10:50 AM: It's April Fools and none of the kids have done any fooling yet. Score.
Also, I say "score!" so much when celebrating something, I had to teach it to my 1st-graders yesterday. I explained that "score!" was like when you make a basketball shot or a soccer goal. It's a little moment of victory. So one class of 1st-graders excitedly exclaimed "SCORE!" every time they made some small accomplishment.
1st-graders be darling, yo. Yesterday, I went to visit their wing and got mobbed by dozens of tiny cutie-pies, all wanting high fives and recognition. SG2's homeroom kids are ecstatic that she and I are friends, thus maximizing the possibility that I will come by for a visit.
Today, I went to the 1st-grade wing again because SG2's uncle had passed away over the weekend and I wanted to leave a note at her desk saying that I'd be praying for her and her family, which I've already been doing. She said they were quite close, so it's a difficult time. I left the note, then one of the C-level boys asked me to visit his class, so I went over to meet the little'uns.
Seongmin from my afterschool produced a bingo sheet he had done yesterday and told me he wanted to redeem it for candy. Changho from afterschool chatted happily and SuperTall-Dongmin from across the hall kept shouting that I was beautiful. Some child small enough to fit in a backpack blew me a kiss, and I repeated the gesture. It was lovely.
SuperTall Dongmin (who is my height if not taller) is a kid I only know because we walk to and from home along the same path. He made a habit of yelling compliments to me, so I learned his name. Yesterday, we were walking home and fell in step together, and he quietly asked my name, in complete contrast to his previous loud and proud personality. I'm quite fond of him.
Yesterday, I didn't write much because I was busy putting together stuff for my 2nd round of 2nd-grade classes. I spent three hours putting together a new BINGO game and slide show for the kids...only to forget to download it from my home computer to my USB.
Menboong. (Korean slang for "mental breakdown," more like mental overload, too much to process)
All that effort, all that tiredness and I forgot to bring it. But my only 2nd-class of the day is already over (meaning teaching the same class for the 2nd time), so I'm actually prepared for the rest. This morning with SG2, I improvised an activity for learning "That makes me sad". I gave every kid a piece of paper and a pack of crayon sticks to draw a sentence: "_______. That makes me sad."
3 boys drew killer pictures of our school, complete with proper dimensions and accurate portrayals of the local flora. I made marks on their papers to tell them to come get candy later.
I had a right good time with Dongha and Kyeongwon. Dongha wants to go to America someday and he told me today that he knows a kid who studied in Boston. He was really proud to transmit this info to me. And Kyeongwon wanted to know the words for "electricity" and, get this--"power outage". Because that was the subject of his drawing--power outages make him sad. Dude! That's creative.
I also really love how the boys ask me in Korean to translate Korean words into English. And often, I can do it. I asked them the Korean word for "storm" but they said "taepoong" (태풍), which translates to typhoon or monsoon, a rather specific kind of storm.
And my Hyunho said that the thing that made him sad was being short. Goodness. This morning, I noticed that Hyunho didn't have his glasses on. I told him he looked different, and he immediately asked, "Handsomer?" I told him he looked older, more mature, though I should have just said handsomer because it was true and maybe he needed to hear it.
Because when Hyunho drew a picture of his "sad" topic, he drew himself and his brother, with a line across the middle of the picture, starting above his head and at his brother's shoulder-level. And I realized just how very small Hyunho is and how yesterday, I had to keep stopping Glasses-Minsu and Kyeongwon from hitting him pretty hard while he played cards. In an all-male environment, it can't be easy to be physically small. Maybe that's why he seemed so hard and guarded at the start of the semester, in contrast to his sunny nature last year
Lately, Hyunho's been smiling more, acting confident and having fun, but today was a reminder for me to build him up. To tell him that he's handsome and smart, because he can't hear it enough.
So. BY.'Bout all that...
I heard from KBR that BY told his homeroom teacher that his father was very upset about BY having to attend afterschool and that his father had complained to the education board about it.
The homeroom teacher was referred to an online forum run by the Board of Education, where someone claiming to be BY's father had written a lengthy message about the unfairness of mandatory afterschool.
Now, online comments are handled a bit differently in Korea. In America, I feel like the comments section of any website is usually considered uninformative/silly/obscene etc, and is generally not taken seriously. In Korea, online comments are taken seriously and even important official institutions may change their approach to something in response to online comments. (I think it's because of Korea's rich protest-culture...up until the late 80's, the South was a rigid dictatorship not a democracy, so people got in the habit of protesting things and those protests eventually saw results).
Anyhoodle, the Office of Education sent out a memo to every teacher in our school, saying that kids should not be forced to attend the supposedly optional afterschool classes. The Vice Principal got quite upset at BY's homeroom teacher, and there was much confusion and consternation that a disgruntled parent went around the school and went straight to the top, getting everybody in trouble with one comment when the problem could be solved more directly.
Except BY's dad did not write the comment that launched a thousand ships.
BY did. To get out of a spare 45-minute class, this boy went online while posing as his father, incited action from the local government, angered his vice-principal,confused all the staff at our school, and got his homeroom teacher into enough hot water to boil a lobster.
I can't even.
When KBR told me, I couldn't stop laughing, though. It was too funny. Part of the problem is, BY's got the highest IQ score of the 300 kids in his grade. And he makes a point of studying human psychology so he can tell people what they want to hear while still getting whatever he wants. I'd told KBR I'd had big talks with him about not being manipulative. Perhaps we need to talk yet again. I certainly need to pray for this little genius to go easy on his homeroom teacher, a good woman who does not deserve the blamestorm that has landed on her.
That kid. Oy.
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7 PM: Last classes went fine. Tuesday afternoons are a marathon, with two 2nd-grades back to back, followed by afterschool. But the kids were fine. 2-11 is the hardest class period, because they have three classes jammed into the same room and the low-level noise never changes.
But every child said their piece and everybody played bingo and like 7 of them won candy, so a reasonable amount of happiness was obtained by everyone. The "troublemakers" did wonderfully. Jaehyun spends most of the class in the back, drawing detailed tattoos on his arms with sharpie. Today, it was lizard scales in a half-sleeve from wrist to elbow. And may have made him look like a gangster, but it was pretty cool and stylin' and I told him so.
Then 2-7, 2-8 rolled along okay too, and thus NG-Teacher and I had a good day in our back to back 2nd-grades. My little Heekyu was cute and thoughtful, and Yunho played with my hair and everybody said English words. I even started the class with a fun video so they had something enjoyable at the start.
Afterschool was difficult to manage, but good because they are all my boys. The afterschool troublemakers won't hardly do their work, but I did call them all up to have conversation with me. Today, the boys all read their stories to me and I praised them and made a fuss over them. Jinhyuk is one of the trouble-dudes, but he keeps "fainting" in class so I'll come over and worry about him and he's the one who stared at me during "Frozen," so I know he just needs extra care.
This morning, I said "Good morning, Jinhyuk!" on the walk to school and he turned around and repeated it to his friends--Sem knows my name. She said hello to me. He and I had a nice conversation and he seemed happy that I asked about his life, so I think that even when the lil' trouble-dudes don't do their work, I can still have conversation with them and have it make an impact.
And! Eunseong is in afterschool! After asking enough teachers, it was made possible for my guy to switch afterschools and join us. I am so glad to have him in there, truly.
And I have some talented artists and writers. I feel like I'm not just nudging along language-phrase-learning anymore, but encouraging clever thoughts and beautiful ideas. The boys all want and need so much attention and I try to give what I can.
The only April-Fools I got all day long was Leader-Jaehoon's continual roll of "Teacher, Eunseong hates you. ....April Fool's Day!" "Teacher, I don't like English. April Fool's Day!" He was so confident in his jokes, it was beyond delightful.
And my friend O-Teacher is back at school! She was going to go to grad school, but now she's back with us, and I'm so happy. Eee, it's so good to have my buddy back. Now I can visit the special needs' room more often.
Speaking of the special needs students, Joonsung came again this morning to sit in my chair and watch Teletubbies. I was just kinda hanging around with no seat, standing next to him and reading poetry. JY-Teacher saw me standing and a student sitting and began to say, "yah..." but I went over to her and explained that my little guy was autistic. It's okay for him to commandeer my chair because he needs it.
And right before afterschool, Joonsung came back! It's the first time he's visited me twice in one day. But by then I was quite tired and my feet hurt and I did not want to stand, nope I didn't. So I hoped he would just watch Teletubbies and listen to my headphones while standing, allowing me to sit.
But no. When he couldn't get me to stand, he just sat on me. Joonsung sat in my lap for five minutes during cleaning time and though he was pretty heavy, it was still really sweet because it reminded me of my baby brother. The other teachers recognized who he was, so they didn't think it was unusual, though I doubt he sits on anybody else.
Also, Minchan came by to talk with me. He told me that when he was in 1st grade he was A-level, then last year in 2nd-grade he was B, and now in his final year he has dropped to C-level. Oh, my poor boy. But he's doing great in his attempts to chat with me, and I told him his language was good. Minchan wanted my phone number, so I gave it to him. Prince Woobin asked for it two weeks ago also, so there's a small contingent of really nice kids who could send me a Kakao message when they want to.
It was a good day. I got my bangs trimmed, got clothes-shopping done, and got home to relax and study. Huzzah!
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