Chapter Twelve: Seoulja Boys and Girls

With my halfway point officially in the rearview mirror, I still have so much to do and see in Seoul and in Korea. Many of my friends are leaving now; their contracts are up. It's weird seeing them leave, as they were the seasoned veterans I relied on both for advice and funny stories. And it's weirder thinking that I'm now where they were when I got here.

I am now the longest tenured teacher at my school--counting the Korean teachers, which is rare. (And a sign of how poorly our school is run.) We now have two teachers doing the work of three, and our boss thinks we are her servants, to the point of commanding us to spend time with her on weekends. It can be unpleasant. The best thing about the job, by far, is the kids. While they still can and do hit, lick, spit, and cry, seeing kids who 6 months ago didn't know their English names ask questions using complete sentences is pretty amazing.

I try to make English as fun as I can, so I have taught them a couple of things not in the course books. (I have spent the last week trying to make a video of this all compiled but Windows Movie Maker has crashed on me every time. So the following videos are raw and uncut, just the way my readers like it.)

The first is a line from Bill and Ted they are learning, the second is part of their Princess Bride education, and in the third they show off their ninja moves.

Chapter Nine: (Right About Now) The Funk Seoul Brother

This entry was brought to you by Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim.

I'm coming up on my 4 month anniversary already--1/3 of my time in Korea is over. That's not so long--sort of like pretending turning 25 is a big deal because it's "a quarter of a century." But it's not a small amount of time, either. It's further proof, I suppose, that time really flies regardless of what you have going on in your life. What's strange is I feel like this is my reality, that I've been here forever, but when I look back on my time here I might not even remember the first couple months.

The biggest thing going around recently has been the paranioa about the Pig flu. I've been doing my best to ignore current events and for the most part have done just that. But with alarmed parents phoning in, this one is harder to avoid than, say, the hyserics about North Korea. All foreign teachers at my school have had to get our temperature checked twice now. If we cough or sneeze on the subway or elsewhere in public, we will get glared at (worse than usual) and people may actually move away. Many Koreans think that only foreigners can catch this flu, and they are very suspicious of all of us showing any symptoms of any cold. The irony here is that any sick foreigner here has probably gotten it from working with Korean children, whose idea of hygiene is sucking the snot off their fingers before they rub them on your face and try to put them into your mouth.

My average break at school.

Conditions at the school have been far from ideal, but the more draining the week days, the more I try to do on weekends. In the last few weeks, I've been to Suwon (again), Lotte World (a Korean version of Disney Land), a zoo (called Zoo Zoo) Seoul Grand Park (self-explanatory), up Bukhansan, and ascended the Seoul Tower. This is in addition to patronizing places like various Wa Bars (a western style bar), various Garten Biers (Korea's version of German bars), and several Noraebongs until the wee hours of the morning.

The Teddy Bear museum at the top of Seoul Tower.

Panda Bear ride at Lotte World.

The Legend of "Sindbad" ride.

And continuing the recent trend of videos, here is proof that I am not, in fact, faster than water:

Chapter 6: Mr. Seoul

This week's title is brought to you by Buffalo Springfield, of "For What It's Worth" and "Bluebird" fame.

This video should provide a little insight into what it's like to teach at our school. It was slightly worse because they saw my camera, but you cannot keep these kids in their chairs. They are wild. In a given week, you will be punched, kicked, bitten, pinched, drooled on, spat on, sneezed on, have your "junk" grabbed, and a korean specialty of two hands put together and shoved up your butt.

And the kids are the good part of the job!

It's really hard to have perspective on what's normal, not having seen any other schools, but from talking to other teachers this is pretty much how it goes. Despite their abundance of energy, most of the kids do make an effort to learn, and they really do soak up English at an amazing rate. And once you get used to being a combination punching bag/jungle gym for them, it's not so bad.

Far more challenging is dealing with what the director wants, and the system of the hagwon. Most frustrating is the expectation to always know what to do, even if it's come up before. In most jobs, intuition and common sense can serve as a good substitute for training, but those won't get you very far in Korea. You have to leave those at the door and just do as told.

My classload looks like this: On MWF, I teach 9 classes. On TTH I teach 8. I have a total of 22 books I use, and a total of 40 minutes a day to plan for these classes. Unfortunately, we cannot even use this time soley for planning as we have weekly and monthly reports that take up a lot of time. I don't mind reports, but these are us just typing the same thing in the book over and over again. If it were streamlined, we could just click a button and be done. But ... it's Korea.

So there isn't much time for planning. A lot of planning is necessary since the way the lessons break down the official curriculum can last less than three minutes. See below:

My actual curriculum for a 40 minute class. It doesn't last long. We play a lot of Hangman. And now Tic Tac Toe as well.

Another thing I wish I had known is that when your contract is for 12o hours a month (30 hours a week, sweet!) that means actual teaching hours. We have to be at school for 45 hours a week, minimum, and we have to mandatorily spend our lunches and breaks with the kids, but only at half pay since we're not "teaching." I think that's the Korean way, and it's not the end of the world, but it is drastically different than my expectations and maybe even how the recruiter presented it to me.

An even more significant challenge is teaching the different age groups. One group of kids, I can spend 40 minutes trying to teach them the phonics of the letter B and how to write it in upper and lower case. And it might take 2 or 3 classes before they start to mutter along with me.

My oldest group of kids, on the other hand, I get to explain things like reflexive pronouns and subject verb agreement. The thing is, they don't know terms like "verb" or "article" so how I am supposed to do that is currently beyond me.

As always, any comments, suggestions, or queries are welcome.

Chapter Three: Seoul Asylum*

Runaway Train never coming back...wrong way on a one way track.

Now that I have a week of teaching under my belt, I have a few observations and stories.

First, these kids are very funny. They're not very disciplined (ie: not at all) but that's for two reasons. One they are very young (more on that later). And two the school I work at is apparently known as a fun school so kids who "can't cut it" at a stricter school end up coming here. It is chaos even with relatively small classes. Our biggest classes are 10 kids, which compared to some teachers I know who have 30 or 40 seems nice. But ten 6 year-olds bouncing off the walls can be a lot to handle.

It sounds almost condescending, but I'm surprised that they have such strong personalities. It's funny to think that, for the most part, the outgoing ones will be extroverts their whole lives and the shy ones will remain shy. Maybe there is something to the nature part of the whole nature vs nurture debate. Or maybe the first three years really are the most important.

I teach 7 classes a day, everything from phonics to library time to worksheets. Mostly it's just getting them to sing or memorize stuff but with most classes I find the sillier I am the better they learn it.

I have one class with two 7 year olds in it. Sounds like a breeze, right? Well these two kids' personalities are a violiatile mix. One kid is like a Korean version of Nelson from the Simpsons. He's the oldest kindergartner, kind of a bully, and he swears nonstop (the korean equivalent of poop poop poop is his every other word). He cries if he loses a game though he mocks other kids if he wins.






He is a cute little guy though.



It would be tough for any kid to be in a class with him, but the other kid is, in his own way, more of a challenge. He is sometimes brilliant; he has already outsmarted me a couple of times. But his social development is lacking and he hits other kids several times a day for either making fun of him or doing something wrong in his view of the world. Today, for instance, he dropped a toy and when one kid went to pick it up and give it back to him, the kid grabbed and punched him and fell to tears. He thought he wouldn't get the toy back, I think. He also has severe OCD and if I write a letter on the board slightly wrong, I can't move on until he has gotten up and fixed it. As I said, he is very smart but it's a challenge getting him to do the day's lesson plan and not, as he did today, write 1-100 over and over again for 40 minutes.





Here is a snapshot of the two of them at play.







I mentioned age before. It's calculated differently here. You are considered one year old when you're born. And everyone is considered one year older every January 1st. If, like one of my students, you are born on December 31st, this means the next day you are considered 2 years old. This makes for a large variety of ability even amongst a group of so-called "seven year-olds." My morning kindergartners were born in 2003! Seriously? That wasn't so long ago, was it?


Another strange element that takes some getting used to is that school is a business here. Without kids, there is no money and with no money that means no foreign teachers (aka us). This creates an asylum run by the inmates, where the smallest amount of discipline (giving a troublemaker less stars than the good students) can result in an hour long call from a parent or grandparent. We have to keep them happy but it's a fine line. They still have to pass the progress tests and some parents get angry if their kids don't get homework every night.

My Seattle class hard at work. Like any kids, they like the tickle monster way too much and think that being grabbed into the air and turned upside down is a major treat.

***
In miscellaneous other news, I don't have a phone yet, but had to take this picture when I saw it. What do the emergency services for phones do in your home country? I assume call 911 or 999 or whatever your number is. As in so many other areas, Korea is different.

While I'm a big fan of being able to request a mountain or a sea rescue, nothing beats the double-edged sword of using your mobile phone to either Spy (option 7) or Report a Spy (option 10).

And a picture of my bathroom. While it's not too terribly small, I basically have to fill my sink and (ironically) wash my washer every time I take a shower.

Oh, I have a Korean name! I don't know what it is in Hangul, but in English it's Typhoon Park. Typhoon because, well I guess that should be obvious, and Park as my family name because it seems to be the name of just about everyone over here.

*Will the Seoul puns ever get old? Gosh, I sure hope not.