Teaching, Being Flexible and Fingernails

I did in fact come to Korea to teach.  I didn’t come here to help someone find a green card, to get away from American politics, or because I couldn’t hack it in American schools.  That being said I also stumbled across a rather humorous political cartoon when I was brainstorming with one of my classes.  We were discussing political scandals and their job was to represent a political scandal and the damages of them in the form of a political (or editorial) cartoon.  I provided a few examples in a PowerPoint and one of them made these 6^th graders laugh because they even knew that it was true.  You’ll find the cartoon at the following link: http://taylorhumanities.blogspot.com/2011/01/political-cartoon.html

I’ve taught 6 classes so far and my 7^th will be tonight.  I enjoy the students and the topics that we discuss in my older classes are at a level that I think some high schools would want to reach, and here none of my students are passed the eighth grade.  This week the topics ranged from the 1964 Civil Rights Act to Watergate, to even museums returning artwork stolen by Nazi’s to Jewish families.  These aren’t your typical topics that you talk about in a foreign language class.  We skip all the formalities of “Hi, my name is….” And don’t worry about learning the items of the classroom and their names.  The focus is on being able to critically think and effectively communicate in English which is a pretty interesting process.  I think outside of this methodology of teaching English and English thought is the hours that I work.  I teach younger grades (2-5) from 4-7, which isn’t out of the ordinary, the extraordinary part is that my upper level students that are ranging from 4^th-8^th grade attend class from 7-10.  That’s right the kids that are in my class don’t get out of class until 10.  Chances are they’ve problem been in classes such as mine that “enrich” ever since they got out of school.  So that means they get home at ten, have something that resembles dinner and still have to do homework.  Every other Saturday they go to school as well and every Saturday from 3-6 they’ve got class with me.  I just keep reminding myself that it’s a different mindset, a different culture.  Confucius’s first emphasis was education and the role of the teacher and that is definitely a philosophy and way of life that’s been adopted over here.

My younger classes resemble a typical foreign language class to a point, but also have elements of deeper English thought built into them in the hopes that the students will be able to progress and graduate up in order to be in the upper level classes.  In one class we’re talking about endangered animals and the ways that the students come up with in their presentations in order to protect a certain animal is pretty funny.  Ways such as building a panda farm, let people shoot people who shoot gorillas, and giving rhinos steel armor to protect them from hunters.  The last one was an awesome suggestion because of the picture that went along with it.

The kids also get to pick their English names that they want to be called by in class.  Some of them come to us with names that they used during a previous class here or at a previous institution, but some of them just make up names.  I’ve got an Amy, Suzie, Christine, Peter, Dana, Mark, Paul, Matt, etc. I’ve also got a Bumblebee and a Ronald McDonald.  One of the other teachers said he’s seen a Batman, Superman and an Elvis at this campus.  I think that’s super awesome. 

During the break on the first day the two girls that I had in one of my upper level classes (only 2 people period in the class) kept asking me about what Korean foods I’d tried so far.  I told them and they thought it was funny that I’d had so many different types of Korean food, and I explained to them that it would be kind of silly for me to come to Korea to live and expect to live on McDonald’s and “American Food”.  They agreed.  Then again most of the time when I’m in America I’d rather be eating Mexican or Italian food so I guess there’s something to be said about our melting pot of a society. 

During this week there’s been a great deal of students absent due to studying for exams and one of my classes got canceled and my other classes have very low attendance.  When I showed up yesterday to work my head instructor informed me that my upper level class may be canceled and that in that case he’d have me teach his class just for practice.  I was open to the idea, the only issue was that I did not have the books required for the class as I had left mine at home as I had taught the class the day prior.  I borrowed his as only one of his kids showed and only one of mine in the level above showed up, therefore we talked it over with the girl and she was totally willing to combine classes so she wouldn’t be the only one in the class.  Once again I covered the material and was better with my time management the second time around and evidently gained a reputation quickly after last night of being “the loud one” as a couple of the other teachers mentioned it again today before work.  I blame poor construction and thin walls.  They weren’t complaining however, they in fact didn’t even mention the term loud. 

I always thought that there might be a few questions when I arrived at this campus as to the issue of me jumping right into teaching the upper level classes.  I don’t brag about it or talk about, but if I’m asked about it I won’t lie about what classes I’m teaching.  I also don’t hide the fact that I’ve got teaching experience and there’s two pieces of paper on the wall with my name on them (metaphorical wall as my diplomas aren’t here in Korea), but the point is made.  I’m comfortable teaching these topics, I’m confident in my abilities to keep to the structure and to also inject enough enthusiasm into the class that a student will take things from me even at 9 o’clock.  I'm always willing to teach other classes, and I'm just here to teach.  I've experienced plenty of drama in schools for a while and I'd rather this teaching experience in Korea be drama free.  Here's hoping.
That being said, my fellow teachers are awesome.  Super friendly and there's a couple teachers that are Korean-Americans and so it's nice to bounce ways to say things in order to get places or order food off of them so we can do it independently.  I appreciate the close family aspect of our campus. With only 8 teachers including myself, it's hard to go a day without seeing everyone, and I think that greatly adds to the friendliness.  It's nice to make that visual connection every day.

-------------------RANDOM THOUGHTS FALL BELOW-------------------

Kipling backpacks are big with the kids in my classes.  I think of the 30 kids that I’ve seen so far, 12 of them have had Kipling backpacks.  That might not seem like a huge percentage by any stretch of the imagination except for the fact that I don’t think any of my kids in Georgetown had a Kipling bag.  Just an observation, there’s really nothing else behind it.  Likewise in other tidbits of information, it has spread quickly in this school in the 3 days that I’ve been here to call me Steve Jobs as apart from the beard I apparently bear a resemblance to.  It’s kind of funny, but I act like it bothers me.  I’ve got some big ideas on decorating my classroom.  I’m probably going to venture out Saturday morning before my Saturday evening class and look for a shop in which I can score some posterboard.  At the Wal-Mart type store that’s next to school, Home Plus, I did find a world map that’s written in Korean characters that when I’m departing back to the states I’ll probably pick up.  I’ve had shoe problems the last couple of days.  Tuesday I broke the heel on my new “Christmas present” boots L.  Fortunately it was just the rubber part and I think that will be an easy fix for a Korean cobbler and I’ll look for one of those soon.  Then today I wore my Chuck Taylors that are lower than traditional Chucks and they just started wearing the hell out of my heel and I had to result to tucking in the back to not rub me further raw.  Fortunately I’ve got my brown boots, running shoes and a pair of Chucks that make my feet feel like angels, instead of punished demons.  Finally, this colder weather in Korea has made me take a close close look at ceasing biting my nails.  I’ve quit it in the past, so I’m going to definitely adopt some of my past methods in order to beat the beast of a habit once again.