11:00 AM: Wore my hair in braids today, and the school is in a happy uproar. Apparently, pigtails are really interesting. The older women in the office have been exclaiming "Cute!" at me all morning. The male teachers have let me know they really like it, too.
It's so nice to be so appreciated, but I'm already a vain person--vain about my abilities, not looks--and now I'm at a school where little boys shout "Beautiful! Very Pretty! Oh my gosh!" all day. I heard that Koreans were really blunt, so I fully expected to come here and have everyone ask why I'm so fat. I heard that they think all Americans are fat, so I was expecting to steel myself against a constant barrage of friendly insults, not a heaping helping of more compliments than I know how to deal with.
But it's their way of being friendly. Out of 1,000 boys only about 100 have good enough English to start a conversation, so if they want to connect with the new teacher at all, they're stuck with a vocabulary that's essentially limited to "Hi," "Hello," and "Pretty!" I think the Lord will keep me humble, though--goodness knows, I feel insecure enough about my teaching methods to balance out the ego trip of uber-appreciative-ness. Also, there's no reason to take pride in your own appearance because you can't control it.
I notice the unpleasant flipside of the appearance coin when I taught Deokryeong this morning in 1-9, 1-10B. He's a grumbly teddy bear of a boy, and when I went over to help him with his paper, some of the boys in his class asked why I was sitting with Deokryeong, because he's ugly. I said no, he's handsome! That made Deokryeong happy, but then another boy laughed mockingly, and D stood up to go hit the guy. I let him do it. It's not the best behavior, but D has developed his own set of defense mechanisms against the meanness of children.
Last time I taught him, I though he was a bit of a wild one because I could barely get him back into his seat when he was trying to fight somebody. Now I'm pretty confident that Deokryeong only did that because he had been mistreated. I've never seen him instigate, but he reacts pretty fiercely.
Also in 1-9, 1-10 B is Deukhee, one of my darlings. Deukhee and and I smile and greet every time we pass in the hallway. I'd love to spend more time talking to him because he seems to have the sweetest personality. In 1-9, 1-10 B we have Seonghoon, too, one of the smaller 1st-graders. I forgot his name, but I sure remembered him after teaching him last week. He's rowdy and mobile and delightful. For some reason, Seonghoon is never in a proper school uniform, he's always in a crisp while shirt and a black tie. Cuuuuuute.
Seonghoon was funny today, too, because he's one of the shoutiest kids I know, and he had lost his voice, so he had to resort to waving his arms madly to get my attention. The 1-9, 1-10 B boys wanted to know my name again, so I wrote it on the board and six of them promptly began doodling hearts with "So and so loves Leigh" in them. They also told me that because I have white skin, I am a gumiho.
Now, I knew that a gumiho was a Korean mythological creature with two forms--a human woman and a fox with nine tails. I also thought that a gumiho was a monster of some sort. Then when I looked it up on Wikipedia, I got this lovely surprise:"[the gumiho] can freely transform, among other things, into a beautiful woman often set out to seduce boys, and eat their liver or heart". Wut? Your livers are safe, boys. Maybe there's more to the legend than I know, because they said it in a sweet way, like "You're a mermaid!" or something nice like that.
My first class was 2-1, 2-2 A, with Byeonghyun, Seongmo, and Keundeok from my afterschool, plus Kimchi-Power-Kyeongbae, Poet-HH, and Computer Genius-Seohyung. I'm learning them, bit by bit. It was a great class. I taught by myself because poor KBR-Teacher was sick this morning (bless her--she's a sweet person and a brave teacher, so I sympathize with her hurting).
In 2-1, 2-2 A, we played 10 Questions with superheroes as the topic, and when the boys narrowed it down to "fictional male American superhero who flies and is sort-of a god and is not Superman," HH guessed Thor. Then we did 10 Questions for a song and Seohyung got "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars on the 10th question. Then half of us sang a few bars of the chorus. It was a great moment in class history.
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1 PM: 3 free hours until afterschool! I borrowed a deck of playing cards from a teacher friend, so I hope to play some card games with them. One game called "Werewolf" should go over well. It involves "killing" people and guessing identities, so I think they'll like it.
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1:30 PM Daesung came over to the office and talked for 15 minutes! That is by far the longest that any boy has managed to keep a convo going one-on-one. AND Daesung told me that he's C-class! He doesn't even have English class with a native speaker because his level is too low. He didn't speak in sentences, but he used every word he knew, and we communicated a lot through writing. Being able to read hangul is a life-saver when it comes to talking to the lower-English kids.
Daesung told me that his mom is Korean, but his dad is from Pakistan, hence my thinking he might be from India. We only had one big miscommunication--he was saying he liked David Beckham and I thought he was saying he liked to eat bacon. We had a good laugh when we realized when I went wrong in interpreting his words. We had plenty of lulls in the conversation, but he just waited around until one of us thought of a word or phrase the other would understand.
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2:30 PM Went down to O-Teacher's room to talk with the boys with autism. Nearly taught one boy how to play "Heart and Soul" on the classroom piano, then another special-needs student who had been ignoring us up until that point came over and played a jazz variation of "Heart and Soul" that was 10 times better than what I had been plunking out. It was beautiful. Then the second piano-prodigy boy played a Korean song and I tried to sing with him, reading the hangul lyrics. The kids thought it was funny, how bad I was at reading.
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6 PM: The 3rd-graders (15-year-olds) have upped their game. Yesterday, one of the bigger boys graduated from saying "Pretty," to saying, "I love you. I need you!" But if I'm going to be hollered at by little boys, I suppose it's good to get full, grammatically correct sentences? Today, when school was over, they descended in a pack to ask questions. One boy I haven't met was busting out the lines. "Beautiful! Teacher, how old are you? Where you live? You invite me your apartment!" I told him no, never. He asked, "Why?" but I couldn't answer because I was distracted by Seongjae running up to hold an umbrella over my head as I walked. It wasn't even properly drizzling, but I couldn't get him to stop sharing his umbrella unless I opened my own umbrella. But what a gentleman! That kind of behavior will serve him well in 10 years.
I was fairly grateful to have my umbrella open, too, because it enforces a bit of distance. Everybody was striking up conversations on the walk home and asking too many questions about where, precisely, I live. But Hwangmin and Yoonseop were really sweet, and they were trying to speak clearly, too.
Afterschool rocked! I played the boys an OK Go video to start class--it didn't connect to anything we were learning, but it had dogs in it, and it got their interest up. I had prepared a slideshow about the card game "Werewolf" we were going to play. The boys already knew the game by the name of "Mafia," so they were pretty familiar with it, but we still had a bajillion mix-ups. I had to push together 20 desks to make a table-like surface, then it was like herding a flock of greased penguins to get the boys into their seats.
I kept expecting the worst because Joon and Jeongmin didn't want to do anything, Jiwoong was horribly grumpy, Minsu was feeling mischievous, and Sanghwa and Taehoon were jumping off the walls. But it went over fine! They had a great time, even thought they are awful at playing the game. I mean, they could not be worse if they were trying. They ALL peeked when they were supposed to have had their heads down, and for most rounds of the game, they were screaming the name of the werewolf before they even knew the name of the victim.
Oy. I was the storyteller, so during the first round of the game I said, "Werewolf, wake up and look at me," so that they could pick who they wanted to kill. No one looked up. Now, what are you gonna do, Teacher? The game doesn't work without a wolf. So I said, "There is no wolf, so I'm going to touch one person. They are the new wolf." That worked and suddenly the game was back in full swing. The wolf who did not speak up was of course, Sanghwa. I have no way of knowing whether he didn't speak up because he wanted to mess with me even though we've been on good terms the last few days, or because he was off in Cloudland and genuinely did not notice that his card was the joker.
In any case, Sanghwa was totally participatory in the rest of the game. So participatory that he could not keep quiet. Every round it was "Teacher, teacher, teacher! Him, him, he werewolf, it was him!" Oh, child. Taehoon had the time of his life and when I asked for a volunteer to be the storyteller so I could play the game myself, he leaped to his feet. And he mostly narrated in English. "Night now. People sleep. Werewolf wake up. Wake up NOW."
Then I let grump-master Jiwoong be the storyteller. I have to do nice things for Jiwoong because I don't want to--he rubbed me the wrong way on day one, so now I'm trying to work twice as hard to treat him well.
I gave everyone in class candy twice--once for showing up, once when they correctly guessed the werewolf. but Taehoon and Jiwoong wanted a third piece. With almost everyone else gone, I said they could have one more if they told me the name of their favorite song. Taehoon agonized over his favorite for a solid minute, when Jiwoong bulldozed over and told me, "My favorite song is Gangnam Style. Give me candy." Taehoon then said his favorite song was "Gentleman" by Psy, which was obviously not true, but he was doing this hopeful wide-eyed face, so I gave in.
Saturday-Jeongmin was sick with a bad cold today and looked exhausted, so I gave him a candy, too, even though he's not in my afterschool.
My beautiful afterschool students don't know I was up 'til late last night thinking of what would work well for them, and they don't know I spent over two hours today determining the best rules for Werewolf (there are about 50 version of the game), putting together the slides, and troubleshooting for what I'd do if things went wrong. But they don't need to know. I can't put this much effort in every time, but today I was pleased to have found one more thing they love to play, even if they're rubbish at keeping their eyes closed and even worse at keeping their mouths shut. :-)
Seongyeol in afterschool has appointed himself as my protector. He helps me set up my computer, helps me pack it away, just generally helps with everything he possibly can. When I sang part of "Call Me Maybe" to myself in class, he looked it up on his phone and played it for me later.
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