9 AM: Graduation is today for the 3rd-graders...in one hour, I think. It's another lonely-ish morning at school because there are no classes and the 1st and 2nd-graders aren't here. The noise, the chatter, the randomness are absent today.
I did bring my video camera, so maybe I'll get footage of our graduation, though!
This morning while walking to school, Juseong brightly greeted someone behind me and I didn't think he was talking to me, but I was confused for a second. He then looked embarrassed and said, "Oh, Teacher. Hi to you, too." He told me in Korean that this was the final day of school, and wasn't I going to give him a present? I told him to find me later and he'd get chocolate.
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3:30 PM It be time for the videos!
Just after 10, we all wandered over to the gymnasium, where our 300 3rd-graders were seated by class. I stood on the side and tried to get good shots, but I forgot how to zoom in! KBR-Teacher blessedly showed me how to do it, so by the end I was able to zoom in on the screen during the presentation.
Here's the opening band:
I don't know these kids, but I did know the song, "나는 아름다운 나비 "(Naneun Areumdaun Nabi=I'm a Beautiful Butterfly). Aren't they talented?
But that's nothing compared to my favorite 3rd-grade charmer America-Hyunkyeong, who sang next:
ETA: Heh, heh, heh. I just now noticed, at the very beginning of this video (1 second in), you hear a boy yelling "멋있는 척 하지마!" (Meoshineun Cheok Hajima!= Don't Act Like You're Cool!) Undoubtedly, he's yelling to Hyunkyeong because he's got a reputation as a cool kid, always staying totally smooth.
Does this kid have pipes or what? I will say that it sounded better live. And I'm KICKING myself for not figuring out the zoom feature sooner.
Next, we have one of my top-5 favorite 2nd-graders, Byeonghyun on the piano. He's pretty much perfect. His fingers are made of light beams and waterfalls:
Again, I'm dying the death for not having a better shot of Byeonghyun's face. He's just beautiful.
After those performances, one kid from each homeroom class got an award...not sure if it was the class captains or what, but I got footage of my boy Giant Shion getting his award from our principal:
The angles of the previous video are awkward because I was having to hold the camera over my head. Good thing I've been working out, or videotaping our graduation would have broken me. While taking the next video, my arms started shaking.
This is the montage video of all our 3rd-graders and what they did during the year. I occasionally say the names of the students that appear in the video. And there's a blink-and-you-missed-it picture of me in the school festival's performance.
Annnnd make note of the "Frozen" soundtrack. Frozen is so popular in Korea, it was the soundtrack for my teenage boys graduating from school. The kids sing "Let it Go" and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" in the halls, the teachers have those songs as their cell ringtones, and now those two songs form the background for our meaningful memory montage. Well played, Disney, well played. You are everywhere.
And I don't know who the people early on in the video are--they're not teachers at our school, but the kids apparently know them.
The pictures made my heart all melty. Soon, we were all dismissed and the kids and parents poured outside, whereupon I recorded these closing remarks and talked to Dongho (who didn't want to be recorded):
One funny/encouraging side effect of attending the graduation was seeing that the kids not paying attention in my class is not some rare phenomenon--they didn't pay much attention to their own graduation! Half of them were on their phones, albeit quietly, and only one-third of them responded in any way to the speeches (applause was right sparse). But they're grand boys, despite their lack of participation.
I held it all together until I saw JY-Teacher talking to one of her students. She's a homeroom teacher for 3rd-graders and at the teachers' dinner last night, she and I had been talking about the struggle between wanting to be respected and wanting to be compassionate to the students.
She told me that she wants respect and that other teachers (in other schools) talk about how totally in-line their kids are, but she and I both agreed that if you focus on beating everybody into shape and keeping them in a perfect line, you forget to care for them as human beings.
Anyhow, this super-tall student gave her flowers and as he walked away, she started crying. She told me that he was one of her smartest students, but that he gave her the most trouble--it was endlessly frustrating, dealing with this boy. She struggled to control him all year, but now he's leaving and he's thanking her for being his teacher.
Once I saw her crying, I broke down a bit, too. I thought about how I won't see Love-You-Sungjae, Guide-Jaewan, Giant-Shion, 6-Meetings Juseong, Jjang-Donghwi, Boo-Jongha, Model-Seokho, Jinhwan, Heechan, Teacher's Pet Jeongmin, Hyunkyeong or any of the rest of them again. Ugh, it hurt.
I wondered why it was so very sad to see them go, and I realized that this is the first time that I've been left behind. In high school, college, and grad school, I'm sure my teachers and professors missed me and I missed them, but I got to jet off to the next big, fun thing. Maybe not for the professors, but I do wonder if it was hard on my teachers to see me and my compatriots leave.
Even when I was a teacher in America, I taught middle school and younger high school students, so in the 2 and half years I taught, none of my kids graduated from the school--I was the one to leave. Leaving my family for another country was tough, but I knew I could talk to them every day and I could come home by plane a few times a year. In other words, it wasn't anything like a permanent goodbye.
But this is my first time to be the one staying, not the one leaving. The 3rd-graders jet off to the next big thing, but I stay here and repeat the routine with another crop of kids. How very different. It's not bad at all, just new. A grown-up experience, I guess.This is what will continue happening if I keep being a teacher and eventually (I hope), a professor. And someday I'll have my own kids and they will go places. And that will be okay.
God really blessed me with these boys. They never let you stay too serious; as soon as a couple of the boys saw me and JY-Teacher wiping tears, they mocked us horribly, which made me laugh enough to stop crying.
And before that, Sungjoon tapped my arm to get my attention then did a finger-guns "hey there, girl" gesture while winking. Serious educational ceremonies do nothing to tamp down incurable flirts. And then America Hyunkyeong came by in his nice suit to ask me for chocolate. I gave him some and told him that he had a great voice.
Hyunkyeong was accompanied by a C-class kid that I love, but who has resolutely refused to tell me his name. This boy always teases me about dating the ethics teacher, and he's excellent at soccer. I didn't recognize him at first because his hair was different, but I gave him chocolate too and told him that his new look was cute.
We had an excellent teacher-lunch at a galbi-tang (beef soup) restaurant, and our vice-principal was thrilled when he heard how much my Korean language ability was coming along. I've seldom seen him that happy, so it was a tremendous mood boost for me, because I've been studying so hard for so long with seemingly little results, but my VP thinks I'm advancing nicely. Boo-yah!
Still, the silent walk home was kind of sad. I kept trying NOT to think about the students that I wouldn't see again. Because then I would cry, and I did not want to be a lone foreigner crying while walking down the street. I turned toward home, a little blue but staying solid, when I heard "LEIGH!"
Across the river bridge, faaaaar away was Giant Shion, waving his arm wildly. I waved back, "Hi Shion! Congratulations!" He was too far away to walk over to, but I was smiling the rest of the way home just from the greeting. Because I remembered that Shion lives in this neighborhood. And so do Youngjin and Seokho and Joah-Seonghoon and a bunch of others.
I'll still see them sometimes. And in March, I'll have fresh new baby 1st-graders to teach and love and be annoyed and driven insane by. There's always people to love, and God makes you equal to the task of giving to others, however many others there happen to be. Just when I feel a bit too poured out, the Lord lets one of the kids do something that refreshes me and makes everything better.
Tomorrow's the last day of school for 1st and 2nd-graders and Leigh-Sem can't wait to see them all again, come the new semester in March. :-) We've done graduation; bring on the next school year!
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