handsome, or smart. Not 10 minutes to comprehend the question in English, 10 minutes to decide. I like Next-to-Hyo-Minjoon.
Speaking of Hyo, I wrote him a note in English and gave it to him before class, just thanking him for being a sweet student and for being such a good artist. I drew a flower on his note in crayon, and I put a butterfly sticker on it. Hyo's a visual child, so I thought he'd like it. It's my first serious attempt at writing thank-you notes to students, though I've done it once for Letter-Byeonghyun and once for Saturday-Jeongmin.
I also re-met Hyukjae in 1-7, 1-8 B. He's brainy and thoughtful and has original ideas, but won't be pushed into something he doesn't want. I need to recall Hyukjae this time, because I wrote him on my hand last week and forgot.
Sitting behind Hyukjae is Hyunwoo, who is quiet and contemplative and like Minjoon, took an eternity to decide whether it was better to be invisible or to fly.
Jangyeop wears a necktie and is poetic. He wrote "I would rather fly because then I can be free" in lovely handwriting.
Chanjin and Minkyu were best buddies and cutie-pies as usual.
Sleepy-Front-Row-Moonshik wrote well.
Hyunmin the Cool Kid decided that I was paying sufficient attention to him and his crew. I had to wheedle with him for half a minute to get him to play my guessing game, but after Hyunmin went, everything was smoother. After somebody went, I often let them choose the next kid to guess, so that got them interested.
Hyunmin guessed "rabbit" instantly because one his buddies said "Lee Seulgi!" or some name like that. When I asked what the significance was, Hyunmin tried to explain that one of the 1st-graders in another class was nicknamed Rabbit. Then I was packing up my bag after a really dull class, Hyunmin happily walks up to me with another kid in tow. He claps his hands around his friend's noggin, framing the child's face and presenting it for my perusal.
"Teacher, he, he, him, he Lee Seungri (or something like that), face, he face!" And bless the kid's heart, Hyunmin is holding the face of a lovely 1st-grader whose innocent-eyed extended-toothed visage can only be described as rabbity. But it was done affectionately--the rabbit child was clearly used to such presentations. And Hyunmin cared enough to show me something. I should fuss over him even more, though it's difficult because he has the least English of any boy in class.
I feel sorry that 1-7, 1-8 B are my Monday morning guinea pigs and that every class I teach gets better because I learn from the mistakes I make with them, but I will make things good for them in the future, and I know more of their names than any other 1st grade I teach.
-------------------------------------------------------------
1 PM: Gyah, 3-5, 3-6 B was dull, too, and it wasn't even the same lesson!
But first, the new names.
Sooncheon has a broken leg, braces, and beautiful eyes. If I ask it of him, he can do a lot of writing.
Jangwon is a kid I'm already forgetting. He sits behind Teacher's Pet Jeongmin.
Junhee wears a red jacket and has a complacent world-weary look on his face like he's been schlepping pro bono cases at a charity lawfirm for 30 years. But when I noticed his schoolwork and how well he writes, he smiled in a way that made the whole class worthwhile.
Taegyu isn't even in the class. He's Japanese-Soccer-Kid, the one I punched in the back for squeezing a kid's face, the one who brought me the dead bat. He's close buddies with Sungjae, and he seems to love me despite (or because of?) the fact that I hit him. He wrote his real name in Japanese characters, then English. He's a sweet boy.
The boys didn't understand the second game we played, so I had 6 kids actively playing and 14 not. Nobody caused trouble. My poor Teacher's-Pet-Jeongmin kept his head on the desk for the whole class because he says he's sick. He actually does look quite sick and I wanted to fuss over him, but I talk to the same 5 boys every week in that class and the favoritism was starting to show pretty strong. I made myself go talk to new kids, and Jeongmin got left out. Sad times.
I-Love-You-Seongjae wanted to know why he's not written on my hand and other boys are. I explained that he was written in my brain and my hand was for kids I didn't know yet. That seemed to make him happy.
After lunch, I went to the special needs room and played piano with Jaehyung, meeting his regular-student friends Inha and Sangwon. Inha leans a bit toward bulllying and Sangwon seems to bear the brunt of it.
Oy. Now I have to try two 2nd-grade lessons back to back, then a double afterschool, hoping against hope that 2nd-grade lesson at least is not awful. I want to do well for them.
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6 PM: THANK GOODNESS WE HAVE TOMORROW OFF.
The two 2nd-grade classes were interesting at least, and the first one went way better than the second, which was full of swear-to-goodness the loudest kids on earth. And KBR-Teacher says half of them are her homeroom students, so she has to deal with them every day.
Then after the exhaustifrying back-to-back 2nd Grade A-classes (which you would think would be less trouble than the B classes but aren't), I get back-to-back afterschool.
What a perfect bunch of hellions they were.
And yet, I loved them more than I ever have. I don't know how it's possible to simultaneously feel so bad and so good about a class period, but today's afterschool left me drained but mostly happy.
We did the unstructured thing from last week where we played a few games, then every time they won, they could get something, like the Youtube video of their choice or 3 minutes on their cell phones. Nobody learns anything, but it's right good fun and we bond and I'm desperate for bonding.
I realized that I had been expecting compliance from Grumpmaster-Jiwoong without really loving him or even knowing anything about him or caring in the slightest who he is. So today I decided I'd do at least one exercise designed to get to know something about my afterschool boys--I'd write their name and something they're "good at" on the board.
They weren't severely interested in this activity, but it showed them that I was interested in them. When Jinseop couldn't think of anything he was good at, I wrote for him "Good at keeping Leigh-Teacher from the computer" and reminded him of last week, when he was a human barrier between me and the "off" button for the violent cartoon. Jinseop later showed that he felt my effort, because he presented me with a prime view of his phone wallpaper, a picture of his beloved dog. It's a white creampuff of a dog...maybe a bichon frise? And he says that Bingo is it's name-o. Sooooo cute.
They couldn't pick a video, so I made them sit through an inane yet catchy k-pop song, which they pretended to be annoyed at but which had their toes tapping. Next time, they were ready with a video choice.
Cardsharp-Minsu is feeling the love, too. He wouldn't play the "what I'm good at" game, but another kid said he was good at basketball, so I wrote it down. Then I said, "Of course Minsu is good at basketball! Because he's so tall. Tall people are good at basketball." Blatant flattery always wins over cats, and Minsu is all cat. After I said that, he never once tried to sleep or hide his head in class, and he was just in general My Boy for the day. This is not to say that he was always good--but he was my boy, pranks and all.
Then. Then there was Jiwoong. I prayed that I'd love him, and I did. I did love and do love that little brat-scoundrel, and he feels it. He would not answer a single question or write a single response for me, but I let him know I cared.
I don't know, but I have had a suspicion that Jiwoong envies the amount of attention I shower on Taehoon, his close buddy and my obvious favorite. I could be wrong--I'm a person who likes being liked, so naturally I'm going to interpret people's behavior to mean that they want me around more. But today I barely spoke to Taehoon who has a handsome baby-face and a charming personality so that I could focus on Jiwoong, who has neither but who is still valuable.
Jiwoong closed his eyes and put his head down on the table to ignore me every time I went over to ask him a question. So I petted his hair and said, "Wake up, Jiwoong-ah.....wake up." He would open his eyes sometimes, and he would never truly comply, but the corners of his mouth were smiling. It's the closest I've seen this bad-tempered boy to being happy. The times he would not open his eyes, I'd stare at his sleeping face for 30 seconds, smiling at him where Taehoon could see. Taehoon would yell at him in Korean, "Open your eyes already, she's just sitting here waiting!" But whether he complied or not was not important--I wanted Jiwoong to feel himself being adored, and for there to be witnesses.
And while his eyes were closed, I saw not a mostly-grown adolescent with a penchant for giving me headaches, but a little boy like my younger brother; someone worth protecting.
And now Jiwoong is my boy, too.
Again, not to say that Jiwoong was one whit well-behaved, but it became a game with us to see how bad they could try to be and how I'd react creatively.
Which leads me to all the jackets....
9 PM: Went out for coffee with O-Teacher and now I'm back for the rest of the story.
Jiwoong kept putting his jacket over his head, to use his phone or generally to ignore me. So I whipped it away and tied it around my waist. Game on, Jiwoong-ah. Next time I came by, His head was covered by his white dress shirt, which goes on top of the school polo. Whip. Now I'm wearing his jacket and his white shirt. Taehoon spreads his shirt over both their heads in a little while, so I get that one, too.
Before the class is through, I've got Jiwoong's red jacket and three white long-sleeved shirts belonging to Jiwoong, Taehoon, and Sanghwa tied around my waist, I'm wearing Taehoon's white jacket regular-style with my arms through the sleeves, and I've got Jiwoong's backpack on my back because he was sticking his head in it. I tied my hair back in a bun, and over the course of 10 minutes, I've grown to look as much like an oddly-layered middle school boy as a grown woman can.
They whined, but they were happy, too. I've seen the boys angry over losing their property, and this was a far cry from anger. Jiwoong would protest faintly, "That is my shirt..." and I would reply, "But it looks cuter on me," and I would do a half pirouette, modeling my weird student-fashion. They would inevitably cave and collapse into boy-giggles.
I still don't know what Jiwoong is good at or what he likes, but I know he secretly loves cutesy adorableness because when he refused to answer my question, wrote on the board, "Jiwoong--good at being cute" and he yelled protests for a few seconds before settling into pleased silence. And every time I did something stereotypically cute, he couldn't fight it. I have no idea what he and Taehoon were saying to each other when I'd blink and smile at them wide-eyed while telling them "no," but it sounded like, "how can you stay mad at her when she's doing that?" Just a guess. They could be cursing me out in Korean for all I know, but I got enough smiles to think they were not truly upset at any point.
And also, there's the "ah" and "-yah" ending I've been adding to their names. In Korean, if you know a kid well, you just sort of add a random extra syllable to their name at the end, an "ah" if their name ends in a consonant and a "yah" if it ends in a vowel. No clue why. But I had heard this on so many K-dramas, and sure enough, the other teachers do it with students they know by name.
So without even meaning to, I started calling Taehoon "Taehoon-ah". But he was the only kid I did this with, and I thought I heard Jiwoong mocking it, once. So today Jiwoong was "Jiwoong-ah" all class long. And Cardsharp-Minsu was Minsu-yah, again without my having to think about it. His name just came out that way. Sanghwa was Sanghwa-yah, but Joon is Joonie for whatever reason.
And during break, I asked Stoic-Seonghak to play his soccer videos, so that made him and Jinseop happy, and it showed Seonghak I remembered his interests.
During break, Hyun had no phone to play with, so I told him he could play with mine, so I let him download an app called "Cookie Run" and I watched him and Sunbin and Cardsharp-Minsu play it. Minsu didn't want to stop playing when break was over, then he remembered it was MY phone he was playing, so Minsu was as bashful as Minsu ever gets when he handed it over.
Minsu also showed his love by stealing my whiteboard eraser. We were playing one last round of 10 Questions and the boys didn't want to lose, so Minsu kept hopping up and wiping answers off the board, so that they still had plenty of questions left to lose. I wrote the words back, then when I leaned over to hear something Keundeok said, Minsu grabbed the eraser and ran up to erase them again. When I lunged for the eraser, he pivoted out of my reach and hid behind the projector sheet. I couldn't even deal with him properly because Jiwoong and Taehoon started an all-out fistfight in the back of the classroom, like stomach punches with an audible thwack.
So Minsu's way of showing that we're close is by causing me trouble. Being loved by a cat is just as unproductive as being hated by a cat--there's still precisely nothing getting done, but at least both you and the cat are happy.
And I'm trying to teach with all this going on. The boys actually got through several small games of 10 Questions, a powerpoint game called Rorschach Test, and the "What Are You Good At?" questionnaire at the beginning. I do hope and pray that some bright day I can teach them a real thing, a genuinely solid language thing that makes them smarter and shows that I can actually teach, but today I gained Minsu and I loved Jiwoong and Sanghwa's fuzzy noggin didn't get into any trouble, so. It was pretty nice.
And tomorrow I can sleep and sleep and figure out how to sparkle up those 1st and 3rd-grade lessons. Onward we go. :-)
----------------------------
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
9-19-13 Roommate's Back, Percy Jackson, and We Went to Seoul!
7 AM: I'm fine, I just had slow internet today and couldn't blog yesterday!
My roommate from EPIK orientation is an amazing person, so I asked her to come stay with me for the holiday. Yesterday, we walked all over my town and saw everything--my school, downtown, then the movie theater.
We had fun at Percy Jackson 2. It was one of those movies that doesn't have any depth but is still a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes, and it was great Korean language practice because I was reading the hangul subtitles while listening to the English and seeing the subtle differences between statements, like when the plain word "brother" is translated as "older brother" because the distinction is important in Korean and not important in English. Or when one character is thanked and replies, "No, thank you." and it came out in subtitles as, "I am the person giving thanks."
Today, we're considering a trip to Seoul. The train schedule is more complicated than it needs to be, but we shall figure something out. I'm so glad my roommate's here--she's really knowledgeable about travel and we just click, personality-wise.
Only saw three students from my school, yesterday, none of them ones I really know. The town really has emptied out, but there are still places to get food, etc. If we get to Seoul, what I really want to try is a cat cafe, a place where you buy an iced tea and sit around and pet the nice, clean domestic cats.
------------------------------------------
10:30 PM Great day! We wandered Seoul for 11 hours and it was great.
First, we went to Gangnam, because it's such a super-famous district, but because it was Chuseok the streets were vacant. At one point, we walked through a suburb and saw not another person for 10 minutes. Nothing was open except a Starbucks. We walked along the main streets past 20-story buildings and there were a few cars and a rare person, but it might as well have been the zombie apocalypse for the small remnant of humanity we saw.
So we left Gangnam and went to Itaewon, the foreigner district, where we knew people would be. It was a hit! There were so many people there, and around half of them were foreigners--white people, black people, and lots of people who looked Southeast Asian, possibly from the Philippines or Malaysia. Many Turkish people were there, too--Roommate and I actually had lunch at a Turkish restaurant, which was great.
I was losing energy completely by 4 PM, so we recouped at a coffee shop, just taking an hour to sit and refresh. It worked fine, and we went wandering down the streets, which were nice and full.
I like Itaewon. Supposedly, it's a bit crime-y at night, but during the day it has a nice personality, like you feel you could walk into any shop and be welcomed there. I bought a couple of baseball caps, a shirt, and a bracelet at sidewalk stalls--it was really fun.
Roomate and I started climbing up a random set of stairs nestled into a hill, to get a better view of Itaewon. The view just kept getting nicer, so we climbed more stairs and took trails that wound further up and around the mountain. Soon, we came to some gardens and ponds, and realized the place was a park. We kept exploring to see where things would lead because we were seeing a lot of people, many with pets or children in tow, walking up the winding, ultra-steep paths.
I saw a sign saying "Namsan Gongwon" or Namsan Park and I looked up to see...Namsan Tower in the nearby skyline. Namsan Tower is a major-major-major landmark in Seoul and I have seen it in several TV shows and read about it on several teacher-blogs. I wondered if we could possibly walk to it from our place in the park. We could. It was 2 kilometers from where we started out, but we walked to the top of the mountain and saw almost the whole city.
It was so beautiful up there, near sunset. The place was very crowded, despite it being Chuseok, and we rode back down on a cable car just before sunset.
After some more walking, we found Seoul Station and. bought tickets back home. They were standing-room only, but we sat the whole way in the cafe car, which was necessary for the survival of our feet.
It's been just over one month that I've been in this country, and today was my first time really adventuring in Seoul. And I walked up a mountain and saw a fantastic tourist spot...by accident! The Lord really took care of us today, and though there were a lot of tiring moments, I was never really worried. We always had a decent idea of where we were, and we had our phones, and we had each other.
It's been a great Chuseok.
My roommate from EPIK orientation is an amazing person, so I asked her to come stay with me for the holiday. Yesterday, we walked all over my town and saw everything--my school, downtown, then the movie theater.
We had fun at Percy Jackson 2. It was one of those movies that doesn't have any depth but is still a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes, and it was great Korean language practice because I was reading the hangul subtitles while listening to the English and seeing the subtle differences between statements, like when the plain word "brother" is translated as "older brother" because the distinction is important in Korean and not important in English. Or when one character is thanked and replies, "No, thank you." and it came out in subtitles as, "I am the person giving thanks."
Today, we're considering a trip to Seoul. The train schedule is more complicated than it needs to be, but we shall figure something out. I'm so glad my roommate's here--she's really knowledgeable about travel and we just click, personality-wise.
Only saw three students from my school, yesterday, none of them ones I really know. The town really has emptied out, but there are still places to get food, etc. If we get to Seoul, what I really want to try is a cat cafe, a place where you buy an iced tea and sit around and pet the nice, clean domestic cats.
------------------------------------------
10:30 PM Great day! We wandered Seoul for 11 hours and it was great.
First, we went to Gangnam, because it's such a super-famous district, but because it was Chuseok the streets were vacant. At one point, we walked through a suburb and saw not another person for 10 minutes. Nothing was open except a Starbucks. We walked along the main streets past 20-story buildings and there were a few cars and a rare person, but it might as well have been the zombie apocalypse for the small remnant of humanity we saw.
So we left Gangnam and went to Itaewon, the foreigner district, where we knew people would be. It was a hit! There were so many people there, and around half of them were foreigners--white people, black people, and lots of people who looked Southeast Asian, possibly from the Philippines or Malaysia. Many Turkish people were there, too--Roommate and I actually had lunch at a Turkish restaurant, which was great.
I was losing energy completely by 4 PM, so we recouped at a coffee shop, just taking an hour to sit and refresh. It worked fine, and we went wandering down the streets, which were nice and full.
I like Itaewon. Supposedly, it's a bit crime-y at night, but during the day it has a nice personality, like you feel you could walk into any shop and be welcomed there. I bought a couple of baseball caps, a shirt, and a bracelet at sidewalk stalls--it was really fun.
Roomate and I started climbing up a random set of stairs nestled into a hill, to get a better view of Itaewon. The view just kept getting nicer, so we climbed more stairs and took trails that wound further up and around the mountain. Soon, we came to some gardens and ponds, and realized the place was a park. We kept exploring to see where things would lead because we were seeing a lot of people, many with pets or children in tow, walking up the winding, ultra-steep paths.
I saw a sign saying "Namsan Gongwon" or Namsan Park and I looked up to see...Namsan Tower in the nearby skyline. Namsan Tower is a major-major-major landmark in Seoul and I have seen it in several TV shows and read about it on several teacher-blogs. I wondered if we could possibly walk to it from our place in the park. We could. It was 2 kilometers from where we started out, but we walked to the top of the mountain and saw almost the whole city.
It was so beautiful up there, near sunset. The place was very crowded, despite it being Chuseok, and we rode back down on a cable car just before sunset.
This Is Not My Picture, It's Taken From Google,
But This Is What We Rode On.
After some more walking, we found Seoul Station and. bought tickets back home. They were standing-room only, but we sat the whole way in the cafe car, which was necessary for the survival of our feet.
It's been just over one month that I've been in this country, and today was my first time really adventuring in Seoul. And I walked up a mountain and saw a fantastic tourist spot...by accident! The Lord really took care of us today, and though there were a lot of tiring moments, I was never really worried. We always had a decent idea of where we were, and we had our phones, and we had each other.
It's been a great Chuseok.
Monday, September 16, 2013
9-17-13 Turkey Attack, Math and Piano With Jaehyung, and Good 3rd-Graders
10:30 AM Whee! First class went well! Yesterday's classes were a bit boring, so I changed it up for today and downloaded a powerpoint game called Turkey Attack. I showed the boys of 2-7, 2-8 A some slides about Thanksgiving, then we played the game to see how much they remembered. There was shouting, there were accusations, there was general uproar and rioting in the streets. But they were Englishing, and more importantly, they were happy.
Peter-Pan-Taehoon is in this class and, as always, he waited for me to do his worksheet with him. In this class there is also Grumpmaster-Jiwoong, but there were so many fun, loud boys in the class, his grumpiness was minimized, and I even saw him shouting answers and arguing with the other boys. Tanned-Ikgwang is in here also, as are Sparkly-Daehoon and Daehoon's Friend-Jihyuk.
Diamond-in-the-Rough-Seonghyun from my afterschool is in this class, too. I only noticed Seonghyun for real yesterday, when I struck out with Grumpmaster-Jiwoong and Cardsharp-Minsu and I just had to succeed with some kid or I was going eat all their candy myself. I sat by Seonghyun and worked with him on a story about a book that made a kid invisible, and it was awesome. Today, there were 4 teams in class and Seonghyun led his team to victory. He remembered a massive amount of material from the slides and calmly stated the correct answer. Diamond-Seonghyun probably needs more notice in the future. I told him today, "Seonghyun, you're really smart." He smiled and all his friends heard it, so that went over well.
My mom reminded me to get Chuseok presents for important people, so this morning I left a container of my favorite coffee for Mr. B, and chocolate bars with thank-you notes for Co-Teacher, KBR-Teacher and a new girl, S-Teacher, who I only taught with for the first time yesterday. I have 2 chocolate bars left, and I think I need to save one as a prize for my afterschool boys. Who gets the other? B-Teacher? Vice-Principal? Principal? Gosh, I should have gotten more, but this morning 1 canister of coffee and 5 chocolate bars looked like plenty of presents.
I spent 20 minutes with O-Teacher and the special needs boys. Joonsung is the Piano Prodigy who wants me to sing better in Korean, and Jaehyung is my friend, who I play Heart and Soul with. I don't know the other two boys well, but Byeongsu is small and Chanyeong is big, so I remember them by size.
Jaehyung is always smiling. If you didn't know, it would be hard for you to tell he has autism until you really hear him talk. Whereas Joonsung is on the more severe end of the autism spectrum, though his English is actually rather good. When I picked up a book that Joonsung did not want me to touch, he took it from me, then nudged my arm with his head. I suppose a head-butt is his way of saying, "How could you?"
When I sat down at the table in their class, Jaehyung asked O-Teacher why I was there: "Sem isseoyo. Waeyo?" She explained that I was there to help them with math. MATH. So at O-Teacher's prompting, I helped Jaehyung with his math problems. So there's me, a word-person, helping an autistic teenager with mathematics. In Korean. Fortunately, the math was simple and I knew the words for the numbers. And Jaehyung was smart, too, so we got through. When he finished, O-Teacher said he could play piano as a reward, so we practiced our duet a bit more. And Jaehyung was humming "Heart and Soul" while he did his subtraction problems. Sweet.
-------------------------------------------
11:30 AM --Woohooo, just checked a Korean book out of our school library, using only Korean. WHO'S THE MAN? I'm the man. Sort of.
---------------------------------------------
1 PM : 1-5, 1-6 B went well. This is the class with Hyunshik-Pig, Munsu-Octopus, Jinho-Puppy and Acapella-Hyunho. Hyunho committed himself to my memory last week when he said he enjoyed acapella music and sang with one of the videos. This time I finally added Smart-Heekyu to the list of boys I recall. I wrote Heekyu on my hand last week, but I didn't remember him because his brand of intelligence is very quiet. Heekyu's a wonderful kid though, and he hung around after class to say, "See you later, Teacher."
The Turkey Hunt game went well, though there's a huge difference in what A-level and B-level can remember. So I wrote words on the board as the slides went by, to jog their memory, and that helped. There were several kids trying to sleep, but I think at least one of them--Hyunshik--had a severe headache. I should learn more of 1-5, 1-6 B because they're a good bunch of kids.
At lunch, I managed to greet Huge-Eyes-Jeonghee who I met yesterday. I was really afraid I would forget Jeonghee because he seemed to care that I remembered him. He's lovely. At lunch I sat with O-Teacher and the special needs boys on one side, and Inseong and Secret and the other 3rd-graders on the other side. There seemed to be some debate and some pushing regarding who was supposed to sit by me, but it ended up being Secret again. Secret managed to tell me that our lunch co-ordinator is crazy. He said she's only nice "on surface," but is crazy on the inside.
I'm seeing Walk-to-School-Minki everywhere. He greeted me as he stood in the lunchline, and Laryngitis-Seonghoon punched him in the stomach. But then Minki put Seonghoon in a chokehold, so. All's right in the world, or something. It's so weird to catch myself feeling happy when the kids are beating each other up in equal measures.
Saturday-Jeongmin met me in the hall to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving, aka Chuseok. He informed me that the two holidays were "very similar". I love when he does his lecturer-delivering-cultural-info voice
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2: 40 PM Third class went well. I really need to learn names for 2-5, 2-6 B, because I know a few faces but don't have the kids in my brain yet. They did well with the game and I immediately went to sit with the cool kids as soon as the game was over and it was time to do Chuseok worksheets. My new strategy is to cozy up to the cool kids first, if it's possible.
The quiet kids need me more, in all likelihood. But if you don't go talk to the troublemakers first, they'll think you don't like them. AND they'll be bored, which is double death. But when I went to the cool kids first in 1-7, 1-8 B on Monday, everything went smoother. Same thing here. Seongsu is the only boy I really know, and I remember him because he made fun of my laugh back in week one. I made a beeline for Seongsu and his crew after the game. After some prodding, they filled out their worksheets just fine and we shared some laughs over the fact that their big plans for Chuseok are going to the PC room to play computer games.
Laughter-Seongsu's friend Dongjoon has slightly better English, and in my head he's Really-Dongjoon because he kept reassuring me that he was telling the truth by saying "really". Seongsu and I get along fine now that I understand that mimicry is his way of having fun, not his way of attacking.
Seongsu told me my eyes were beautiful, then a friend of his said my face was beautiful, and a third friend went a bit further and said, "body, Teacher, S-line very nice!" complete with hand motions to illustrate what he meant, in case I didn't get it. I elbowed him in the ribs and the slight pain seemed to calm him down. You just have to be a little bit mean when they're being a little bit idiotic, and everything turns out. You can't get too mad because they're still little kids in a lot of ways and they're not being threatening, but you can't let it slide either, or they'll take it as a signal to say more.
So I hope that as the weeks wear on, I can spend more time with the quiet ones. I don't want to be a respecter of persons, valuing the charismatic kids more than the less sparkling ones, but sometimes I have to make a decision in class and pick a maximum of five kids to really interact with. If the Lord blesses, I'll get to have it be a different 5 kids next week.
-----------------------------------
5 PM: Freeedoooommmm! I didn't have an afterschool! We let out, we are done! I have a friend from Gangwon coming to stay with me tomorrow, and we are going to soak in the vacation.
3-3, 3-4 B went great. I thought I remembered these boys being my single worst bunch of 3rd-graders from last week. I had a 45-minute lesson for them that lasted 20 minutes, and I remember looking over at Mr. B like "what happened? what do I do now?" I hashed something together because I survived that class, but it was nasty. No one was mean, but they were a level of uncooperative I have not previously seen.
Ah, but today would be different. Today, I had Turkey Attack. 3 classes had already loved this game, and fun and candy were there for the having. They tried not to react, but the thrice-blessed teacher who put together the turkey powerpoint game designed it to have moments where instead of merely gaining or losing points, you can attack another team and make them lose points. Team 3, who took a full minute to say a single word in English when I asked them the first question, was screaming out responses when presented with the chance of taking points away from teams who had taken points from them.
I did worksheets with the cool kids again. The weird thing is, the class leader for 3-3, 3-4 B looks nearly identical to Laughter-Seongsu, the loudest kid in 2-5, 2-6 B, my previous class. Weeeeird. I have even mistake the 3rd-grade boy for Seongsu before. The 3rd-grade instigator of 3-3, 3-4 B is Hyungjin, and the way I can tell him apart from Seongsu in appearance is that he is slightly taller and has much prettier eyelashes. Eyelashes-Hyungjin wanted candy so badly although his team lost the Turkey Attack, but I had it set up where if the boys finished their worksheet, they got candy, so he had his piece after all.
Mr. B was proud of me after class. I had really wanted to show him that game, because our class together yesterday was fairly boring and I wanted him to see that I could change my plans and do something fun for the boys. It was great. I have worried so much about being a disappointment to Mr. B, but when I started focusing on doing lovely things for the students, I got the side benefit of lots of praise from Mr. B. Almost like Solomon asking for wisdom from God instead of money, then getting wisdom and money. Only not as important or Biblical.
He said these boys are the single worst batch of 3rd-grade B-class, but they were engaged today. He said they loved the game, and that he likes my style of going around one-on-one and talking with each boy. The trouble is, he says, that when I'm with one kid, the rest of the room acts up, but he agrees that teaching to the whole room does not work. It's not my fault, he says, it's just the difficulty of teaching these boys. Yay! Happy kids and happy teachers! I can't think of a better note to end the work week on.
I gave the two remaining chocolate bars to JY-Teacher and to my Vice-Principal. Everyone seemed happy with the little presents, and one of the teachers said he was jealous of the Vice-Principal and wanted chocolate too. In Korean, I told him "There is no more," which made all the men laugh. The male teachers all said goodbye to me today, one shook my hand, and some went out of their way to speak English when it's hard for them to do so. It was terribly thoughtful.
After lunch, I played piano with Jaehyung some more. This time about 10 of the regular students crowded into the room to listen, so I was happy he was getting the extra positive attention. Jaehyung is so likable, he seems to be treated very well by the non-special-needs students. From what I can tell, everyone understands that he needs to be protected, and they do so. I need to find us some more piano duets--maybe order some sheet music so I can learn it, then teach it to him. Maybe a Canon in D variation?
Greeted Shotputter-Jinseong about 3 times today--being the size of linebacker, he is hard to miss. Jinseong seems to appreciate the attention, and I appreciate the chance to give it, so everybody wins.
----------------------------------
Peter-Pan-Taehoon is in this class and, as always, he waited for me to do his worksheet with him. In this class there is also Grumpmaster-Jiwoong, but there were so many fun, loud boys in the class, his grumpiness was minimized, and I even saw him shouting answers and arguing with the other boys. Tanned-Ikgwang is in here also, as are Sparkly-Daehoon and Daehoon's Friend-Jihyuk.
Diamond-in-the-Rough-Seonghyun from my afterschool is in this class, too. I only noticed Seonghyun for real yesterday, when I struck out with Grumpmaster-Jiwoong and Cardsharp-Minsu and I just had to succeed with some kid or I was going eat all their candy myself. I sat by Seonghyun and worked with him on a story about a book that made a kid invisible, and it was awesome. Today, there were 4 teams in class and Seonghyun led his team to victory. He remembered a massive amount of material from the slides and calmly stated the correct answer. Diamond-Seonghyun probably needs more notice in the future. I told him today, "Seonghyun, you're really smart." He smiled and all his friends heard it, so that went over well.
My mom reminded me to get Chuseok presents for important people, so this morning I left a container of my favorite coffee for Mr. B, and chocolate bars with thank-you notes for Co-Teacher, KBR-Teacher and a new girl, S-Teacher, who I only taught with for the first time yesterday. I have 2 chocolate bars left, and I think I need to save one as a prize for my afterschool boys. Who gets the other? B-Teacher? Vice-Principal? Principal? Gosh, I should have gotten more, but this morning 1 canister of coffee and 5 chocolate bars looked like plenty of presents.
I spent 20 minutes with O-Teacher and the special needs boys. Joonsung is the Piano Prodigy who wants me to sing better in Korean, and Jaehyung is my friend, who I play Heart and Soul with. I don't know the other two boys well, but Byeongsu is small and Chanyeong is big, so I remember them by size.
Jaehyung is always smiling. If you didn't know, it would be hard for you to tell he has autism until you really hear him talk. Whereas Joonsung is on the more severe end of the autism spectrum, though his English is actually rather good. When I picked up a book that Joonsung did not want me to touch, he took it from me, then nudged my arm with his head. I suppose a head-butt is his way of saying, "How could you?"
When I sat down at the table in their class, Jaehyung asked O-Teacher why I was there: "Sem isseoyo. Waeyo?" She explained that I was there to help them with math. MATH. So at O-Teacher's prompting, I helped Jaehyung with his math problems. So there's me, a word-person, helping an autistic teenager with mathematics. In Korean. Fortunately, the math was simple and I knew the words for the numbers. And Jaehyung was smart, too, so we got through. When he finished, O-Teacher said he could play piano as a reward, so we practiced our duet a bit more. And Jaehyung was humming "Heart and Soul" while he did his subtraction problems. Sweet.
-------------------------------------------
11:30 AM --Woohooo, just checked a Korean book out of our school library, using only Korean. WHO'S THE MAN? I'm the man. Sort of.
---------------------------------------------
1 PM : 1-5, 1-6 B went well. This is the class with Hyunshik-Pig, Munsu-Octopus, Jinho-Puppy and Acapella-Hyunho. Hyunho committed himself to my memory last week when he said he enjoyed acapella music and sang with one of the videos. This time I finally added Smart-Heekyu to the list of boys I recall. I wrote Heekyu on my hand last week, but I didn't remember him because his brand of intelligence is very quiet. Heekyu's a wonderful kid though, and he hung around after class to say, "See you later, Teacher."
The Turkey Hunt game went well, though there's a huge difference in what A-level and B-level can remember. So I wrote words on the board as the slides went by, to jog their memory, and that helped. There were several kids trying to sleep, but I think at least one of them--Hyunshik--had a severe headache. I should learn more of 1-5, 1-6 B because they're a good bunch of kids.
At lunch, I managed to greet Huge-Eyes-Jeonghee who I met yesterday. I was really afraid I would forget Jeonghee because he seemed to care that I remembered him. He's lovely. At lunch I sat with O-Teacher and the special needs boys on one side, and Inseong and Secret and the other 3rd-graders on the other side. There seemed to be some debate and some pushing regarding who was supposed to sit by me, but it ended up being Secret again. Secret managed to tell me that our lunch co-ordinator is crazy. He said she's only nice "on surface," but is crazy on the inside.
I'm seeing Walk-to-School-Minki everywhere. He greeted me as he stood in the lunchline, and Laryngitis-Seonghoon punched him in the stomach. But then Minki put Seonghoon in a chokehold, so. All's right in the world, or something. It's so weird to catch myself feeling happy when the kids are beating each other up in equal measures.
Saturday-Jeongmin met me in the hall to wish me a Happy Thanksgiving, aka Chuseok. He informed me that the two holidays were "very similar". I love when he does his lecturer-delivering-cultural-info voice
-----------------------------------------------------
2: 40 PM Third class went well. I really need to learn names for 2-5, 2-6 B, because I know a few faces but don't have the kids in my brain yet. They did well with the game and I immediately went to sit with the cool kids as soon as the game was over and it was time to do Chuseok worksheets. My new strategy is to cozy up to the cool kids first, if it's possible.
The quiet kids need me more, in all likelihood. But if you don't go talk to the troublemakers first, they'll think you don't like them. AND they'll be bored, which is double death. But when I went to the cool kids first in 1-7, 1-8 B on Monday, everything went smoother. Same thing here. Seongsu is the only boy I really know, and I remember him because he made fun of my laugh back in week one. I made a beeline for Seongsu and his crew after the game. After some prodding, they filled out their worksheets just fine and we shared some laughs over the fact that their big plans for Chuseok are going to the PC room to play computer games.
Laughter-Seongsu's friend Dongjoon has slightly better English, and in my head he's Really-Dongjoon because he kept reassuring me that he was telling the truth by saying "really". Seongsu and I get along fine now that I understand that mimicry is his way of having fun, not his way of attacking.
Seongsu told me my eyes were beautiful, then a friend of his said my face was beautiful, and a third friend went a bit further and said, "body, Teacher, S-line very nice!" complete with hand motions to illustrate what he meant, in case I didn't get it. I elbowed him in the ribs and the slight pain seemed to calm him down. You just have to be a little bit mean when they're being a little bit idiotic, and everything turns out. You can't get too mad because they're still little kids in a lot of ways and they're not being threatening, but you can't let it slide either, or they'll take it as a signal to say more.
So I hope that as the weeks wear on, I can spend more time with the quiet ones. I don't want to be a respecter of persons, valuing the charismatic kids more than the less sparkling ones, but sometimes I have to make a decision in class and pick a maximum of five kids to really interact with. If the Lord blesses, I'll get to have it be a different 5 kids next week.
-----------------------------------
5 PM: Freeedoooommmm! I didn't have an afterschool! We let out, we are done! I have a friend from Gangwon coming to stay with me tomorrow, and we are going to soak in the vacation.
3-3, 3-4 B went great. I thought I remembered these boys being my single worst bunch of 3rd-graders from last week. I had a 45-minute lesson for them that lasted 20 minutes, and I remember looking over at Mr. B like "what happened? what do I do now?" I hashed something together because I survived that class, but it was nasty. No one was mean, but they were a level of uncooperative I have not previously seen.
Ah, but today would be different. Today, I had Turkey Attack. 3 classes had already loved this game, and fun and candy were there for the having. They tried not to react, but the thrice-blessed teacher who put together the turkey powerpoint game designed it to have moments where instead of merely gaining or losing points, you can attack another team and make them lose points. Team 3, who took a full minute to say a single word in English when I asked them the first question, was screaming out responses when presented with the chance of taking points away from teams who had taken points from them.
I did worksheets with the cool kids again. The weird thing is, the class leader for 3-3, 3-4 B looks nearly identical to Laughter-Seongsu, the loudest kid in 2-5, 2-6 B, my previous class. Weeeeird. I have even mistake the 3rd-grade boy for Seongsu before. The 3rd-grade instigator of 3-3, 3-4 B is Hyungjin, and the way I can tell him apart from Seongsu in appearance is that he is slightly taller and has much prettier eyelashes. Eyelashes-Hyungjin wanted candy so badly although his team lost the Turkey Attack, but I had it set up where if the boys finished their worksheet, they got candy, so he had his piece after all.
Mr. B was proud of me after class. I had really wanted to show him that game, because our class together yesterday was fairly boring and I wanted him to see that I could change my plans and do something fun for the boys. It was great. I have worried so much about being a disappointment to Mr. B, but when I started focusing on doing lovely things for the students, I got the side benefit of lots of praise from Mr. B. Almost like Solomon asking for wisdom from God instead of money, then getting wisdom and money. Only not as important or Biblical.
He said these boys are the single worst batch of 3rd-grade B-class, but they were engaged today. He said they loved the game, and that he likes my style of going around one-on-one and talking with each boy. The trouble is, he says, that when I'm with one kid, the rest of the room acts up, but he agrees that teaching to the whole room does not work. It's not my fault, he says, it's just the difficulty of teaching these boys. Yay! Happy kids and happy teachers! I can't think of a better note to end the work week on.
I gave the two remaining chocolate bars to JY-Teacher and to my Vice-Principal. Everyone seemed happy with the little presents, and one of the teachers said he was jealous of the Vice-Principal and wanted chocolate too. In Korean, I told him "There is no more," which made all the men laugh. The male teachers all said goodbye to me today, one shook my hand, and some went out of their way to speak English when it's hard for them to do so. It was terribly thoughtful.
After lunch, I played piano with Jaehyung some more. This time about 10 of the regular students crowded into the room to listen, so I was happy he was getting the extra positive attention. Jaehyung is so likable, he seems to be treated very well by the non-special-needs students. From what I can tell, everyone understands that he needs to be protected, and they do so. I need to find us some more piano duets--maybe order some sheet music so I can learn it, then teach it to him. Maybe a Canon in D variation?
Greeted Shotputter-Jinseong about 3 times today--being the size of linebacker, he is hard to miss. Jinseong seems to appreciate the attention, and I appreciate the chance to give it, so everybody wins.
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Sunday, September 15, 2013
9-16-13 Chuseok Lessons, Grumpy Jiwoong, and Cartoons I'll Never Watch Again
8:30 AM- I'm somewhat nervous about how my lessons will go today, since I only teach Monday and Tuesday and I'm trying to do a cultural lesson on Thanksgiving and Chuseok so that none of the kids are ahead of the others in the book.
As I was trying not to worry on my walk up to the school, I saw Byeonghyun-the-Letter-Writer smiling and waving from a second-story window. How can you fail to be happy when that kid is smiling at you? And then when I got to my office, he walked through the door with a canned drink for me. I took a picture.
As I was trying not to worry on my walk up to the school, I saw Byeonghyun-the-Letter-Writer smiling and waving from a second-story window. How can you fail to be happy when that kid is smiling at you? And then when I got to my office, he walked through the door with a canned drink for me. I took a picture.
The Can, In Front of His Letter, Still Tacked To My Cubicle Wall.
I opened it, and it's coffee! I can't get enough coffee, so that makes this an even better present. Okay, the rest of the day can go however. I'm happy now.
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11 AM: 1-7, 1-8 B went well. My little baby Hyo was cheek-pinchably cute as always, and Class-Clown-Hyunmin got along really well with me. The lesson on Thanksgiving and Chuseok went fine, even though I didn't teach them anything new in terms of words, all the boys seemed willing to work with me on their papers.
Hyunmin and his crew of 4 other fairly cool boys let me pull up a chair among them and work on writing about Chuseok. They spoke in mostly Korean, and seemed really gratified that I could usually take their meaning. I wish we'd had more English produced verbally, but at least they were writing it. These same boys acted up pretty majorly last week, so it was like a tea party, sitting inside a knot of 5 of them, talking about their Chuseok plans. They wanted to know if I've ever played League of Legends, and by now I'm fairly convinced that I need to get myself to a PC Room to see what all the fuss is about.
I met 2 new small ones in 1-7, 1-8 B: Chanjin and Mingyu, who are best buddies and who were happy to talk a bit. Minjoon is the member of Hyunmin's cool crew who had the best English, and Hyukjae is the person among the normal kids who had the best English. All 4 names are written on my hand, and I also met a sleepyhead named Moonshik who was a darling kid to work with, every time I nudged him from his slumbers.
It was a beautiful class, actually. I got so much one-on-one time, I feel like we're getting somewhere. Even after the bell rang to dismiss us, two of the boys let me sit by them and finish their Chuseok poems. And the cool crew took 2 minutes to try to explain to me that one kid in the back's nickname was "grasshopper," and that got us talking about animals. I said I was born in the Chinese year of the Tiger, and they replied that Kid-In-The-Back was born in the Year of the Grasshopper. There is no such year, but I like their creativity.
Saturday-Jeongmin walked into class as I was leaving and I got to ask him which class he normally stays in--he's 1-8, but he's A-level and I only teach B-level 1st-graders. I told him I wanted to give him a thank-you note for helping me on Saturday. I went downstairs, got out my stickypad notes and a purple pen and wrote, "Jeongmin, thanks so much for helping me on Saturday. You're the best! --Leigh-Teacher".
I walked back up four flights of stairs, then when I inquired about Jeongmin, someone in 1-8 directed me to the next room. I presented Jeongmin with his tiny thank-you letter, then left. The boy who showed me to Jeongmin seemed to be saying that his name was Seongmin and that he should get a note as well, because their names were similar.
One unknown child in a P.E. shirt has decided to shake my hand every time we pass in the hallway.
Met little 1st-grader Laryngitis-Seonghoon on the stairwell, where he announced, "Glasses!" and pulled on a sleep mask designed to look like a pair of sunglasses. I rubbed his head and said it was "very cute".
Coming down from 1-7, 1-8 B, I saw one of the bigger boys squeezing a smaller kid's face very hard, and the smaller kid was making pained noises. The big guy was the boy who brought me the dead bat last week, the boy who always wears a soccer uniform and who the other kids say is Japanese--I don't know if they're joking or serious when they say that. When Soccer Player let the smaller boy go, the smaller kid looked just fine and when he saw me, he beamed and said, "Hello, Princess!" It's the first time any kid has used that term, so I assumed he was okay.
Still, I punched Soccer Player in the back to get his attention, and he did not react because he presumably did not feel a thing. Then I touched his shoulder and said, "Hey. Hey. Be nice." Soccer Player smiled and nodded, then said "Konnichiwa!" So either he actually is Japanese, or he's playing along with the foreigner role the other boys have assigned him. Now that I've interacted with him, I think I like Soccer Player. He may play too rough, but he seems to have a pleasant nature. I'll try to get his name, soon.
Seongjae-the-I-Love-You came up in the hallway to remind me that I teach him in 4th period class. As if I'd forget that. So in just a bit I've got my favorite 3rd-graders, Seongjae, Yeonghyo, Hyunjoon, Hwangmin, and Teacher's-Pet-Jeongmin. Looking forward to seeing them!
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1 PM: Class with 3-5, 3-6 B went fine. Mr.B was at a parent-teacher conference, so I had them by myself and they weren't bad. It was hard to get them to write on their worksheets, though. And Teacher's-Pet-Jeongmin was in a fine frenzy. I was apparently not paying enough attention to him, so he would flounce about and walk over to other people's tables to talk with them. When it took me too long to come sit by him, he yelled "Hurry up!"in English. I gave him a look that said I loved him but he was treading on thin ice. I instructed him to say he was sorry and he did.
When I spent too much time with Seongjae's crowd at the front of the room, Jeongmin started crooning what I assume is an actual song that gets radio play but which might have been his own invention, "I love yooooou. I love you so muuuuuch. I'm hurrrrrt." When we did start his worksheet together, he wouldn't name traditional Chuseok foods, and instead decided to write all the food-words he knew, like "chicken, water, ice cream, " but when I left, he was soon off talking while I was trying to speak to the class, and I had to tell him to be quiet, using his full name. It's rather like dealing with a spoiled kitten.
Soon, the lunch bell rang and I went to eat with O-Teacher and the special-needs boys. It's mildly unusual for a teacher to sit with students, but it's fine for mine because I'm with O-Teacher and she has to sit with her boys. But then some 3rd-graders who were decidedly not special-needs kids came up and sat by me. "Hello, good to see you again!" trilled one of them, then didn't speak again for the rest of the time. When asked about his name, he said "Secret!" But I did learn the name of his friend, Inseong, who was probably the guy with the idea to come over. I don't teach Inseong, but he says goodbye to me everyday on my walk home.
Saturday-Jeongmin said thank you for the thank-you note. Gave Poet-HH another decent high-five. We're on a roll! Trying to figure out a game for the next two classes. I want to do something a little more fun with the lesson.
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6:30 PM My two second-grade classes went fine. The boys were a wee bit bored, but when I brought out the candy rewards, they perked right up. I can't offer them candy every day, but today I wanted to do something special since Chuseok is coming up. Some boys who never would have talked to me or written their vocabulary on their own suddenly brightened up and made a serious effort. I had a good time talking to them.
My poetry-writing exercise was a non-starter because I was working with B-class students. I bet the A's could have made it work, but at least I coaxed a few new words out of the B's. And I found out that Minsu in my afterschool is also B-class. What is up with so many B-class being in English afterschool? Minsu likes cards, and I need to have an excuse to let him use them in class. Cardsharp-Minsu is also very much like a cat---he craves attention and kicks up a storm to get what he wants, then when you actually have time to engage him, he's not interested and can't be bothered to roll his head in your direction. He shouted and blustered that he needed candy, until I said he would have to write a story to get it. Then he claimed he never cared for chocolate in the first place. Absolute cat.
Afterschool went fine except for Jiwoong. Grumpmaster-Jiwoong came to class 15 minutes late, after another teacher hunted him down. When the other boys put up their phones, he draped his jacket over his head and kept his phone, claiming that he was not playing it. I put his phone in my pocket and he demanded, "You steal my phone. Give me my phone!" I explained to him that he needed to speak in a kinder tone. I said he was speaking in "yeongeo banmal" or English informal language. A student should never speak to a teacher in Korean banmal, so he understood that I was telling him to be more respectful.
I said, "It's not "give me my phone!" You can say, "Give me my phone, please." Jiwoong replied, "No. You steal my phone. Give me my phone." I said, "Jiwoong, if you say "please," you can have your phone back. Say "please"." He said, "You take my phone. You drive me crazy." Oy. The other boys are screaming at him at this point, telling him to be more polite, but he won't budge. Peter-Pan-Taehoon is one of Jiwoong's buddies and I think Taehoon was the angriest at Jiwoong for his fussiness. The wrath of Taehoon is pretty fierce.
Anyways, i just dropped the issue. Jiwoong refused to write a story with me, and I think he wrote something bad about me in Korean, because I saw the Koreanization of my name written in a scrawled sentence on his paper. 3 minutes before class ended, I gave him his phone back, trying to show him that I cared and I was not unreasonable, and he immediately started playing phone games. I'm trying to figure out what's this boy's motivation--does he want to be perceived as tough in front of his schoolmates? Is he the type who will resist me to the death, just to prove a point? I'm not trying to control him for the fun of it. I wanted to give him chocolate, and I wanted to give his phone back, but he would not be less than a grade-A grump.
My Taehoon moved to the back of the room for the second half of class and put his head down on the table. He seemed genuinely exhausted. While the other boys were writing stories, I went to the back to work with Taehoon. I nudged him awake and we wrote a story about a boy with a magic dog. I said we needed a villain, so what should the bad man's name be? He grinned at said, "Jiwoong," knowing that Jiwoong had just given me a first-rate headache. Taehoon later changed the name on the paper to "Minho," another friend of his. I was just glad that on a rough day, I could still write stories with Taehoon and make him smile.
I worked with a quiet boy in class called Seonghyun, and I've never talked to him before because he's not brilliant and he's not trouble. But he smiles so brightly and he laughs at my jokes, and he was perhaps the only boy left I could work with after being pointedly ignored by Grumpmaster-Jiwoong and shrugged off by Cardsharp-Minsu. That kind of rejection can get to a girl, but Seonghyun was ready to work on his story, so he got his chocolate and I also got to meet a new kid that I really like.
Letter-Byeonghyun's story had me in it--I was a powerful villain. But I don't think he was trying to send me any secret messages or anything. I never got mean or angry with Jiwoong. Clever-Seonwoo wrote a good story on his own, Seonbin and Hyun wrote a very bloody tale together complete with illustrations, and Seonghak and Jinseop wrote a good full-page story together. Protector-Seongyeol wrote two brilliant sentences, but he overthinks everything. Sanghwa wasn't there because he said he had a problem with his eyes, but I don't care if he was lying or not because he told me sweetly, and that's pretty good.
Also, for the almost 2 hours of afterschool, I played 10 Questions with the boys. I'd think of a song, a teacher at our school, a movie, a country, etc. If they guessed it right, they could watch a Youtube video of their choice. What they chose was this horrible, nasty cartoon where the characters keep dying bloody deaths. I won't watch it with them again, but for today I was just letting them access something they liked. Half the fun for them seemed to be watching my horrified reactions to their chosen entertainment.
They loved winning 10 Questions so they could get back to a few more minutes of their horrible cartoon. It became a big production when I'd "lose" and be forced to watch more of it--it was like little boys holding a frog in front of a girl's face for the fun of hearing the shriek. I played it up, too, and let them enjoy their moment. Because this is bonding time. Everything's more fun when your teacher is their to praise you or be aghast at your questionable taste.
The boys were screaming out answers for 10 Questions. Sometimes I would choose something I thought they knew, but it would be too obscure--I picked a math teacher at our school who only teaches the 3rd-graders, so my boys didn't know her name. They lost that round, so the next round, I picked the other American at our school and Taehoon got it in two guesses. Clever-Seonwoo cackled with manic glee as he walked over to my computer to start up another round of our violent cartoon and I whimpered out a "whhhhyyyyy...." They ate it up.
Jinseop had a good day, too. By pairing him with Stoic-Seonghak, whose English level is higher, I got a lot more out of Jinseop today, and he seemed really interested in the story-writing. I also made Jinseop happy by trying to wrestle him away from the computer. I was trying to turn off the cartoon, but Jinseop prevented me, telling me the episode wasn't over yet. I pulled at his arm for half a minute, trying to budge him, mainly just so he could have the fun of keeping me from it. When I was truly ready to turn the show off, I quietly told him to move and he did. But Jinseop was so joyful for those moments when I was letting him win--I felt like it made up for my ignoring him for nearly 2 weeks, since he's another one of the boys who is B-class and has very little English. Now he knows he's well-liked.
During the break between class periods, Stoic-Seonghak asked me in a carefully composed sentence, "Teacher, I would like to watch soccer news site, please." I let him access it, so for the 15 minutes of break, those of us who were still in the English room watched soccer matches because Seonghak's into English football, Manchester United, specifically. Some other A-class 2nd-grader who isn't even in our afterschool slid into class during break to hang out with us. He (Yoong..jae?) translated some Korean for me, and participated in a few rounds of 10 Questions. It was sweet.
I was leaving school with O-Teacher, and Teddybear-Deokryeong ran toward me at the door as if he was expecting a hug. I was weighing the pros and cons of giving him one when he stopped short. He said in Korean, "Where are you going?" I said in Korean, home. He said in Korean, "Shall we walk together?" I said in English, sure. O-Teacher was laughing like crazy because I could understand him. He only walked a few steps with us before chickening out, but it was still cute.
Then me and O-Teacher were swarmed by more 3rd-graders issuing a bajillion greetings and saying of their friends, "He I-love-you! My friend, he I-loves-you!" It's so much fun to accuse your friends of harboring teacher-crushes. O-Teacher and I grabbed coffee and cheesecake, and on the way home she called me "unnie," or "big sister". My hear goes melty when the boys call me "Sem," the familiar form of "Teacher," so being called sister does the same thing.
O-Teacher is so sweet. I feel really fortunate to know someone so grand. One of her boys was asking for me today, wondering where his piano-playing partner was. I ran down the hall to play 1 minute of Heart and Soul with him even though I was already running late for 6th period class. I'll have more time to spend with the special-needs boys tomorrow.
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