10 PM: Well, the day was not entirely rubbish. There were beautiful moments, and that is what I try to focus on.
To teach in each class, I bring my school laptop to the room, then plug the laptop into the internet cables in the room, so I can access my powerpoint slides, plus Youtube. Out of 3 regular classes and a 2-hour afterschool class, my powerpoints and videos worked properly twice. TWICE. Which left me with terrifying boocoodles of free time in which to engage the attention of children who can barely understand me. Ugh, it was dreadful.
But some of the kids do understand love. In my first class of first-graders (first grade of middle school is American age 12), one little boy named Hyo looked like he was really touched by the one-on-one attention when I helped him fill out his bingo paper. Hyo is one of the littlest kids, and something in the set of his shoulders tells me that he gets picked on. I adore him already. He managed to tell me through mostly sign language that while he had never vacationed on Jeju Island, his parents had been there.
My second class of third-graders (age 14-15) was actually great. The kid who said "I love you" three days ago was in this class. He told me he was in D-class, but he's in B! I knew he couldn't be at such a low level, not with wit like that. His name is Seongjae. When I put a smiley-face on another kid's paper, he demanded one as well.
As I walked home from school today, keeping my head held high so no one could see that I was feeling a bit defeated, Seongjae rode his bike beside me and said "Hello, I love you, have a nice day" again. I said, "Hi Seongjae," and his friends went "ooooh, she remembered you," in Korean. He shouted back at them in Korean, "Yeah, of course she remembered my name, so what? Why wouldn't she?" That tickled me, because I had enough vocabulary to know exactly what he was saying.
I complimented him on his bike, which has one purple wheel and one pink wheel. He said, "Thanks. I like it, too." He commented on my silver purse, saying "shiny!" and I said "Banjjak-banjjak?" (반짝반짝?) which is a Korean word for shiny, but more like glittery or bling-y. He said yes, that was right, then he rode away. That exchange was more important than it sounds. I was like, well, I may have had a lousy day and disappointed a lot of kids, but at least Seongjae loves me!
My afterschool class that I had been so looking forward to was the worst part of the day. We had no powerpoint and no youtube capability, so I was left with only paper and pens. No markers for the markerboard, either, because at our school they get taken and misplaced. I tried to do my American school-teaching trick of having the kids re-arrange the chairs and desks in an unexpected way, to get the creative juices flowing, but I think it simply confused them. I had the move from chair to chair for variety, but they didn't like that. I asked them questions, but even though their English was higher than other kids, it wasn't high enough for discussion or complex questions.
So it was me and 16 boys and 2 hours in a room with nothing, nothing, nothing. I took the easy way out and let them play on their phones for 70 minutes. ("Got a good reason, for taking the easy way out...") I could not have been more disappointed in me. The kids learned zip and I set a bad example for classroom management. But! Tomorrow I'm going to have a lesson about zombies, so that should brighten things. Fortunately, Byeonghyun is in my afterschool class. Every time I felt sorry for myself, I'd look over at him, playing a phone game with his friend, and know somebody was on my side. That boy is a pillar of respecatability, and his friend Sungmo is a crack-up, so they're fun to be around.
The questions the boys asked me today were interesting. Of course, I was expecting "how old are you?" and "do you have a boyfriend?" which were always the first things each class wanted to know. One class wanted to know my height, and were very much impressed by the ultra-high number of centimeters I wrote down. Then I got the plastic surgery question--from what they indicated, I have a nose that sticks out and has a high bridge, which is usually achieved through construction. And the way they asked about the surgery was cute--"Teacher, did you....touch your face?" Such a delicate way of phrasing it.
One boy wanted to know if my hair was real. I let him hold a piece of it, and he said in Korean, "OMYGOSH, it IS real!" His astonishment was hilarious.
I had each class write a list of their favorite things, such as "I like basketball," I like to eat pizza, etc. Most answers were normal, but I got the occasional odd one, like "I like to eat Jinho's blood." That kid got a smiley face, for creativity. I got the standard number of "I like Leigh-Teacher" answers, and some closely related responses, such as "I like English class" and "I like USA," along with the strangely specific, "I like watching you." Not creepy at all, Jeongmin, not at all.
Anyhoo, my co-workers continue to be lovely. I have about 10 people at school who are reliably nice and helpful to me, and that's part of what got me through a nasty time. I'm going to pray for my students, get some sleep, then hit the whole thing again tomorrow.
