a week of confusion
I'm about to start my second week of teaching english classes to children who so far as I can tell are between the ages of 7 and 12. Even with a full week of classes being only thirty 45-minute sessions, it felt like an incalculably long time. Every day I came home too overwhelmed even to sit and use my computer. This was a combination of the fact that I've never been a teacher of any sort before and that my boss speaks very little english but still shifts and changes things so that I never know what to expect. I took over five classes from a Filipino teacher named Evelyn who I did not speak to or even meet. I was told which books to use and to check the children's books to find out where they were at in the class. The books that I'm teaching from are also often part of a larger cirriculum set that the school hasn't purchased, leaving me to figure out for myself how I'm going to supplement or ignore sections that rely on audio resources, etc. To make things more interesting, my boss left to manage their boarding school in the Philippines for a couple weeks. She left me with the rough advice that I was to 'finish up the books' for a few of my classes and ease them into another. I am left to fill in the blanks with details like how to test a class, what to do when there are students of vastly different language skill, how to assign work when half the class is finished their books and the other don't have any, etc..
I have found that as I am finding ways to teach, it is rehashing a lot of old feelings that I have about the education system. I tutor a 12 year old boy on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-10pm. He goes to school from 8am-4pm and from after-school academy from 4pm-8:30pm. Then, he drives half an hour to be tutored by me in english. He is a very smart kid, but from what I can tell his schedule is fairly common. I teach the same classes comprised of the same kids every day of the week. This means that all the kids (except the youngest) that I teach go to some type of school at least 12 hours every weekday. I don't think that this is fair and it still bewildurs me how the kids manage to stay childlike or even to have a childhood. This makes it extra difficult for me to accept when I feel like what I am trying to teach them is too repetetive or boring -- especially when they look frustrated and bored. There are more kids than I would expect that seem eager to learn new english and hone their grammar and such, but there are also plenty of those that aren't. They cheat on tests and they only ever mimic other students' answers or wait until another student answers for them. They draw and write notes to each other in Korean. I am supposed to make them pay attention, and I try, but how can I get angry and punish them for this? It's my job to try to make them pay attention, but I can't make them be interested. A teacher who can communicate with their students always has the opportunity to try to connect with them or relate with them... but I cannot communicate with my students in any meaningful way. I can't answer any of their casual questions and all but the most persistent students have given up trying to ask a question that a text book hasn't taught them to ask. (Do you like strawberries? How many apples are there?) I don't see how they even have a chance to become interested when faced with a teacher who is clumsily trying to convey the meaning of some simple phrase. Most of the time 'teaching' boils down to me yelling a phrase and the class yelling it back at me. Even the more advanced learning only involves getting them to yell back the proper response. It's easy for me to sort of break down and slip into delusion where I imagine that I am a revolutionary stirring up the masses for their final stand against tyranny. The kids don't know what they're saying and so I find myself hoping that the emotion behind my firm declarations of A! B! C! is instilling something in them more valuable than basic english speaking skills.
In this past week I've had a number of opportunities to go out to eat. Thankfully, most restaurants either have some pictures on their menus or up on their walls. This allows me to point if I see something that I might like. Still, this almost never works out for me. It's almost always a random grab bag of what will be brought to me, even if ten minutes is spent 'clarifying'. I went out for lunch once with my boss's husband, the pastor of the church that our school is a part of, and tried to explain that I wanted these deep-fried pork stick things. After involving two waitresses in our search for the correct menu item, I received seafood fried rice wrapped in an omelette and some cole slaw. Leta and I went to a "Chinese restaurant" and the waitress there seemed to speak some english, but she ended up getting noodles in mushroom sauce (she hates mushrooms) and I got some fried rice with little pieces of shrimp, squid, little crunchy minnows and what I think we decided were sea slugs... with a side of shredded cabbage covered in ketchup. We've even gone to a fried chicken place and gotten deep-fried chicken neck by accident. This is the sort of thing that I fully expected when coming here, so I find it more amusing than frustrating. Still, there are times when I push my plate away and try ordering a second time.
At some point last week, our boss took us into Gwangju to get the immigration paperwork submitted for our alien registration. This was boring, but on the way home we stopped at this huge mall-type complex called Kumhoworld. It was something like 8 floors filled with stalls and booths of people selling any kind of electronics or electronics components imaginable. Most stores were just a desk or display case in front and a shelf in back, with one of each item displayed and a bunch of cardboard boxes full of extras on the ground next to the salespeople. Nothing had prices on it, which indicated that the suggested prices were only the initial offer and that they were open to negotiate for your business. Now some electronics, like cameras, are apparently more expensive here... but computer components, especially anything including memory components, are dirt cheap here. I don't normally like to shop, but I found myself entranced with the place as I tried to organize all the ideas I was having into some kind of plan. I managed to pull myself together enough to buy some blank CDs and a keyboard to replace the one that I ruined by spilling juice on, but decided that I was going to have to do a lot of pricing and at least learn how to say my Korean numbers before I did any serious business there. I don't really have the money to do anything impressive yet anyways.
So last night, Leta and I went with the other three english teachers into Gwangju because it was one of their birthdays. We went to the same Italian place as before, except this time I had much more of an appetite and so enjoyed in that much more. After that, we decided to go to what I thought was a karaoke bar... but it turned out to be a place where you go and play board games and pay by the time you spend in the place. We played five rounds of Clue. Everyone else in the place was playing this game that involved smashing each other with these plastic accordian hammers that squeaked whenever they hit anything. They never seemed to get tired of how funny it was smashing each other on the heads with it. In the end, the five of us paid just as much as it would have cost to buy a Clue game for ourselves, but the oddity of the experience made it well worth it. Sadly, after that we went and had dunken donuts and a baskin robins ice cream cake. It wasn't sad at the time, but both Leta and I are feeling pretty sick this morning and I hold dairy responsible.
That's all for now.
I have found that as I am finding ways to teach, it is rehashing a lot of old feelings that I have about the education system. I tutor a 12 year old boy on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-10pm. He goes to school from 8am-4pm and from after-school academy from 4pm-8:30pm. Then, he drives half an hour to be tutored by me in english. He is a very smart kid, but from what I can tell his schedule is fairly common. I teach the same classes comprised of the same kids every day of the week. This means that all the kids (except the youngest) that I teach go to some type of school at least 12 hours every weekday. I don't think that this is fair and it still bewildurs me how the kids manage to stay childlike or even to have a childhood. This makes it extra difficult for me to accept when I feel like what I am trying to teach them is too repetetive or boring -- especially when they look frustrated and bored. There are more kids than I would expect that seem eager to learn new english and hone their grammar and such, but there are also plenty of those that aren't. They cheat on tests and they only ever mimic other students' answers or wait until another student answers for them. They draw and write notes to each other in Korean. I am supposed to make them pay attention, and I try, but how can I get angry and punish them for this? It's my job to try to make them pay attention, but I can't make them be interested. A teacher who can communicate with their students always has the opportunity to try to connect with them or relate with them... but I cannot communicate with my students in any meaningful way. I can't answer any of their casual questions and all but the most persistent students have given up trying to ask a question that a text book hasn't taught them to ask. (Do you like strawberries? How many apples are there?) I don't see how they even have a chance to become interested when faced with a teacher who is clumsily trying to convey the meaning of some simple phrase. Most of the time 'teaching' boils down to me yelling a phrase and the class yelling it back at me. Even the more advanced learning only involves getting them to yell back the proper response. It's easy for me to sort of break down and slip into delusion where I imagine that I am a revolutionary stirring up the masses for their final stand against tyranny. The kids don't know what they're saying and so I find myself hoping that the emotion behind my firm declarations of A! B! C! is instilling something in them more valuable than basic english speaking skills.
In this past week I've had a number of opportunities to go out to eat. Thankfully, most restaurants either have some pictures on their menus or up on their walls. This allows me to point if I see something that I might like. Still, this almost never works out for me. It's almost always a random grab bag of what will be brought to me, even if ten minutes is spent 'clarifying'. I went out for lunch once with my boss's husband, the pastor of the church that our school is a part of, and tried to explain that I wanted these deep-fried pork stick things. After involving two waitresses in our search for the correct menu item, I received seafood fried rice wrapped in an omelette and some cole slaw. Leta and I went to a "Chinese restaurant" and the waitress there seemed to speak some english, but she ended up getting noodles in mushroom sauce (she hates mushrooms) and I got some fried rice with little pieces of shrimp, squid, little crunchy minnows and what I think we decided were sea slugs... with a side of shredded cabbage covered in ketchup. We've even gone to a fried chicken place and gotten deep-fried chicken neck by accident. This is the sort of thing that I fully expected when coming here, so I find it more amusing than frustrating. Still, there are times when I push my plate away and try ordering a second time.
At some point last week, our boss took us into Gwangju to get the immigration paperwork submitted for our alien registration. This was boring, but on the way home we stopped at this huge mall-type complex called Kumhoworld. It was something like 8 floors filled with stalls and booths of people selling any kind of electronics or electronics components imaginable. Most stores were just a desk or display case in front and a shelf in back, with one of each item displayed and a bunch of cardboard boxes full of extras on the ground next to the salespeople. Nothing had prices on it, which indicated that the suggested prices were only the initial offer and that they were open to negotiate for your business. Now some electronics, like cameras, are apparently more expensive here... but computer components, especially anything including memory components, are dirt cheap here. I don't normally like to shop, but I found myself entranced with the place as I tried to organize all the ideas I was having into some kind of plan. I managed to pull myself together enough to buy some blank CDs and a keyboard to replace the one that I ruined by spilling juice on, but decided that I was going to have to do a lot of pricing and at least learn how to say my Korean numbers before I did any serious business there. I don't really have the money to do anything impressive yet anyways.
So last night, Leta and I went with the other three english teachers into Gwangju because it was one of their birthdays. We went to the same Italian place as before, except this time I had much more of an appetite and so enjoyed in that much more. After that, we decided to go to what I thought was a karaoke bar... but it turned out to be a place where you go and play board games and pay by the time you spend in the place. We played five rounds of Clue. Everyone else in the place was playing this game that involved smashing each other with these plastic accordian hammers that squeaked whenever they hit anything. They never seemed to get tired of how funny it was smashing each other on the heads with it. In the end, the five of us paid just as much as it would have cost to buy a Clue game for ourselves, but the oddity of the experience made it well worth it. Sadly, after that we went and had dunken donuts and a baskin robins ice cream cake. It wasn't sad at the time, but both Leta and I are feeling pretty sick this morning and I hold dairy responsible.
That's all for now.
posted by Pope Lithium at 5:30 PM
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