Bopping Kidz

So we like to think that we lead a relatively austere existence here in Seoul.  We don't tend to accumulate possessions so much; those just take up space and hold you down, man.  We don't need a big TV or a flashy, expensive car to be happy, man.  Because we watch TV shows on our computer and have flashy, expensive bikes, man.  ...Man.

It turns out one of the things we have accumulated, though, is photos of adorable students.  Those kinda pile up, which makes it extremely difficult to keep this post pared down to fewer than a dillion photos.  So we're not really going to try.  Enjoy this onslaught of cuteness, intercut with some ramblings about the teaching culture in Korea.

Annalise's note reads: "Harry teacher I love you Thank you Stay happy forever Analise"  I had her add some punctuation, because teaching English is an Always Job.

This little guy was the bane of my existence for an entire year.  He's loud, disruptive, hyperactive, and occasionally extremely sweet and adorable.  Cute enough to overlook the disgusting snacks that he was always eating in class and the fact that his teeth are all black and rotting.  Anyway, yeah.  Sweet little guy.

So any of the names mentioned here, it should be pointed out, are not any of these students' real names (and thus, it's probably not any kind of violation of privacy or anything).  Unlike Japan, where I can't say I knew anyone outside of the "International" classrooms at Harumidai Kindergarten who used an English nickname, everyone in Korea seems to.  All of our Korean co-teachers, 95% of our students, adults unaffiliated with a school...when they interact with foreigners, every Jae Won and Dong Ha suddenly becomes Jimmy and David.

There's a few funny ones, of course.  Nothing like what I've heard Chinese students of English do, but we've got a couple of girls named Sunny, one Soul, one Shiny, and a Jelly.  Plus a lot of Solomons, for some reason.  Mostly they're all named Sally or Sam or Alice, though after Frozen came out suddenly they all wanted to change their names to Elsa.  Oh, yeah, they change their names.  Sometimes one of the student will walk into the classroom and attempt to explain with their kindergarten-level English: "Teacher, Ellen, no.  Hannah."  Most of the time I ignore what the kids tell me about their identities (such as "Teacher, me dinosaur"), but I try to take it in stride and encourage the other children to respect the kid's new name choice.  This does cause some adorable confusion in some of the kids who aren't that great at paying attention but are long on helpfulness ("Teacher," they look at me, perplexed, "Ellen, that's Ellen."  "I know that," I tell them, "but tell that to her.").

More fun with comics.  This one was written by Alex (age 15) and dedicated to his bestest friend ever, Daniel.

One of the secrets of the Early Childhood EFL game is that there are only four children's songs: "Frere Jacques," "Ten Little Indians," "Twinkle, Twinkle," and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."  All other children's songs are just setting different words to these four tunes.  This, though.  Seriously.  I refused to teach this song in my classroom on the grounds that it would actually make my students worse at English.  And this isn't the only one.

Christ.

I know you have to work with what they can already say, but...really?

Another successful Valentine's Day craft!  I taught my snarky middle schoolers how to be creative when utilizing stiflingly uncreative materials.

As a thank you from this same middle school class, they very kindly left me some pieces of their grody Korean pizza, which I promptly gave to someone else.

As far as teaching in Korea as opposed to Japan goes: in Japan, the educational system prized test results above all else.  Students study long hours at school at longer hours at cram school, often not getting home until 9:00 or later.  Yet as we've mentioned before, it's entirely possible within the Japanese school system to excel at English, get a perfect score on your national English exams, and become a fully accredited English teacher without being able to speak a single word in conversation.  The Japanese solution to this problem is to import unqualified native speakers (heyo!) to just kind of exist around their students and hope that their native pronunciation is more important than the idea that they have no idea how to teach.

In Korea, there is a similar culture of working students to death , many students working even longer hours than their Japanese peers.  Since the government forces after-school academies to close by 10 p.m., there is an abundance of illegal "study rooms" that teach illicit lessons past this curfew, sometimes until 3 or 4 a.m..

Something Korea's doing does seem to be working, however.  We've met far more adult Koreans who speak passable (or even excellent) English than we ever met in Japan, and there seems to be a much greater focus on speaking as a quantifiable skill here (they're big on making students of any age do speech contests).

"Teacher!  Hint!"

This kid didn't seem to have any idea what he was doing.  I think the rhythm is just in him.  Or the devil.

Getting some help with my Korean homework.  I find it's a good way to connect with young English learners to see that their teacher is struggling with another language, too. Plus I'm lazy and appreciate the help.

Always a party in Harry-teacher's class.  Never have so many wanted to share so much about something they know so little about.

And that's about it for the teaching life in Korea.  We'd come back and do it again, no question.  Unfortunately, as it turns out, our school is shutting down on the very day that we are to finish our contracts!  Long, poorly-understood story short: while it's billed itself publicly as a "Continuing Education Center," our school has actually been run as an after-school academy.  That is, according to the law, CEC is supposed to be teaching adults cooking classes or whatever, and for the 10-plus years of its history it's just been getting away with educating children in English instead.  The nerve of some people.

But before we end, let us encapsulate in twenty seconds the experience of one year of teaching two gross little seven-year-old boys: