11:00 AM: Whew, first two classes went well. 1st-graders loved the music part of the lesson, and I hadn't actually taught this group before, since I missed last Wednesday to get the ARC card. One child, Pyo, kept trying to tattle on another kid who sits behind him, saying this kid was noisy and talkative, but by now I've figured out that any time one kid tattles on another, they are the culprit. Anyhow, I just paid Pyo a lot of attention and told him in English and Korean to be a good person. He still fussed: "Teacher. Him! He talk. All time. Very noisy at my back."
In 2-3, 2-4 A, I saw my afterschool Joon. He had been refusing my help lately, but today he let me work with him and he smiled and smiled when I told him that he was a bad person because he never wanted to try anything. There is a specific way you can insult a boy to let him know he is valued, but it's a very delicate process. This time it seemed to work with Joon. I've got to make sure that I remember that Joon's learning is just as important as Taehoon's--it just takes three times as much effort to draw Joon out, and with less immediate return on the investment.
BY is in 2-3, 2-4 A, and when we filled out "Who my hero is" worksheets, he wrote that his hero was a magician. BY is also an amateur magician, it seems. I am not surprised at all. After class, he asked me if "yah" was the first Korean word I learned. Let me explain...
I've been yelling "yah!" to get my classes' attention, lately. "Yah!" is the Korean "Hey!". Calling the boys in English doesn't often work because it filters through their ears as noise, and doing those clapping patterns they taught me in orientation doesn't work worth a flip, either. Most kids are just amused by the clapping, like "Aw...she's really trying to communicate! Good try, teacher! A for effort!" Sometimes they would clap back, sometimes they would burst into full applause.
New measures were needed.
Then I remembered from K-dramas I watched that when teachers needed attention or when a mom was upset with her kids, they would yell "yah". So I tried it with a noisy class, last Friday. 25 pairs of eyes, instantly trained on me. Oh, the power. You can only use it about 3 times per class, but that's all I need. And "yah" can sound harsh when you yell it, so I always give my sunniest smile right afterward--I am not mad at you, I just need your attention. My co-teachers have liked it, and Mr. B asked me, laughing, "Where did you learn "yah"?" My theory is, the boys listen up because I sound like their mom.
So BY, among other people, is really tickled by my shouting. I told him no, my first Korean word was actually "saranghae," or "I love you," and I learned it before the phrase for "hello," so once upon a time I could not have said hello to any Koreans, but I could have let them know I loved them.
Learned a new boy in 2-3, 2-4 A---Yoonjae. He's a doll and his English is nice and we had a big laugh when he wrote his height on a piece of paper and I wrote mine, which was 1 centimeter shorter than him. I couldn't believe it, so made him stand up and sure enough, he was taller. "See, Teacher? True. I very tall." We also had a mini-debate over how to spell his name in English--he wants to spell it Younjae, but I explained to him that native speakers might read it as Yuhn-jae that way, whereas if you write "Yoon" we'll read the longer sound.
Also written on my hand is 2-3, 2-4 A's Shinhyuk. He's quiet but smart, and something tells me he's important to remember. Hyun and Seonbin from my afterschool are in this class, too.
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1 PM: 2-9, 2-10 B went terrifyingly well.Why are they so well-behaved? Why? They're a B-class, and they sit in a class with open windows where the breeze blows in and they can hear the shouts of other kids having P.E, so they should not be in any way the listen-y types, but they were great.
In 2-9, 2-10 B, I met Seongmin, whose hero is film director James Cameron. Seongmin wants to direct movies some day. A boy named Seulbin named a video game assassin as his hero--I thought Seulbin wouldn't talk to me, but he did with a little nudging.
Also in 2-9, 2-10 B in Jinseop, who is in my afterschool. He's one of the boys I never remember because he's not a chatty genius, a wounded emo-teen, or a fun rabble rouser, like most of my afterschool. Jinseop does not talk. Jinseop barely writes.I decided he just didn't care about English. The truth is, I think the child doesn't understand much English at all. And he's in an afterschool conversation class with A-level boys who can write whole paragraphs. Oh, dear. I'm going to have to show Jinseop special attention. I don't know why his parents put him in afterschool, but I need to make it a good place for him to land. His eyes were bloodshot yesterday and he looked sleepy. I should have said something kind.
I'm stunned by how many kids will flourish with 2 minutes of personal attention. Boys I thought were utterly checked-out can write and talk and be bright when you don't rush them. Trouble is, while I'm one-on-one-ing in the corner, every other kid is doing without. But how else can I behave? If I teach to the room, none of them get anything at all. Maybe I can hope that in the course of the year, I can get more quality time in with each student.
I still need more materials for each class, more for the students to do, but I'm getting closer to filling time.
I'm trying to respond to any too-rough behavior I see in the halls, while not viewing myself as everyone's hero. If I think I'm superwoman, sole defender of bullied students, I will really mess up. But so far today, I pulled two big boys off a first grader they were repeatedly pushing into a closed door, and got 4 boys off one kid they were sitting on. The sat-on boy looked fine, but I can never tell when they're genuinely okay or putting on a brave front.
I try to only address situations that look like restraint--if someone is being held down or trapped in place. If they're free and clear, I don't worry myself with the punching and kicking. Every time I pass Dongmin in the hall, I make sure to greet him by name, so that he knows that I know who he is. I don't know if he's truly a delinquent, but I do know that feeding kids the pepper-dumplings was his idea, and I know he made Taehoon look worried yesterday.
Met a new boy named Daesung. He's super-tall and may not be 100% Korean--he looks like he's from India or possibly Malaysia. Daesung's a sweetie and I can tell that he's been wanting to introduce himself for a while, because I every time I see him, he smiles and hangs around but doesn't say hello.
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1:40 PM - PIGS HAVE FLOWN. I just had a very pleasant 2-minute conversation with Sanghwa in the hallway. I think the upshot of it was that he has a cold today and that his class is going on a hiking trip tomorrow, so he will be out of class for awhile. We were talking! Mostly in Korean, but still we were conversing nicely! Atta boy.
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4 PM: My final 3rd-grade class went great. The videos I had for them kept stalling--don't know if it was a faulty internet cable or what, but things went much better than the last bunch of 3rd-graders who breezed through 45 minutes worth of material in 20 minutes. These boys were really sweet, and since I hadn't taught them before, they were extra curious. Mr. B translated that one of the boys is worried about my hair. I'm not sure exactly what the nature of his worry is, but one kid in 3-1, 3-2 B is distinctly concerned for my hair's well-being.
The boys in general find nice things to say to me. Yesterday, a student said in passing, "Your purse is wonderful." I was carrying my shiny silver bling-y purse, and several of the boys have said they liked it, but this was a new sort of comment. When I asked him to repeat, he stared at the glittery sequins and said again, "It's wonderful." I think I need to buy more sparkly stuff, if it makes them so happy to see shiny things.
Off to prepare for my afterschool--I've got something big planned, and I hope it goes well.
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8:30 PM It did not go well. I had a video chat set up so my students could talk to my brother in America, but the audio didn't work. I spent so much time trying to prepare this event--getting the boys to write introductions to themselves, communicating those introductions to my mom, making sure my adorable, precious baby bro was up at 2:30 AM American time to talk to my boys at 4:30 PM Korean time. Oh, my brother was a trooper. I so wish it had worked out.
But it didn't. And I had 15 teenage boys in a room and nothing to do. Again! I started off by herding them together and asking them these "serious topic" questions about school bullying and about whether all-boys schools were a good thing. But none of the serious topics caught on, so we spent the last 30 minutes gossiping and arm-wrestling. I let most of them win, and some of them won for real. Yeah, I know, arm-wrestling with your students is really lowbrow, but while we were having competitions, they were all smiling, laughing, and speaking English.
No, I'm not likely to ever do it again, but for today it was okay. After I lost to two boys and won with one, Taehoon demanded a turn. Then I convinced Emo Joon to try--he won, for real, and he was smiling and talking, neither of which is standard for him.
I gave them all chocolate before they left, and I returned five confiscated phones. Jiwoong told me I was "very very bad teacher" for taking his phone after his second incident of playing phone games in class. Not that this is the most serious afterschool class ever, but I can't do anything at all for them if they're off in phone-land! But Jiwoong forgave me, as they all do. The five boys who wrote zombie stories got their papers back with comments on them--I was so proud of their writing.
O-Teacher and I had dinner at my apartment, actually. She knows how to order takeout, so we had some good fried chicken and better company. I'm older than her, but she says that I remind her of her younger sister, so she feels protective of me. I told her I understand--I've all but adopted Taehoon because he reminds me of my brother, so I completely understand "substitute family member" syndrome.
The real hero of afterschool was Seongyeol, who is the most helpful kid I've met, aside from Byeonghyun. Seongyeol helped me set up the video chat, helped me tidy up the room, and looked up a ton of words on his phone dictionary so he could communicate better with me. I hope he had a good day--he worked so hard to make sure I had a good one.
Anyhoo, I hate that I had another wasted class, but the boys are pretty resilient. So long as they use some English while they're with me and they're upbeat when they leave, I'm fairly satisfied that we had a good day. Keundeok even expressed an opinion for the first time--he has not seen World War Z, but he wants to, so he requested that I play it in the future.
