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. :-)
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