11:40 AM Been working on lessons about haiku for tomorrow's Saturday class. I'm pretty happy with how it's going--poetry's a place where I feel at home, and the Saturday kids have a high enough level of English to do well with the assignment and have a little fun with it too, hopefully.
The 1st-graders are out on a field trip (hiking? climbing? something strenuous), so I didn't have 1st grade today. Just got done with 2-1, 2-2 A's speaking test and had a grand time of it. I walked through the door and they launched into yelling "Guys!" in my exact vocal tone, then they all began loudly singing, "Joah, ni modeun geosi joah..." and I collapsed into laughter.
I told them we were having our speaking test today, then I went out to the vestibule to wait. One by one, they filed in to talk and only two of them got a less-than-perfect score. HH was the only one to compliment my singing--he walked in saying, "You were amazing!" One of the questions was "what do you want to be when you grow up?" and he wants to be involved in international service (political? diplomatic?) someday. Seongmo has changed his dream job from cellphone designer to soccer player, Byeonghyun's still set on being a composer, and Seohyung wants to be an engineer (he can do it, too--I proofread an essay he wrote as an application to science camp, and he's going to be a great bilingual professional someday).
When Byeonghyun's turn came, I heaped the praise on him for his piano performance. He accepted some of it this time. For the "who's your hero?" question, he said his hero is a famous piano player who does piano as a hobby, and practices medicine as his actual job. Artist-Joohyun, who is one of my favorite kids, has even better English than I thought--whenever he had a chance to make a one-sentence answer, he turned it into three sentences. His English isn't on a level with Byeonghyun or HH, but Joohyunnie tries and reaches for every word at his disposal. I told him outright that his English was wonderful.
Day after singing report: Our principal told me I did a "good job" yesterday. Mr. B came by to thank me for singing and to tell me I did a good job. An older female teacher who I'm not acquainted with stopped in the middle of her busy schedule to tell me that my voice was good yesterday. Fun-Hyuynmyeong winked at me in the hall and asked, "Park Jay Bom?" naming the singer of the song I'd picked. I've gotten lots of smiles, too, from kids who don't say anything but who seem to feel more connected now that they've heard me singing in their language.
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2:45 PM No 3rd-grade class after all, because they're all scheduled to listen to some teachers from local high schools? Anyway, I passed Sungjoon in the hall and said, "I don't get to teach your class today. I'm sad." He surprised me by replying, "I'm sad, too."
During lunch, Shimyong, Joonsang and B-Class Minwoo came by to play the forest game on my computer. I've seen at least 10 different boys playing a version of the game on their phones, and I've walked in to 2 separate classrooms to find boys playing the game after downloading it onto the classroom computer. It's like it's sunken deep within our school's culture.
Anyhoo, Joonsang and Minwoo wanted me to promise to teach their class today because they know I sometimes let the kids play for a few minutes if we have time left. I had actually arranged to change my two B-classes for A-classes today, since B-Teacher and I are just administering speaking tests, and the A-class room is warmer because you can sit in a walled-in vestibule instead of a windy hallway. I only appeased Joonsang and Minwoo by letting them play on my computer at lunch.
And actually, I left them playing on the computer when my 3rd-graders came by, all the more eager for their turn at UNO because today they got to compliment and tease me about my performance yesterday. They were positively itching to talk about the singing, and they were extra excited when I introduced a new card game: spoons. You try to get 4 cards of the same kind, then you grab for a spoon, only there's one less spoon than there are people, like musical chairs.
The game rules are surprisingly hard to communicate to C-class boys working with essentially no English. But we worked it out and after 20 minutes, they had the gist of it and were exclaiming, "Seroun gaim... oh jaimi-itne.." or "the new game, it's so fun/interesting..." I was thrilled that they were happy with it.
Seongwonnie was hanging out in the hall outside my office twice today. Not sure why. I gave him oreos the first time I saw him. The 2nd time, I asked who he was waiting for and he indicated no one. He didn't want to play the forest game when I invited him, but he did follow me into the math room to watch me play the spoon-card game with the 3rd-graders. He perched on a desk beside me and kept trying to open the spare pack of cards. And failing, because his nails are too short.
Speaking tests for 2-3, 2-4 A went great. Byeongyoon had me cracking up with his answers, and grumpy little Afterschool-Jeongmin actually wheedled his way into getting a second piece of chocolate from me, just by saying "please". Tall-Yoonjae came back to sweetly ask for extra chocolate too, and I begin to see that this word "please" is spreading better than I intended. I work for a couple of weeks on introducing "please" into their vocabulary, and now they use it constantly.
Dongmin came by my office to ask for chocolate. He was trying to get it without speaking English, saying he was no good at English, but I walked him through the "may I have chocolate please" speech step by step. I really care about that boy.
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