Today started off as a beautiful day. The sky was a bright blue, with lots of fluffy clouds sailing between the tops of buildings, like ships over a coral reef. A clean sky, thanks to lots of rain.
The bus was full, so ended up sitting next to a pretty girl who told me she is studying Nutrition. I asked her, with reference to what I posted earlier, "Which is the best Korean food for an athlete." She said, "Bibimpap." Interesting. It's a salad, basically, which I guess you can mix with rice. But it's not really something one can use as a staple.
Earlier I also referenced my dairies, that in the last 3 years, every time at this time of year, in August, there has been drama.
I didn't expect drama to open right off the bat. In fact I'm using some new material, new storybooks, new attitude (a new level of loosely accepting all the unacceptable things (eating in class, coming in late, refusal to think or respond to questions)which actually represennts a poor standard of teaching, but hey). The challanege as a teacher is not to force yourself over a class, not to regiement them, but to get them to think for themselves, get them to work things out.
What frustrates me at this school is that the level of English is so low, it feels like we are standing on the starting blocks every day. That wears you out. You stand on the starting blocks everyday, and the sun just beats down. And the time for the race never comes.
Why do I love teaching English? Because I love English, and I love imparting English. I'm not doing that, nowhere near to the degree that brings even a little satisfaction. Some of the kids, a minority, are okay. Some can't read the word 'to'. All they do is parrot and pretend. You do, I do. Monkey say, monkey do. When they walk out the door they're none the wiser.
The weird thing is I got an email from someone today saying I have a 'temper', and shortly after that, in my second last class, I found myself getting extremely agitated. This is the class where, when I come in, two school bags wait on the desk until 15 minutes have gone by, and then those two students saunter in, sighing as though they're carrying the world on their shoulders. In the first few weeks, after pleasantries didn't work, I tried pushups and caning but that got me into trouble, even when I wasn't disciplining them, so now I just let them do as they like.
What upset me today was that the only student who makes some effort just decided today that she didn't feel it. She told me the class was boring and wanted to go out to drink water.
Towards the end of the class we had an audio CD playing, with the speaker saying a few words (and in the empty echo afterwards the students are supposed to repeat the phrase). So there we were, and the only thing happening was a radio talking to itself. This went on for quite a while. My jaw dropped. With 2 minutes to go, I started to ask them if their parents would mind them just sitting around in class doing nothing. Not much reaction there. I asked them some other pointed queestions. One eye turned to check the time. In fact, basically it was me versus stone statues. Here's the rub. These kids are on vacation now, so this is the only class they have to attend all day. So I don't buy that they are tired. I'm tired. I've been working all day. I think it's more like, Since it's you, we'll take our chances. Nothing happens when we don't work anyway.
So I asked them for their mother's phone numbers. Lisa suddenly burst out crying, and the boy starting protesting and shouting. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. You couyld swear I'd suddenly injected them with adrenalin. They were suddenly alive. Hallejuah! Long story short, we eventually had the director, Alicia and all the students having a shouting match in Korean. Did I get the parents phone numbers? No? Will Larry come in 15 minutes late tomorrow? Yes. Will tomorrow's class be a carbon copy of today? Yes. What did the students learn:
Teacher: 0
Students: 3453
Tomorrow the director will call me into his office and in summary, he will say: Students good, you bad.
Loosely translated: Remember, pretend to be teaching. Don't really teach, it makes everyone unhappy, and the parents don't need to know, they just need to pay.
On the positive side, had some good ideas for a book I've been working in today. And nothing like a bit of angst to get the ball rolling...
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