except for this one. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much Lost but lately I’ve had this distinct feeling of isolation as if I am on an island by my lonesome out here. While it can be humorous, odd, or even a little maddening at times being totally out of the loop and the last person to find out EVERYTHING, this island, unlike the cold, overcast gloomy mid-April “spring” weather I have been bitching incessantly about on facebook, can be quite warm and sunny in the middle of a tumultuous ocean.
Knowing full well coming into this job that I’d be the only foreign teacher at this school there was no expectation that this would be a situation like my previous hogwan position where I was among friends and westerners and we ran the school. The job itself has surpassed expectations but is also odd in how I do so little compared to the other teachers. As you all know, I teach English “conversation” 12 hours a week. I give no homework, no tests, no grades, and have no stress when it comes to the job. I am expected to be in or around the office or my classroom from 8-5 Monday through Friday but am given little or no responsibility outside of preparing for and conducting my 12 classes in whatever manner I see fit.
As I write this sitting here on a Friday afternoon the other teachers are in their weekly meeting, which I am excused from. I went to the last three meetings until the principal asked me if I understood anything they were saying, to which I said: “Ummmm, not really.”. Thankfully Principal Kim used a form of common sense rarely seen in a Korean school or bureaucracy and said: “You don’t need to be here and waste your time.” Hallelujah brother!!! Trust me, the other teachers were just as bored in those meetings as I was but have to go every week because they speak Korean.
Because they are Korean, speak Korean, and are obviously fluent in Korean the other teachers are required to fill out an inordinate amount of paperwork on each student due to the complex ranking system in Korean education. Instead of A’s, B’s, C’s and so forth there is a 1-8 class ranking where the students compete against each other for the opportunity to rank high, low or somewhere in-between and from their ranking get the opportunity to go to Seoul university, work in a restaurant or something in-between. The teachers, needing face time in the office to prove they are hard-working show up at or before 7am and don’t leave until… well, much later--I’m always out of there at 5:00 on the dot and wouldn’t know. Being a foreigner, I am not trusted to give grades or file paperwork, not that I could anyway because it’s in Korean, of course. While everyone around me is up to their ears in bureaucratic duties I am finding ways to occupy 5 or 6 office hours a day planning for 2 or 3 classes, a process I covered in detail last week.
There are classes here every other Saturday and all of the teachers have to come in, except for… you guessed it. Last Saturday I had a game at 12:30 and the vice-principal, unaware that I am not contractually obligated to work Saturdays wondered why I wasn’t in the office. I received a call and was sweating the idea that I might be late to or, God forbid, miss my game. So I went straight to the principal’s assistant, who talked to the principal. The point was that I have no club activities nor could I, no classes, and nothing to do. Like the meeting, common sense won and I was excused from coming in on Saturdays.
Next week is mid-terms and there is an air of tension and apprehensiveness amongst teachers and students alike. The weekend will be bustling as the students prepare like Korean students for their mid-terms and the teachers make last-minute adjustments to their tests. My duty next week, other than having no classes and having to hang out in the office or my classroom, is to supervise the students while they take their exams. This means I stand in the room and watch to make sure they don’t cheat for two hours each day. I can’t make any noise, can’t read, the ipod is out of the question and this is my only contribution to the entire midterm process. Having absolutely nothing to do during this time I’m sure I’ll space out and daydream of my vacation the following week… perhaps I’ll visit an island.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
A Little Nitty-Gritty Day to Day
Six weeks down and it’s still freezing here in the castle. The weeks have been absolutely flying by and one weekend runs directly into the next in a blink of an eye. Perhaps routine has something to do with that and I have little to report this week. What is routine for me however, would be of possible interest to those who haven’t worked in a private high school next to a mountain in Korea… are there any of those out there? While there is no linear storyline this week or coherent thought I thought I’d share some random happenings that are the kinds of things that make this typical procedure… uhhhh, atypical?
The students here are so overwhelmed with homework it’s astonishing. It’s not just this school but commonplace for high school students all over Korea. My pupils are zombies, plain and simple.
Typical conversation:
“How are you?”
“I’m tired (or sleepy)”.
“Why so sleepy?”
“So many homeworks.”
“So….. MUCH homeWORK. Homework is like rice, water, paper, or cheese. It’s a non-count noun and is never pluralized.”
[BLINK BLINK, BLINK BLINK]
“Nevermind, carry on.”
An atypical conversation:
“How are you?”
“I’m great!”
“REALLY? Great! How come?”
[BLINK BLINK, BLINK BLINK]
“Why?”
“Teacher today I feel no stress because I blow off my homework!”
“Well said!! I’m very glad you used a phrase I taught you! Just remember I taught you to SAY that, not to DO that! AND use the past ‘blew off’!”
Next phrase I teach that kid is “down-low”, as in to keep that blow off your homework stuff on. Dear lord, what am I teaching these kids??!! Good thing they love it.
While these “conversation” classes take up about 12 hours out of my 40 hour work week the rest of the time is spent diligently preparing lesson plans. This requires countless hours of research where I scour the news for interesting stories, watch online television shows searching for new phrases, download music in hope of finding a useful song for the classroom and doing the random stumbleupon for hours on end waiting for that perfect lesson plan to pop up. When I’m not steadfastly working on the perfect lesson plan I am able to find a little time to check my e-mail, facebook, MLB box scores, and read a few movie reviews… nice to be able to surf the internet a little bit at work.
When I finish in the evening at five there’s little to do in the neighborhood. Luckily I have a full fitness center and weight room on premises which is completely empty in the evenings and free for me to use. I’ll work out four or five evenings a week and go to bed after a long day of grueling lesson planning. The only evening that is different is Wednesday, when I go into the city for soccer practice and beers and food afterward, which is the perfect way to break up the week. Monday and Tuesday is the usual routine looking forward to Wednesday. Thursday is a blur because of the after practice festivities and then Friday comes where I teach two classes and write the blog. Last thing to happen during the week is the teachers meeting, where I sit in a room and lesson plan on my laptop while a bunch of people speak Korean. Then, just like that, another weekend is staring me right in the face and another week went by faster than the time it took the six of you to read this.
The students here are so overwhelmed with homework it’s astonishing. It’s not just this school but commonplace for high school students all over Korea. My pupils are zombies, plain and simple.
Typical conversation:
“How are you?”
“I’m tired (or sleepy)”.
“Why so sleepy?”
“So many homeworks.”
“So….. MUCH homeWORK. Homework is like rice, water, paper, or cheese. It’s a non-count noun and is never pluralized.”
[BLINK BLINK, BLINK BLINK]
“Nevermind, carry on.”
An atypical conversation:
“How are you?”
“I’m great!”
“REALLY? Great! How come?”
[BLINK BLINK, BLINK BLINK]
“Why?”
“Teacher today I feel no stress because I blow off my homework!”
“Well said!! I’m very glad you used a phrase I taught you! Just remember I taught you to SAY that, not to DO that! AND use the past ‘blew off’!”
Next phrase I teach that kid is “down-low”, as in to keep that blow off your homework stuff on. Dear lord, what am I teaching these kids??!! Good thing they love it.
While these “conversation” classes take up about 12 hours out of my 40 hour work week the rest of the time is spent diligently preparing lesson plans. This requires countless hours of research where I scour the news for interesting stories, watch online television shows searching for new phrases, download music in hope of finding a useful song for the classroom and doing the random stumbleupon for hours on end waiting for that perfect lesson plan to pop up. When I’m not steadfastly working on the perfect lesson plan I am able to find a little time to check my e-mail, facebook, MLB box scores, and read a few movie reviews… nice to be able to surf the internet a little bit at work.
When I finish in the evening at five there’s little to do in the neighborhood. Luckily I have a full fitness center and weight room on premises which is completely empty in the evenings and free for me to use. I’ll work out four or five evenings a week and go to bed after a long day of grueling lesson planning. The only evening that is different is Wednesday, when I go into the city for soccer practice and beers and food afterward, which is the perfect way to break up the week. Monday and Tuesday is the usual routine looking forward to Wednesday. Thursday is a blur because of the after practice festivities and then Friday comes where I teach two classes and write the blog. Last thing to happen during the week is the teachers meeting, where I sit in a room and lesson plan on my laptop while a bunch of people speak Korean. Then, just like that, another weekend is staring me right in the face and another week went by faster than the time it took the six of you to read this.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Why is Korea not flat?
Korea is a strange place. For so many reasons there are these little things that happen here that are funny, ridiculous, infuriating, and downright goofy. Seeing how the week after week, weekend after weekend monotony so far has not produced any real linear stories I’ll talk about some of the weird idiosyncrasies (anyone who has spent time here can tell you there are far more than a few) that have stuck out so far. These are some things that maybe I had forgotten about in my time away either by choice or through the normalcy of life back home.
In a city with eleven million people crammed into a relatively small space one might think it would be imperative to pay attention to where one is going. Not so, not so, not so. I am constantly amazed that there aren’t flattened Koreans all over the sidewalks as no one watches where the hell they’re going! Not only are they completely, and I mean COMPLETELY oblivious to their surroundings but they also will suddenly change directions without looking to see if anyone is coming. You would think in a crowded city on a sidewalk with people walking, running (yes, Koreans love to run through crowds), riding bicycles, and motor scooters (that’s right, on the sidewalks) that it might be important to say, glance over one’s shoulder before making a sudden turn in the opposite direction.
Last weekend I was riding my bike down the sidewalk and there was a little boy standing on the far right side of the sidewalk facing the building. Having years of experience navigating these sidewalks on The Falcon I knew instinctively that this child would walk directly into my path, even though I was riding on the far left. As I came within 20 feet of the kid he jumped backwards as far as he could, never looking around to see if there was a scooter or say, a person on a bicycle coming, directly into the path of my bike. Knowing somehow this would happen I braked and steered around him, shaking my head as I passed the oblivious should-be-flat boy.
This isn’t exclusive to children here, though--the adult children know no better. Later that day there was a young woman who walked out of a store, straight across the very busy sidewalk, directly into my path, of course. Not only did she never look in my direction at all—I was coming directly at her—she actually walked toward me, head pointing opposite direction, absolutely oblivious as I slammed on my brakes and skidded, narrowly avoiding hitting her. Even as I yelled: “Holy SH*T!!! Watch where you’re going!!!” after nearly wrecking my bike trying to avoid running her over, she still took no notice and never even turned her head. It is a living video game riding a bike down a sidewalk with so many bizarre obstacles and people that seem to instinctively move towards the path of oncoming traffic but somehow walk away unscathed and completely unaware of how close they came to getting run over.
Speaking of getting run over, a fellow teacher and I were discussing a bizarre situation when it comes to traffic laws here. Although unaware to other pedestrians, scooters, and bikes as I just explained, Koreans are really aware of crosswalks. I have never seen a Korean cross the street when there is a don’t walk signal even if there is absolutely no traffic at all. They will wait for the green walk signal no matter how slow the street is and do not infract on this rule at any time. However, when they get behind the wheel of a car a red light becomes not a rule but an arbitrary suggestion. So the pedestrians can wait all they want for the green signal but it is common and almost expected for someone to blow through the red light in their automobile. But then again, somehow, miraculously, there are no flat Koreans.
Oh, the small ironies in this country. I remember the time when I lived in Suwon and I shook my head perpetually for 65 straight days. How is it that a kid can solve complex math equations and spend his/her whole life studying yet lacks the common sense to look before crossing. How does a person who earlier in the day spent five minutes waiting at a crosswalk completely ignore a red light and try to beat a pedestrian through a similar crosswalk? These logic-defying enigmatic behaviors and many other like it can do a couple of things to a person: Infuriate them or make them laugh. I’ve been taking the route of shaking my head, laughing, and saying: “Oh, Korea!”.
In a city with eleven million people crammed into a relatively small space one might think it would be imperative to pay attention to where one is going. Not so, not so, not so. I am constantly amazed that there aren’t flattened Koreans all over the sidewalks as no one watches where the hell they’re going! Not only are they completely, and I mean COMPLETELY oblivious to their surroundings but they also will suddenly change directions without looking to see if anyone is coming. You would think in a crowded city on a sidewalk with people walking, running (yes, Koreans love to run through crowds), riding bicycles, and motor scooters (that’s right, on the sidewalks) that it might be important to say, glance over one’s shoulder before making a sudden turn in the opposite direction.
Last weekend I was riding my bike down the sidewalk and there was a little boy standing on the far right side of the sidewalk facing the building. Having years of experience navigating these sidewalks on The Falcon I knew instinctively that this child would walk directly into my path, even though I was riding on the far left. As I came within 20 feet of the kid he jumped backwards as far as he could, never looking around to see if there was a scooter or say, a person on a bicycle coming, directly into the path of my bike. Knowing somehow this would happen I braked and steered around him, shaking my head as I passed the oblivious should-be-flat boy.
This isn’t exclusive to children here, though--the adult children know no better. Later that day there was a young woman who walked out of a store, straight across the very busy sidewalk, directly into my path, of course. Not only did she never look in my direction at all—I was coming directly at her—she actually walked toward me, head pointing opposite direction, absolutely oblivious as I slammed on my brakes and skidded, narrowly avoiding hitting her. Even as I yelled: “Holy SH*T!!! Watch where you’re going!!!” after nearly wrecking my bike trying to avoid running her over, she still took no notice and never even turned her head. It is a living video game riding a bike down a sidewalk with so many bizarre obstacles and people that seem to instinctively move towards the path of oncoming traffic but somehow walk away unscathed and completely unaware of how close they came to getting run over.
Speaking of getting run over, a fellow teacher and I were discussing a bizarre situation when it comes to traffic laws here. Although unaware to other pedestrians, scooters, and bikes as I just explained, Koreans are really aware of crosswalks. I have never seen a Korean cross the street when there is a don’t walk signal even if there is absolutely no traffic at all. They will wait for the green walk signal no matter how slow the street is and do not infract on this rule at any time. However, when they get behind the wheel of a car a red light becomes not a rule but an arbitrary suggestion. So the pedestrians can wait all they want for the green signal but it is common and almost expected for someone to blow through the red light in their automobile. But then again, somehow, miraculously, there are no flat Koreans.
Oh, the small ironies in this country. I remember the time when I lived in Suwon and I shook my head perpetually for 65 straight days. How is it that a kid can solve complex math equations and spend his/her whole life studying yet lacks the common sense to look before crossing. How does a person who earlier in the day spent five minutes waiting at a crosswalk completely ignore a red light and try to beat a pedestrian through a similar crosswalk? These logic-defying enigmatic behaviors and many other like it can do a couple of things to a person: Infuriate them or make them laugh. I’ve been taking the route of shaking my head, laughing, and saying: “Oh, Korea!”.
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