Lost snippets from the drafts folder – #5

My drafts are dwindling, but we are forging ahead here. This one goes more into depth about how much I loved the 1st graders from 2018, which I also briefly mentioned in my previous post.

May 2018 – Untitled

One of the many unique things about being a teacher is that the working experience can change drastically from year to year, all depending on the classes and the students.

Last year was a golden year. As I wrote about at the time, I was in a very Zen zone. Everything was pretty easy. I let the stressful stuff slide off my back, but to be honest there weren’t a whole lot of difficulties in terms of the students and teaching.

This year has definitely presented itself as… a challenge, to say the least. The 3rd graders have gone full Apathy/Chaotic Mode from Day 1 (admittedly, continuing a trend they’ve followed since they entered middle school, but the behavior has intensified exponentially now that they’re at the top of the food chain).

The 1st graders this year fortunately balance that out a bit. We’re already about halfway through the semester and they’re still good listeners and easy to manage. This is a first. In my experience, by this point in the year they’d already be very demotivated and (in some cases) noisy and disruptive.

Whether this change is due to the new textbook (which I love because it’s so much easier and more engaging than the old one), my new approach to lessons based on said new textbook, this particular set of kids, or some combination of the three, I’m not sure. I’m just so glad we’re still going strong, because once a negative mood creeps into a class it’s hard to kick it out.

I can’t gush enough about them, honestly. I can walk into class with them knowing that I’ll be greeted cheerfully – even at the dreaded 4th period (right before lunch) or 7th period (the last class of the day) – and that when they get noisy, all I need to do is say “eyes on me” or point at the “Listen Carefully” rule on the whiteboard to get them to self-police and quiet down. It’s amazing!

Currently we’re prepping for speaking test week at the end of the month. It’s old hat for the 2nd and 3rd graders, the same format they’ve done for a year or two now.

We had Sports Day yesterday (purposely coinciding with Teachers’ Day to give teachers a “break,” although I’m pretty sure it was the opposite because there was so much prepping and kid-wrangling to do).

I usually like watching the Sports Day festivities. Yesterday, however, I only watched for the first hour and then went inside because the pollution levels were out of control. You could literally see the gray smoggy haze in the air. The mountains were obscured by layers of smog. After that one hour, my throat and chest were feeling the effects, and I, not wishing to get any more fine particles lodged in my lungs, retreated.

However, while I was in my office and missing out on Sports Day, I did at least get visits from a few students from last year. They came in a shy little group to say hi to me.

Yep, do not miss that set of 3rd graders (as a whole). *shudder* One of my coworkers at the time, who is still a good friend of mine now, still occasionally talks about how traumatized she is from teaching them. They were… a lot.

2018 was also one of the worst years for air pollution here. When Covid caused China to shut down its factories in 2020, we had some of the best, clearest air days we’d had in years – since before I came to Korea, I guess. I remember taking so many pictures of the sky during 2020 because I was awed by how different it was. While pollution has crept back in the years following, so far it’s still been better on the whole, but most of our super bad days are thanks to westerly winds blowing in nasty toxic stuff from the factories on the east coast of China. (Does China deliberately build its factories on the east coast so that the pollution blows into Korea? You’d best believe it. I mean, allegedly.)

Lost snippets from the drafts folder – #4

Well, here we are again with another bit of a post from years ago. What am I going to do when I run out of these drafts? Good question. But with a baby on the way and likely to show up any day now, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

April 2018 – Untitled

*tap tap* Is this thing on?

Working alone

My officemate is a part-time teacher who works on T/Th, so I have my small office to myself 3 days a week and it is THE BEST. I get to recharge my batteries or plan lessons in solitude without appearing deliberately antisocial. It also sometimes feels a little weird, like is it actually okay for me to be left alone for 3 whole days a week?

Actually, at lunch last week one of my co-teachers did ask me, “Aren’t you lonely in your office?” No ma’am.

Classroom management

This year I decided to create stamp cards for my class that all the students glued to the inside cover of their textbook. If they participate consistently, do a presentation in class, win a game, etc., I give them a stamp.

If they complete one row of stamps, they get a piece of candy or chocolate.  I was worried that this would demotivate the 2nd & 3rd graders, because in most cases where they would’ve gotten candy last year, they’ll get a stamp instead. But so far it’s been working pretty well.

In other news

My school allows the kids to form their own clubs and then “recruit” a teacher of their choice to lead the club. A few weeks ago during the club planning stage, a group of 2nd grade boys approached me: “Teacher, can you be our basketball club teacher?”

While I appreciated their confidence in me as a basketball-playing type of person, that is most definitely not the case.

Fortunately, I had an honest excuse: I already have an English club in the same time slot.

I love 1st graders

They start off so fresh and eager, demonstrate appropriate listening and hand-raising behaviors, and are generally pleased with any type of game or activity. They’re quick to answer questions and participate. When the bell rings, they stay in their seats until they’re dismissed.

Ah, yes, solitude. 2018 and 2019 were the years that I had the privilege of my own office space (3 days a week at first, and then every day in 2019 because the English teachers got reshuffled and by some good fortune, I ended up with no officemate). In all the other years before and after, I always had at least one coworker, and in my final two years of teaching, I was seated in the main teachers’ office, under the watchful eye of the vice principal, the school’s head teacher, and about a dozen other teachers. Not that I was getting up to any shenanigans when I was in my own space, but good heavens, I missed the solitude.

Implementing the stamp sheets in my classroom was hands down one of the best things I ever did as an English teacher. It was surprisingly motivating for most (not all) classes and gave me something to reward them with without feeling like a vending machine. Highly recommend.

Also, those 1st graders in 2018 were just the sweetest bunch of kids I ever encountered. Collectively, they were the best listeners and most engaged students I’ve ever taught. I miss them to this day.

Lost snippets from the drafts folder – #3

Hey look, I haven’t given up on this yet! It sure is easy to maintain consistent blog activity when you can just copy and paste old content and hit publish. heheh.

October 2017 – “Walking home”

I pass through the school gates and face a hoard of uniformed teenagers who have just been released from the high school a little way down the street. This is the trade-off for leaving on time. Pro: I’m leaving on time. Con: I have to walk against the tide of students on the narrow sidewalk.

I cross the unmarked intersection and a pigeon hops closer to me, unafraid, to peck at the discarded snack wrapper on the sidewalk.

A round ginkgo pod pops under my foot. There is a carnage of burst, flattened ginkgo fruit pods all over the ground, releasing their pungent, sour smell.

I’m taking the shortcut today, as I almost always do, through the side streets. Past the drum academy, where a steady rhythm pounds out through the open doors. Past the carpenter shop and the smell of fresh wood. Past the little mom and pop shops with small apartments on the upper floors. A wrinkled old woman with snow white hair is sitting in front of her 2nd story window, just observing.

The powerful odor of sewage assaults my nose as I walk past a gutter, then is swept away by fresher air from the mountains as I turn the corner.

One of the many cardboard-collecting senior citizens is pushing his cart full of flattened cardboard boxes down the street in front of me. He’s competing with countless other elderly people who are struggling to get by and who wake up before dawn every day to collect cardboard that they can then sell to recycling centers for a few extra dollars.

As I pass a small Korean restaurant, an old woman pushing her wheelchair down the back alley calls out to me excitedly – “아가씨 (young lady)! Hello! Hello!” – and waves. I head-bow automatically, “안녕하세요.” I’ve never seen her before, but we smile at each other.

At the intersection, waiting for the light to change, a pair of students spot me and wave enthusiastically. “HELLO TEACHER!”

I’m nearing home now. A grizzly old man wearing a floppy-brimmed hat casually steers his bike down the sidewalk with one hand while smoking a cigarette with the other.

A mother and her tiny daughter walk past me hand-in-hand. The girl stares at me, open-mouthed. She’s dressed all in pink. I smile at her.

Approaching my little apartment building now, I take my usual quick look around to make sure none of my students are in range before I reach the door.

In my apartment, I open the windows and listen to the distant sounds of cars on the main road, kids yelling at the daycare across from my building, and the newest addition to our neighborhood, saxophone music (perks of living near a saxophone academy: my life at home suddenly has the ambience of a swanky jazz club, kinda).

There’s no context needed for this one, really. It was the route I walked every single day for 4+ years. Sometimes I still miss that little studio apartment I had. It was my favorite of the three school-provided housing units I lived in – new, clean, bright & sunny (sometimes too sunny in the summer with its big window facing west), cheerful & cozy. I was really crushed that I had to leave there in 2020 when I transferred schools.

Lost snippets from the drafts folder – #2

Here we are, another week, another post fragment from long ago. Let’s see what we’ve got this time.

June 21, 2017 – “Failure and progress”

Sometimes I look at my classes and wonder if it’s entirely out of the question that their formerly cute and chipper selves have been secretly replaced with emotionless, lethargic alien clones of some kind.

Sometimes I have to take deep breaths and remind myself that June is a hellish month to be in school. And so will July be. And it’s not me, it’s not them, it’s just the circumstances.

Sometimes (read: today) I spend a lot of time and effort making what I think will be a fun and interesting lesson and then Things Happen to prevent it from being either of those things.

Basically, I started my after-school class with high expectations until half of my students came in late and 1 of the girls was crying and 1 of the boys was apparently furious and then all the others wanted to do was comfort the girl and find out what happened and then my class was basically derailed and although we eventually continued on with the lesson it was obviously quite a tense and unfun atmosphere.

This is a frequent occupational hazard of teaching teenagers.

Context: I remember this day, but alas, we will never know what the “progress” half of this post was meant to be because that’s where I stopped writing. I wasn’t exaggerating about the hellish June and July days, though – at that particular school, where I spent the vast majority of my teaching career, the principal was so stingy with the A/C that we were constantly miserable. My English classroom at the time (as I’ve mentioned once or twice in old posts) had a row of huge windows facing west, absorbing all the heat of the day and cooking the room to a crisp by afternoon. Even with the flimsy shades drawn, it was brutal.

Plus, I’m convinced children are simply not meant to be confined to a classroom in the summer months. The fact that Korea keeps their butts in those seats till mid-July and then expects them back mid-August is just… a lot.

Based on the handy-dandy revision history WordPress provides, I also originally wrote “Teenagers, man.” as the last line and then apparently rethought it and changed it to what you see above. Same sentiment I guess.

Lost snippets from the drafts folder – #1

So as I’ve been temporarily reviving this blog from the dead, I’ve been going through old unfinished draft posts (of which there were many) and deleting them. But a few were kind of okay, the bare bones of what could’ve been a decent entry. So, as a way to stretch my blog content out before it fizzles and dies again (ha), I’m going to revive these little snippets as their own posts with added context from my perspective in 2024.

First let’s reach wayyyyy back to this draft from almost 7(!) years ago:

Feb 7, 2017 – “Graduation and growing up”

My 3rd years graduated from middle school today. They’re 16 years old and they’ll start high school in less than a month.

At 10:30 I shivered my way down to the auditorium/gym for the ceremony. There were brief speeches from the principal and people I assume work at the Office of Education, maybe superintendents or something. A few exemplary students were recognized.

Every class (we only have six 3rd grade classes at my school, of around 24 students each) had to make a “UCC”, which I believe is Konglish because I’ve never heard it used in America but I really have no sense of these things anymore. Anyway it means “user-created content” and in Korea it specifically means videos, usually put together by students for contests or festivals.

Fittingly, the quality of the videos reflected the general effort and attitude I typically see from each class (i.e. the evil class put approximately 1.5 seconds of thought into their video and it showed, which gave me a very unteacherly schadenfreude-like satisfaction). The rest were pretty cute though.

Then the students sang this song, “Now It’s Goodbye,”* which is kind of a classic sad goodbye song that pretty much all Koreans know. Towards the end they turned the music down and the kids were just singing a cappella. There were tears. Even some of the goofiest and toughest boys were getting emotional.

*Artist: 015B; original title: “이젠 안녕” (1991)

Context: Re-listening to the song I linked brings back memories for sure. I really miss teaching sometimes (but I don’t miss that evil class… still remember them vividly, might have PTSD). Here are the song’s translated lyrics, which might lend insight into why it brought forth tears – very apropos for a school graduation, I think:

In that awkward expression when we first met
It was difficult to talk to each other, so we hesitated, but
The countless days spent buried in music
It’s a shame I can’t go back now
Now it’s time for us to leave each other
I turn away with regret, but
Time will bring us back together
It’s a shame, but we’ll wait until then
One cold winter day, we gathered in a small room
Now that song I used to sing
It was a small song buried in my memory, but
In our hearts forever
Goodbye is not an eternal separation
It must be a promise to meet again
The time we spent together is now a memory
We have to find our own path and leave.

It’s especially nostalgic because graduation ceremonies got nixed when Covid started and still hadn’t made a comeback by the time I left teaching in mid 2022 – the kids would stay in their individual homerooms and just watch the principal’s speech and other closing ceremony type things on their classroom TVs. So it’s been a long time since I witnessed the camaraderie and the bittersweet end of a school year like that.

I hope they’ve gone back to doing whole-school graduation ceremonies by now. It’s so meaningful for the students, and sometimes we all need to be together and sing together and cry together.

AI is stupid and I hate it

Let’s talk AI. Let’s talk ChatGPT. Let’s talk about how AI is stupid and does not live up to its “intelligent” name.

First, a demonstration. A test, if you like.

I’m going to write a paragraph about teaching in Korea. Then I’m going to use the new WordPress AI “Assistant” (so-called) to “improve” the writing. Let’s see how it does.

My paragraph:

During my seven years of teaching English to middle schoolers in Korea, I developed a great deal of resilience. After all, middle schoolers aren’t exactly known for being the most cooperative demographic. Nor are they particularly enthused by sitting in a classroom for hours on end (and who can blame them really). When I first heard from my recruiter that I was being assigned to a middle school (I was expecting elementary school, as there are many more grade school placements available in Korea than middle/high), fear and loathing struck my heart. But honestly, it became one of the best experiences of my entire life. I found my students to be, on the whole, delightful, charming, hilarious. Did we have plenty of bad behavior, bad classes, bad days? Sure. But there were also many moments of joy, insight, laughter, fun. These memories still warm my heart, more than a year after I’ve moved on from teaching.

All right, there we go – I quickly wrote that out in a minute or two, but it’s all my genuine reflections on the experience, in my own words. Now let’s see what AI wants to do with it.

Here’s the “Humorous 😂” tone (emoji included in the menu option):

During my a seven-year “sentence” teaching English to middle schoolers in Korea, I developed a ton of resilience. Let’s be real, middle schoolers aren’t exactly known for being the most cooperative bunch. And who can blame them? Sitting in a classroom for hours on end isn’t exactly their idea of a party. When I found out I was being assigned to a middle school instead of an elementary school (where there are way more placements available), I felt like I’d stepped into a horror movie. But you know what? It turned out to be one of the most epic rollercoaster rides of my life. My students were, for the most part, a downright riot! Charming, hilarious, and occasionally a bit too much to handle. Did we have our fair share of chaos, disasters, and oh-no moments? You bet. But amidst all that, there were also countless moments of pure joy, unexpected insights, fits of laughter, and just good ol’ fun. These memories still give my heart a warm, fuzzy feeling, even more than a year after I bid adieu to teaching.

What do we think, y’all? Has it improved my writing and made it wacky and zany and humorous (and less accurate, having added a typo in the first sentence)?

I don’t know… I read it and I think, okay, it’s… cutesy, I guess? But for some reason I feel like this is the uncanny valley of writing. It gives me the heebie-jeebies. There’s just something… off. Does anyone else feel this way?

Okay, let’s try the “Improve” function – I asked the AI to “improve” my writing by “making [the paragraph] shorter”:

During my seven years of teaching middle schoolers in Korea, I developed resilience. Initially apprehensive about the assignment, it turned into one of the best experiences of my life. Despite challenges, the delightful moments still warm my heart, even after moving on from teaching.

Um… I feel like we lost something here. (Not to mention the atrocious dangling modifier in the second sentence. I mean, AI has learned its grammar from the internet, so what could you expect. But seriously, dangling modifiers are probably my #1 grammar pet peeve and so the fact that AI thinks it’s OK to use them further infuriates me.)

Let’s try the “Confident 😎” tone:

During my seven years of teaching English to middle schoolers in Korea, I cultivated an impressive level of resilience. Middle schoolers, as a demographic, are not typically known for their cooperation, nor are they particularly keen on extended classroom sessions (and it’s understandable). When I first learned that I would be assigned to a middle school instead of an elementary school, I was initially filled with fear and apprehension. However, it turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Overall, I found my students to be delightful, charming, and hilarious. Undoubtedly, there were challenging moments, but there were also numerous instances of joy, insight, laughter, and fun. Even now, well over a year after leaving the teaching profession, these memories continue to warm my heart.

Uggggghhh.

Maybe I’m just being defensive as a human writer who’s now competing with so many AI-generated pieces of content, but somehow it just isn’t right. Right?! Please someone tell me I’m not alone in feeling this way. And please don’t use AI to write stuff for you. It’s soulless.

P.S. In an act of vengeance, I have forced my AI Assistant to admit its shortcomings – I prompted it to “Write a paragraph about why AI-generated writing is vastly inferior to human-generated writing and talk about the uncanny valley of writing,” and here is what it came up with:

AI-generated writing often falls into the uncanny valley, where it imitates human expression but lacks the genuine depth and authenticity of human-generated content. While AI can mimic tones, emotions, and styles, it often lacks the true understanding, empathy, and creativity that a human writer possesses. AI-generated writing can come across as superficial, lacking the nuanced and authentic voice that human writers naturally infuse into their work. The connection and emotional impact of human-generated writing are unparalleled, as it reflects genuine experiences, emotions, and perspectives that resonate with readers on a profound level. As a result, AI-generated writing is vastly inferior to human-generated writing due to its inability to capture the essence and depth of human expression, often leaving readers with a sense of something inexplicably “off” or artificial.

Mwahahaha.

Also, blech. Just go away, AI. grumble, grumble, rabble rabble rabble.

So, what happened?

In the silence of the past almost-five years since my last post, little snippets of blog posts have bubbled up in me from time to time, but they always faded before I had the motivation to sit down and write them.

So what happened during all this time?

2020

• Covid. Obviously.

• I switched schools, and school shutdowns began in Daegu the exact day that my new contract began. I had to move to a shoebox studio apartment (school-funded housing), in which I remained holed up for two months while classes remained online only. In May we went back to in-person, with half of the students coming one week and the other half coming the next in order to maximize social distancing. We wore masks. We stood six feet apart (in theory; try telling middle schoolers to stay six feet away from their friends at all times). We installed plastic dividers in the cafeteria so nobody could breathe on anybody else.
  
  But hey, actually I can’t complain much about all these things because, as an introvert, I sorta kinda enjoyed the personal bubble created by social distancing and masking. If I’m being totally honest, I’d go so far as to say I thrived on being left to mull over various thoughts in silence rather than make small talk at lunch, for example. (I realize that wasn’t most people’s experience with the early days of the pandemic.) The masking was annoying because it certainly doesn’t make it easy to teach a language when your mouth is hidden and your voice is muffled, but it didn’t bother many Koreans. Masking was already the cultural norm here for sick people or when the air pollution was bad, so it wasn’t much of a transition. Wasn’t a big transition for me either, as I was someone who wore masks fairly regularly on bad pollution days. (This is also probably part of the reason we were the last(?) country on Earth to remove mask mandates – in summer of 2023. They are still required in many hospitals, which I’m honestly kind of on board with.)

• Oh, and also I got married in 2020.

It was quite a year.

2021

• I switched schools again to be closer to the apartment my husband and I bought (no longer on school-funded housing, hurrah!).

• I got pregnant and survived roughly 9 months of teaching middle schoolers while intermittently feeling nauseous, exhausted, dizzy, and generally just very pregnant. (You know how women tend to get a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy, especially 1st trimester? Have you ever super-smelled eau de unwashed middle school boy while nauseous? Not recommended.)
  
  (Also not recommended: climbing up and down stairs all day [my school had three separate buildings and one of them was 5 stories] when your belly is the size of a watermelon. But I climbed them right till the bitter end because I deeply distrust small sketchy-looking elevators such as the one my school had. And in the end it probably helped anyway; climbing stairs is a literal technique for helping baby move into position for labor and birth.)

• I went on the legally mandated 90-day maternity leave a week before baby arrived. I was actually supposed to stop in at my school the Monday after I started my leave to sign some paperwork, but then my water broke on Sunday night. I ended up going to sign the paperwork four days postpartum.
  
  (This is my third not-recommended activity. I thought I was totally fine, but I was completely fatigued, physically and mentally, after all of five minutes of standing and chatting with coworkers as my insides felt like they were sloshing around in my still-swollen belly.)

2022

• I resumed working at my school in March (the beginning of the new school year) while my husband took advantage of the 1-year, partially-paid childcare leave offered by the Korean government and took care of our baby at home. We were so grateful to be able to do this because the daycare we were looking at didn’t seem thrilled about accepting such a young infant.

• Husband and I caught Covid after having somehow avoided it for 2 years. At that time, Korea was still enforcing self-quarantine, so I had a week off work while I “recovered” (I was actually almost completely recovered by Day 3). Fortunately, baby did not get sick.

• I realized that working moms are incredible, awe-inspiring superhumans. Working a full-time job while being a parent is freaking hard.

• After a lot of discussion of the pros and cons, we decided I would not renew my public school contract for 2023. I was really torn because I absolutely love teaching and have found so much joy in it (as evidenced by my previous posts here), and I miss my students, but ultimately this was the right choice. Which means…

2023

• I embarked on a new journey as a stay-at-home expat mom in Korea.

And with that said, I have also started a new blog which is probably not of particular interest to the majority of my readers here, but maybe will be to a few: Motherhood in Korea. My intention with this one is to create a resource for other foreign moms in Korea rather than a personal blog like this, but I suppose anyone who’s curious about the differences in prenatal and postpartum care in Korea vs. in the Western world might be interested.

Since I’m currently pregnant again and about to have baby #2, we’ll see how well I’m able to keep up either of these blogs.

One last note

I’ve shared many ups and downs on this blog throughout my years here. I’ve privated or removed quite a few posts that I deemed truly unworthy of remaining as my perspective has shifted and matured(?) over the years. But for those who may have read and remember some of my harsher critiques of the country I now call home, I wanted to express something.

If you’re a long-term expat/immigrant, maybe you can relate.

Moving to a new country, permanently or semi-permanently, involves the same stages as a long-term relationship.

The honeymoon phase. You start with rose-colored glasses. You drink in every new and beautiful experience. You marvel at the country, you praise it, you cannot imagine a more perfect place filled with perfect people, perfect infrastructure, perfect work environments, perfect culture. Everything is perfect. You are in love. It is exciting. You are energized, full of endorphins and dopamine.

The (culture) shock. You begin to notice the flaws. The perfect veneer starts to crack. Things that seemed like funny quirks in the beginning begin to grate on your nerves. Wait, why does this entire culture of people think A when clearly B is true? Why can’t they see that my way, my culture’s approach to this, is far superior? Reality sets in: you’re here, you’re in this for the long haul, and you are not in alignment with each other.

The spiral. The arguably reasonable issues you might have with the country or the culture disappear under a mountain of entirely unreasonable nitpicks that become increasingly irritating. It’s easy to get stuck in this place, letting every little thing get under your skin and blaming the entire country for it until you hit rock bottom, and then you have to choose: stay and make it work, or get out?

Repairing the relationship. Soul-searching is required in this phase, and digging deep to really try to understand the cultural norms, the history of the country, the mindset of its people. If you put the effort in, you can reach the final stage…

Mutual respect, understanding, and love. I love Korea. I would like to say I also understand it – not perfectly, but certainly more than I did when I moved here nearly nine years ago, and as a result, I respect the culture and the people more. I’m still on the journey, and Korea and I have been on the brink of a breakup several times over the years, but I’m happy to say that I have rediscovered everything I loved about Korea in the first place and have an even greater appreciation for it.

i’m back? (no, not really)

um…

hello.

it’s me, i’m alive.

what are you supposed to write after almost 5 years of being MIA?

i do have a couple of posts i want to make. call it a new year’s resolution for 2024, but a short lived one because it’s truly only a couple of posts. and then (don’t be surprised) this blog will lapse back into radio silence (er… internet silence?).

that is all.

happy 2024.

goodbye.

teaching updates

We’re in our sixth week of school already. March was mostly too busy to think.

The extra classes this year are both a burden and a blessing – on the one hand, more work and less downtime; on the other, my low level  (‘C’) classes (with only 4 or 5 students per) give me a chance to really work on their skills and help them be more comfortable with me, while high level (‘A’) classes get to go beyond the basics and learn more because they can handle it.

What about the ‘B’ level classes? I’ve found that they become the most difficult (this was true in my first year in Korea as well, when I also taught split level classes). They know just enough to be bored by basics, but not so much that they’re inspired to broaden their horizons with more challenging tasks. Their behavior is invariably the most out-of-hand.* We’re working on it.

*Except for one very delightful ‘B’ class that happens to have most of the sweetest kids in it, who are very enthusiastic and polite. They’re my last class on Tuesdays, and by that point in the day, they save me from despairing.

Here are a few updates from the past several weeks:

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The lesson is on jobs, and we’re practicing different sentences based on pictures. The sentence to be elicited is: I want to be a bus driver.

Student: “I want to be a bus stop.”

Interesting choice.

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I have a class with some of my low level kids in which the key expression is “I wonder.” A few periods later, two girls run excitedly into my room – “Teacher, I wonder! What is 무?” When I tell them “radish” and spell it on the board for them, they’re amused and delighted for unknown reasons.

(Later I discover they’re making a game out of trying to define Korean words in English by breaking each syllable into parts and translating the parts, like “산적”. 산 = mountain, 적 = enemy. Mountain enemy. Can you guess the real meaning? … Bandit. Not really too far off, I suppose.)

A few days later, I show a picture of my brother and me while teaching comparative adjectives (he’s taller than me) and another girl raises her hand. “Teacher, I wonder! I’m curious! Is that… your… brother?”

I’m always touched when they actually make an effort to use the key words we’ve learned. And to speak in full sentences.

---

The first graders and I are starting to get better acquainted now, and I expect them to know the class rules by heart. I ask for volunteers to come up and write them on the board at the start of class.

“Spelling mistakes are okay,” I say.

“You’d better not make any spelling mistakes,” says Mr. Y sternly in Korean (but with a twinkle in his eye).

---

Every afternoon after quitting time, the principal comes by checking the classrooms to make sure all the windows are closed, and he always yells out breezily, “Good morning” as he passes my (closed) office door. So then I have to awkwardly yell “Good morning” back, so as not to be rude. I don’t know how to tell him that 4:30 p.m. is not morning.

The balance of co-teaching (in praise of Mr. Y)

It’s pretty unusual for a Korean English teacher to be either old or male, but lo and behold, one of my co-teachers is both of these things – a rather gruff old man who we’ll call Mr. Y.

Mr. Y doesn’t really speak English all that much. We’ve never had a conversation; in fact, we’ve never said much to each other at all. But somehow, over the past 2+ years of co-teaching together, he has become the IDEAL co-teacher for me.

When we first started co-teaching, he would mostly nod off in the back over his newspaper or stare into oblivion probably hating his life (as chronicled here). He would yell at the kids whenever he felt they were being too loud in my class, scaring the kids and sometimes me.

But over the last year or so, Mr. Y has mellowed out a bit. He’s gotten to know my teaching style and what I expect from the students, and little by little he’s made changes to how he supports me in class.

We have mastered our joint classroom management approach – good cop, bad cop style. (I’m the good cop.) (That was probably obvious.)

I lay out my own classroom rules at the start of the year. I am clearly the one who is leading the class. I reprimand students myself when they’re acting out. But nothing can quiet the whole class faster than a deep, gruff “Sit up straight and listen” from the back of the room.

When Mr. Y, from his sentinel position at the back, notices one or two kids being squirrelly or chatty and disruptive, he approaches their desks and stands there with a look of disapproval until they cut it out.

If they’re being really noisy, he raises his hand to pause me. “Maddy, wait.” He yells at the misbehaving kids for a few seconds. They stare at their desks in shame. Mr. Y looks at me, gives me a nod. “Okay.” “Thank you,” I tell him. The students look at me soberly. I resume teaching. Everyone is listening. We have a wonderful, focused class, backed up by his silent but authoritarian presence.

When I introduce myself to the new 1st grade students for the first time, they are full of questions. They don’t know how to spell their names in English. They need another piece of paper. They want to ask me if I have a boyfriend. They don’t know the English word for their favorite sport.

No matter how many times they shout these questions to Mr. Y in Korean, he unfailingly responds, “If you have a question, ask Maddy Teacher. Not me. Maddy Teacher will help you.”

This imprints on the kids over and over again that when they are in my classroom, they need to make an effort to communicate with me in English. It also encourages respect for me and my lesson, since he never tries to override what I’m saying or translate everything into Korean so the kids don’t have to try to understand my English instructions.

This year I have a few of my lowest level classes with him, 6 kids per class. Mr. Y adapts to the situation. He waits several minutes after I explain the worksheet to see how they’re doing, then reiterates the key points in Korean and repeats my favorite phrase: “Ask Maddy Teacher your questions. This is Maddy Teacher’s class.”

Given the frequent difficulties of balancing a co-teaching relationship, in combination with the fact that he is an older teacher who comes from a completely different era of teaching methodologies, it is near miraculous that we have come to this point.

And all of this has been achieved, need I remind you, despite the fact that we’ve never really… talked.

Well, with two (partial) exceptions:

Once I sent him a message on the school chat system to remind him that I’d be giving him the 1st graders’ speaking test scores later that day, to be entered into the system.

Mr. Y responded: “THANK YOU”

And one day last year, I didn’t get the memo that my class had been moved to a different classroom on a different floor. When the kids didn’t show, I thought it’d just been cancelled. Mr. Y, not being one to storm up to my office to find out why the heck I wasn’t in class, simply taught the class himself on the fly. He never said a word to me about it, but one of my other co-teachers told me afterwards.

Distraught, I sent him an apology on the chat system.

Mr. Y responded: “Never mind.”*

All in all, Mr. Y is simply the best. Most unfortunately (for me, anyway), he’s retiring this summer, to be replaced by an as-yet-unknown new co-teacher. I already know I’ll miss his support in my classes. Three cheers for Mr. Y.

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*I think it’s only fair to Mr. Y to explain that the Korean phrase for “Don’t worry about it,” when typed into a translator, comes back as “Never mind.” He really is a dear.