trying to work off a chest cold

I've almost finished my third week teaching here in Naju. It's getting easier every day as I coming to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each individual student. At the same time, there are greater challenges of the job that are becoming more apparent. Early last week, Leta got a bad cold and as expected a couple days later I caught it as well. I was expecting to get sick any time now, as it's my usual routine when traveling. I also work in a school where everyone uses the same small toilet closet that smells like human waste concentrate; having to touch the same doorknob as everyone else who had no soap to wash their hands. Unfortunately, as sick as I got, visiting a doctor isn't an option for Leta and I since we're still waiting for our immigration paperwork to get to the point where we can get health insurance through work. At first, my sickness seemed like one of the worst colds that I'd ever had. The first day was spent drowsy from dayquil and with a nose that ran constantly, regardless of whether I could keep up with the tissues. It felt a lot like when my allergies are at their worst, complete with swollen sinuses and a swimming headache that keeps me constantly off-balance. The next day my throat got bad and I developed a bad cough, hacking up gummy phlegms in all shades of brown, green, grey and yellow with the occasional clumps of blood. Since then (I'm still sick), I've spent my mornings going into coughing fits as I purge my lungs and throat of an alarming amount of clumpy goop. I don't know why, but trying to be descriptive about my sickness somehow makes me feel better about it.

Being sick is a bummer, but I've never in my life been forced to suck up a serious illness and continue on with my full schedule. Apparently, though, that's how things work here in the Korean culture of busyness. Even when working in close contact with other teachers and a school full of children. Leta and I spent the weekend watching movies and I've been getting about 12 hours sleep minus middle-of-the-night restlessness. Luckily, my boss was out of town in the Philippines all last week until Tuesday this week... so when I was able to prepare handouts and tests to take the pressure off 45-minute intensive lessons on the days that I had problems seeing straight. While my boss was gone, her role was replaced by her sister-in-law who is pregnant, speaks almost no english whatsoever, and was sick with the same thing everyone was getting. She performed the basic duties of corresponding with parents, taking attendance and solving all the various inevitable problems that come with having swarms of kids running around all day (a violent explosion of yogurt, a potted plant worth of dirt suddenly and mysteriously scattered across the floor, a water balloon prematurely activated, to name a few)

With the return of the boss comes a greater sense of order and a whole new set of problems. From the second she walked into the school, tensions among the teachers shot up very noticably. Far from saying hello and going through the normal motions of returning from travel, she immediately began rushing around busily, yelling at students, and popping into classes to give unclear instructions as to how classes ought to be taught. Apparently her trip to oversee the boarding school was anything but a vacation. While she was gone, a new month of school began and we apparently lost the enrolment of ten students. As is the case in any business, the boss has shifted blame for this down to the teachers, in an effort to try to respond to the problem. As far as we can tell, the boss feels that parents are pulling their kids out of this school in favor of academies with Korean teachers. She says that they feel our western teaching style is too lax and prefer the Korean style of keeping the students in line by screaming in their faces and confiscating anything that isnt a schoolbook or a pencil. Also, our students are apparently doing poorly on their english tests at school... which either means that they aren't learning anything here or that the english they learn at our school isn't transferrable to the english testing in Korean schools. This isn't surprising to me, as building the foundations for skills in a language doesn't help much with being able to memorize and forget a few sentences a week.

Nevertheless, the boss is dissatisfied with our teaching and with the overall direction of the school. This wouldn't be much of a problem, if not for the realities that created this situation in the first place: there is nothing but superficial communication between the teachers and our boss. Desperate to keep students, our boss pops into classes and after a few moments makes general suggestions that can only amount to 'teach better', 'be more strict', or 'make the kids study harder'. Like anybody, the teachers get frustrated by this less-than-constructive criticism and their feelings are hurt. They claim that they shouldn't be expected to adapt independently to these difficult situations as it was clear when they were hired that they were inexperienced. I say 'they' because the other teachers in general get more of this criticism than I do, maybe because I'm the newest and least experienced teacher and maybe because I am a tall male and my female boss finds it easier to speak freely to other females her own height. Regardless, we're all under the mandate that if we don't somehow learn to teach in the Korean style desired from our students' parents, the school "might not need as many teachers as they have right now."

There is no way to adapt the cirriculum of the school when there is no established cirriculum of the school. There is no way to change our style of teaching to some other standard when that standard is unclear and the ways that we need to change are unclear. We were not trained or instructed to begin with. It is understandable that we are expected to learn how to teach independently, as we were hired to be english teachers. We also knew that our boss did not speak functional english, as we had to be screened, hired and briefed through their son in America. Expectations need to be realistic on both sides, but there is little chance of us reaching a satisfactory solution to the problems at hand if we can't understand each other. Another problem that keeps this from being resolved is that the boss was spoiled by having had an english teacher last year with seven years of teaching experience and a military background. He set the standards high, as he was able to operate independently and reach the desired level of discipline and achievement. The boss now tries to correct the other teachers by recommending they "teach more like Eric," which only puts them on the defensive as they are all firmly convinced that they can't live up to his experience or teaching style. This is the drama that is their stress and my angst-filled work environment. Taking offense and making the problem personal isn't going to help us teach better and it isn't going to make it any easier for our boss to manage us. It's too bad that you can't effectively tell people to lighten up and not to get all worked up about the inevitable... especially not a bunch of females.

Ending on another topic altogether, North Americans don't realize how much they take for granted that they don't have to sort their garbage as they throw it away. Washing out bottles and cans for the recycling is nothing compared to the despicable process of throwing our your food garbage separately. Especially when you go to take out your food garbage after almost a week, and you get a bag of fetid rotten meat and vegetable soup leaking out the bottom of the bag onto your front doorstep. This afternoon when I went to bring out the trash before work, I tried to remove the food garbage from its sealed bucket and it dripped everywhere onto my bag of books and the front entryway. I wretched a few times and put it back in the bucket, deciding that it would have to wait until after work to be taken care of. Somewhere in the middle of writing this entry, I put on some plastic gloves and take the bucket and other bags down to the trash. There I had to try to empty the contents of the plastic bag along with the soup in the bucket into one bin and throw the defiled bag into another... without getting anything on me or my clothes. When we got back up here, Leta went to work bleaching the bucket and trying to get the smell out of our entryway. Hopefully it'll be gone by morning, because our whole house stinks like the stuff right now.

That's all. Sorry if the writing took on the character of a sick and exhausted expatriate.