Korean Students vs. American Students

To follow up on the differences of childhoods between South Korea and the United States, here is a video my company now makes all of its foreign teachers watch.




The differences are huge! I have no idea how anybody can survive without American Idol! It's just amazing.

Two Things that made me laugh out loud today

1. Seeing the kids struggle mightily with this wordsearch
   
2. The students pronouncing Alabama, like Alobama, as in the President of the States
   

A Little Bit of Everything

1) A dialogue on the happenings of home:

Zach: Matt was asking me questions on how to handle a situation. It seems a girl has entered his life. If you know Matt, and you do, then you know how rare of an occurrence this is.

Me: Matty has a girlfriend?

Zach: A looker too. But he hasn't got her yet. The ball was falling where it needed to, even overcoming a few hiccups along the way. But then Matt got punched in the face.

Me: Matt got in a fight? I don't even recognize this guy anymore!

Zach: It wasn't really a fight. A Washburn football player, a real big Samoan, a mean SOB drilled Matt in the face. Matt said he didn't even see the punch coming, didn't even know a fight was brewing and doesn't know what caused it. The punch, damaging enough, wasn't the punishing blow. Knocked backwards by the hay maker, Matt flipped over the rail of a deck and twisted his ankle. Scratch that, sprained his ankle.

Me: Booze was involved I'm sure of it. Did Matt instigate this affair?

Zach: There's conflicting stories. Some people say Matt was breaking up a fight, which by the way, Matt's a bouncer at the Hawk. Did I tell you that?

Me: (nodding my head yes, with an expression on my face that says, "You've told me a minimum of five times in the last ten days, that Matt is a bouncer at the Hawk.")

Zach: Anyway, some say Matt was starting a fight. That's neither here nor there. Matt has a love interest, but he has a swollen face and a busted ankle. I mean, he was worked over. And this hottie, a Vietnamese chick, invited him to a formal dance. Matt was in no position to bust any moves or tear up any carpet suffering from both White Man's Syndrome and a bum ankle. So he said he sprained his ankle playing basketball.

Me: He should of said he got in a fight. As the saying goes, chicks dig rebels.

Zach: I told him girls like that. He told me, "Zach, not when you get your ass kicked. They like ass kickers!" Touche Matt, touche.

2) Parent-Teacher Conferences

I have parent-teacher conferences this week. There's only one parent that I've encountered so far that is fluent in English. That was the only parent-teacher conference that I had a significant part in. Parent-teacher conferences are so boring. I am just a mannequin. The conversations are entirely done in Korean, and I speak for a little under a minute, what I say is then translated into Korean. Each conference is about ten minutes long, I'd rather watch paint dry.

My co-teacher, Eva, does 97% of the talking. I just try and sit there with good posture. After about the seventh conference, roughly an hour of talking to parents, I started thinking of that story above. At first, I cracked a smile at Matt saying, "Not when you get your ass kicked Zach; They don't like that! They like ass kickers!" Then I started to chuckle silently. I'm sorry, Matt getting beat up by a large Samoan is funny. The more I began to think about the whole silly scenario the harder it was to contain by growing smile. Then I started to laugh...out loud. I couldn't help myself.

I'm sure the mother asked Eva, "Why is this crazy foreigner laughing?" Eva asked me what was funny, and I told her a non-funny story about the parent's child. The mother, thinking anything about her child was good, began to laugh out loud too. Maybe Eva translated the story so it was funny. But for whatever reason, the mom began to laugh. Eva then joined the party. So all three of us were laughing in this teacher's conference. This all started because of a twisted ankle and a big Samoan.

3) B-Ball

Last night, I went to play basketball at an indoor court. Indoor courts are as rare as a cold day in hell, here in Korea. Indoor courts that foreigners have access to are worth there weight
in gold. Jason, a good wholesome Canuck and a co-worker of mine, got a precious invite. Because these gyms are so rare, the organizer of the gym sends out very few invites. If this gym was open to every foreigner, it would be flooded with them. Luckily, he gave Jason the opportunity to invite one more person. Jason, who is somehow fooled into believing that I am a good guy, invited me to the glorious indoor court.

Having just spent the whole day bored off my you know what, I was looking forward to playing some basketball. This also happened to be the same day I got a good laugh at Matt's expense. Within fifteen minutes of playing, I promptly landed on another guy's foot and sprained my ankle. Karma.

4) Zach

Zach lives in my neighborhood. He's just a five minute walk from my house. This is great for obvious reasons. Last year he was about an hour away, so we only got together about once a week. I expect to see a lot of the big guy this year.

5) Pink

It's said, brave men wear pink. South Korean men must be the bravest in the world. Hey look, I love a good Salmon colored shirt, but these guys will wear any shade of pink, even Hot Pink. There's even a store called Pink, which sells both female and male clothing.

April's Levels

A Breakdown of April's Levels

Seedbed Starter- This class is taught entirely by Korean teachers. They are the tiniest kids in the school with ages varying between four and six. Entry level English is all you'll hear in these classrooms. How are you? My name is __________. I am ________.

Seedbed 1 and 2- This is the next level, so once the kids graduate/get too old for Seedbed Starter they go to Seedbed 1 and 2, with 2 being the higher level of the two. My partner teacher and I teach the majority of these low level courses. I like them. They can be difficult, because the children aren't great English speakers; however, they get the gist of what you say. The program is very easy to run and is very multimedia friendly. The entire lessons have computer based programs which are very interactive. The kids can come to the white board at the front of the classroom and write the answers on the board. My school claims that these kids levels are on par with American children enrolled in kindergarten. In my eyes, that's a bold, debatable claim, but I haven't been around many kindergartners to test it. I teach four seedbed classes.


Seed 1 and 2- At this level, you can start having conversations with kids. They have a pretty good vocabulary, but struggle to put their thoughts in complete sentences. Ages 8-10. About your average 1st grade level back, according to April. I teach two seed classes.


Sprout 1 and 2- Similar to Seed 2, only these students are better. Ages 8-12. Comparable to a second to third grade American student in English. Now I'm going to hit the "bull shit button" because there is no way these kids are at that level. It's possible some of them, that the best Sprout students have the vocabularies of a second or third grader. Maybe even better, but they don't have the conversational ability of a third grader. I teach 0 Sprout classes.

Sapling 1 and 2- The next step up is Sapling. These children are gifted. They had a speech competition that would blow your mind. The topic was global warming, which I think is a sham, which is neither here nor there, but the kids were WOW! Addressing all the issues of what climate change could do in the foreseeable future. It was impressive. Ages 8-13. I teach 0 classes at the Sapling level.

Junior Master 1- These 3 children are the cream of the crop. There are only three of them, and I have the pleasure of teaching them. Basically, it's like my manager said, "We stuck you with all the rug rats, so, here you go... Here's Junior Master. They can speak and read. Have fun." Emma is 8, Tommy is 10 and Jayne is 10. Their topic today is family, which sounds like a nice easy topic, right? Wrong! We have to discuss South Korea's birthrate "problem" and think of the implications of that problem, try to come up with solutions for that problem and look at other countries to see how they combated their birthrate problem. I love the class, because I constantly learn stuff!

Student Profile: Daniel

Named after my beloved Grandpa, Daniel is just seven years old. He is a beginner. Our school has 12 different classes based on a student's English proficiency, Daniel is in the second lowest class, Seedbed 1. He is anything but fluent and still makes mistakes. But he can read! The purpose of Seedbed 1 class is to really hone student's pronunciation and learn phonics. Reading is required, but some students struggle. Daniel is the second student profiled, because he has really shown a lot of growth in the two and a half months I've been here. Daniel once struggled reading but not anymore!

There are many amusing things about teaching small children. For example, they love to stand up. Why? I have no idea, but in any given class, at any given time, I might have 15-20% of the children in the room standing up. They might be excited. They might want to answer the next question. They might not know the customs of adults, so they do what they want. Some of their feet don't touch the ground while they sit, so maybe that's why they stand. I honestly don't know. Daniel is a stander, and not only does he love to stand up, but he loves to walk around the room. What separates a stander from a walker is obvious, right? A stander just stands at his/her desk or in extreme cases on their chair, but a walker wanders around the room.

Daniel is nosy. He likes to see how people are doing on whatever task is at hand. He likes to compare his answers to theirs. He likes to be at the center of the stage, a prominent fixture of the classroom. So if I might be heading to the board to erase something, Daniel might be there to do it for me. There's an abundance of reasons why Daniel walks around. It's safe to say that of all my students, Daniel leads them all in the amount of times I have to say "Sit Down."

I also think, as evidenced by his rapid growth in English and extroverted personality, that he will be an excellent English speaker in a few years.

Going up to Country

Need a break from the drudgery of a 1-8, Monday-Friday job? Tired of pesky 5-12 year old children? Then it seems like Muju is the place for you!

Taming Muju is not a task for the light hearted. Just to make it there, you have to get up before the butt crack of dawn. The bus that goes up to country * leaves at 4:20 in the AM! That means to make it to bus pickup on Saturday morning, I am waking up before I usually cash my Friday night in. In fact, my buddy Travis was at a bar located right down the street from where our bus pickup was located.

*I think I got carried away with that link, but it is one of my all time favorite songs; it just always gets me in a better mood.



(Travis is on the right, Justin on the left)



I once, at length, wrote about how hard it is for me to get up in the morning. That McDonald's breakfasts are the only thing that gets me through. Waking up before McDonald's even serves breakfast is just wrong!















As you can see, skiing (as with pretty much everything in South Korea) is super-duper packed, but Muju was so beautiful it was well worth a few long lines and a couple crashes on the slopes.














Meg paid five dollars for her skiing coat in China! Oh the beauty of knock offs! (and sweat shops)
















The picture to the left is pretty breathtaking. The whole mountain was frosted over giving it a real Winter Wonderland look. Hats off to Meg for taking some really fine pictures!














Has anybody seen the show Meet the Natives? It is a show on the National Geographic channel here in South Korea. I've fallen in love with it, even though I've only seen one episode. The insight the "Natives" showed within only five days of being in America was incredible. Anyway, during one point in the episode, (they were in Montana on a ranch learning about cowboys) they described mountains as being so tall, that they could touch clouds. The ski lift actually vanishes into the clouds at the top of the mountain.

Student Profile

Jayne: 10 years old.










Jayne is a twin, and it's easy to see that Jayne is the dominant twin. She's in a more advanced class than her sister. Because Jayne got to the Junior Master class, which is the top level of our academy, her mom rewarded her with a brand new cell phone. Her Twin, Stacey, got nothing. Jayne is a conversational student, but is very shy, what Jayne excels at is writing. She writes logical, concise debates. She plays the piano and the violin. She wants to be a doctor when she grows up. She is one of my top students.

Childhood

The differences between Korean and western culture are vast. Despite my 14 months of residence in this beautiful country, I am by no means an expert on Korean culture. So I'll stick to just to a difference in childhood between Korea and the United States.

The kids right now have a month off of public school. They also get around 5 weeks off in the summer, so Korean children do indeed partake in the year round school schedule. And, as I found out on Friday, just because the students are off of school doesn't mean they're not going to school. I'll give you some examples.

The youngest student I teach is 5 years old. She's a young five years old, too. She is so little. Her feet don't even come close to touching the ground when she sits in her chair. They dangle happily, as if they're better off not touching the ground. She wears pigtails everyday. She has the biggest dough eyes. She looks like a doll, just like a porcelain doll. She can read and write and answer who, what, where, why, and how questions. Her name is Candy, and she is cute. She's been learning English for over a year now. But she is only 5, and cries here and there. Her mom brings her to the academy everyday. I think she misses her mom, and that's why she cries.

Once the bell rings, signaling the end of class, she'll start to put all her things away, but the problem is, she's only five. She's very slow at it. Zipping up her backup takes a colossal effort from her. She gets a panicked look on her face as she sees all the other kids running out of the classroom like it's on fire, and I know that she truly needs my help. You can tell that she just wants to run out with the other kids (those kids are 6-8 years old) and play. So I'll help her, and she'll run off to go to the next place.

The next place could be her loving mother's arms, or it could be a piano academy. It could be a Korean language academy. The point is, even though she's five, I'm sure there is another lesson to be taught on some subject. And Candy, at the expense of her mother's checkbook, will be attending that lesson with her big, helpless eyes fixated on another teacher even though she is five years old. At least, that's what I think, but she could be in her mother's arms for all I know.

Here's a schedule that I do know. Human, who chose his own name, has a sense of humor. He's 12, and he's the tallest kid in the academy. His English level is conversational, although he never leaves his trusty stand by answers of "maybe" and "I don't know" far away. He's independent, and always sits at the back of the room. He elects for public transportation rather than the shuttle buses my academy offers every student. He navigates his way through a city of 3.8 million people seamlessly. He doesn't have a cell phone, which is a big deal in Korea. I mean, hell, even little Candy has a cell phone. He loves computer games and hates school. During his winter break, he's attending six academies!

Academies are extra-curricular, private institutions that teach the children something. And believe me, there are academies for everything. Human's academies are: English, math, clarinet, Korean, computer,* and an academy on how to speed read.** Even when he does not have school, HE HAS SCHOOL. There is no time to play. He goes all over the city to attend these academies. He takes the subway or buses to get to them. The guy is lucky to get 7 hours of sleep with his schedule.

I have another student who is at a swimming academy from 10-4 Monday-Friday. He's in a swimming pool practicing his breast stroke to become the next best swimmer. His brother has the same schedule only substitute swimming for golf.

Childhood is truly vocational training here. All work and no play. The innocence of growing up is lost when you're 12 and already grown up. I know that some people from the western world wish they would of utilized their time more efficiently growing up, you know, actually learned that second language, followed up on those piano lessons, or studied harder. I do anyway. Well, South Koreans are very efficient with their time growing up, and I am here to tell you it's a shame. There's more to childhood than preparing for adulthood.

* That's all he told me is computer. I don't even know what that means it's so vague, but he gave me the "I don't know response" when I asked him questions on it.

** At the University of Missouri, in large lecture halls, I would always see these fliers scattered about the floor advertising clinics to help improve your reading pace. This was at college, and here Human is doing it at 12 years old. It's crazy over here.