I currently get paid an insane sum of money to work at a 학원 one day a week. It’s a pretty low key affair. I go into a classroom for thirty minutes stints of speaking English at the children. For the most part they are fairly well behaved, but on occassion there are some jerks that need to be told that they are jerks. This is the tale of one such jerk. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
In one of the classes I teach there is this one pre-teen girl who just rubs me the wrong way. She doesn’t do her work. She’s rude. She never attempts to speak English during class. And her voice is annoying as hell. Basically she’s a pain in the ass.
So on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year (that year being 2006), I was at the 학원 attempting to impart knowledge of the English language upon this particular class with the annoying pre-teen girl. During the class I had to stop what I was doing and tell her to stop speaking and put away her comic book twice in the first 3 minutes of class. She still was being disruptive, so it was time to give her the boot.
Now on this particular day she happened to be wearing a scouting uniform of some sorts. Girl Scouts? Nope. The mysterious Space Scouts that existed in Goyang-shi that I never knew what they actually did? No. She was wearing a Cub Scout uniform.
Here’s a little known Wyatt Dunn factoid: I too was in Cub Scouts for a couple of years. I don’t remember much from my days as a scout. I have a vague recollection of constantly doing leather work in some kid’s basement, and a scout leader bellowing “Shit!” while attempting to capture a frog while on a camping trip, and also that I would have rather stayed home and played Dragon Warrior than go to Cub Scouts most nights. The only other thing I recall, and this is with 100% certainty, was Cub Scouts seemed to have a “No Girls Allowed” policy.
Anyhow I seriously digressed there. Back to a classroom in South Korea circa 2006 as opposed to Greg Rosenthal’s basement circa 1988. I turned to this annoying girl and proclaimed, “Listen Boy Scout, I’m not a hippie and this isn’t ‘Do what you feel time!’ It’s English class and I’m your teacher, so sit down and be quiet, or just go home.”
Now you’d think I declared war on this girl for she stood up, and like that Four Non-Blondes song screamed at the top of her lungs…only it wasn’t “What’s going on!” that was bellowed, it was, “FUCK YOU!” I left the classroom and came back with the biggest guns I had at my disposal: the 실잘님. The 실장님 is all about me for some reason and has my back in most cases, so he took the girl out of the room and she did not return for the remainder of class. At the end of class she was brought before me and handed me the most awesome apology note ever:
I tried my damnedest not to laugh out loud at the note, even so my response kind of came out like, “Ppppthh…Oh ok….he he…just don’t do it again…HAHAHA!!! Yo lookit this note! MWAHAHAHA!!!”
The Lion - As you know I teach English in Korea. Every once and a while I see some completely awesome English mistakes that make me sit up and take notice. The above illustration shows one such example. I was correcting some homework (the theme of which I have since forgotten) when I saw the awesome answer, “We got the party!” The lion was my own touch, as it is the only thing I can draw.
Yesterday was the first time since May 2003 (the date of my graduation), that I actually put my degree in World History to practical use…I mean for something other than yelling “Who is Cortez? Dumbass!” at my television while watching Jeopardy. Somehow I got roped into tutoring a Korean-American high school student in history.
Oh how awesome it was! I mean I like teaching English and maybe it was just a nice break from the normal routine or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t get the “I don’t understand, please rephrase it,” blank look, but I had so much more fun teaching history. Things I need to consider when I head back to graduate school.
Sometime several months back I was investigating via the internet the process by which I needed to obtain my Mel Gibson Bellowing “Freedom” Stamp in my passport (better known as an F-2 visa), and for some reason the websites that came up the most often (but had the least useful information) were various recruiters for hagwon positions. Among the non-F-2 visa obtaining information was one piece of information I saw no less than 203 times.
While it is true that knowledge of Korean is not required for the actual employment part of living in Korea as an English teacher, having at least some knowledge of Korean not only makes your stay easier and more enjoyable, but it’s a lot more polite as a resident of a country to at least put forth some effort in learning the language of the land in which you are residing. Anyhow, segway to some links for those of you who have no idea about the Korean language, but have set your mind on teaching in Korea. Don’t say I never did anything for ya!
What follows is a post so bloggy it might as well be on some fat American highschool girl’s myspace or xanga site, but if that were the case I’d need more annoying fonts, more teen angst, more use of the number 2 to represent “to” or “too,” and more emo tunes. On with the show.
I woke up yesterday morning and had a light breakfast with the wife. Then it was sit around and watch some high quality television programs, and then grab some lunch. Lunch equalled some 자장밥 forged in the home kitchen with love and care. It was not 3 Minute 자장…that’s for damned sure.
Following lunch, the wife and I headed out to our respective jobs. Being a Tuesday afternoon, I was totally free from the confines of working in a 학원, and instead headed into the big city for some tutoring. The first stop of the day was my Korean teacher’s house. In exchange for Korean lessons, I tutor her daughter. Since their family is planning to immigrate to the land known as Great Britain, or the United Kingdoms, or England, or Jamie Oliver-land sometime early next year, I have to tutor her daughter not only in writing, reading, speaking, and listening, but also on more technical texts she will encounter when she enters school in England.
Basically what I am attempting to say is that using a British science textbook, I am currently tutoring a Korean middle school girl in science. Since I am not British at all, I occassional come across words and phrases in that book that strike me as odd. For example there was a question about which type of potatoes would be best for someone that wanted a low fat diet, and then went on to list things such as: a jacket potato and chipped potatoes. In addition, this science textbook insisted on using the word, “gut” to reference one’s stomach. “Sugars are absorbed through the wall of the gut.”
Anyhow, the unit we covered yesterday was the dreaded “Human Reproduction” unit…which since it was a British textbook used the word “spread” instead of “unit” and I’m pretty sure also tossed some extra Us into the word reproduction, so that it looked something like this: “reprouductioun.” Being from the repressed puritain society that is America, the awkwardness of being grilled for questions every second line (”What is ‘menstration?’” “Is that a sperm?” ect.) was beyond words.
Luckily the lesson ended when her mother presented me with a dinner 오리탕 (duck meat stew). I can’t remember when the last time I ate duck was, but the stew was outstanding. For those with knowledge of Korean cooking, it tasted similar to 닭도리탕, but allegedly had the same powers that 보신탕 possess.
From there I evacuated to another venue, where I proceeded to teach some 아줌마s about English. It was a past tense party! Also I drank some coffee…and then I got on a subway to go home. I listened to the latest No Brain album, and some Korean hip-hop. Once home I watched some television with my wife and then we fell asleep.
I receive a fair amount of email from lads and lasses interesting in becoming involved in the fast paced exciting world of refrigerator repair, or teaching English in Korea, whichever one I am currently involved in. For some reason these people, in their search for information, stumbled across this website and for whatever reason figured that I’d be the person to ask about teaching English in Korea.
It’s not all puppies and alcohol fueled parties with members of the opposite sex…there’s a lot of things the potential teacher needs to know. So I have decided to take it upon myself to help these poor bastards by giving these people the information that they desperately need, but that no one else (read as recruiters or hagwon owners) will ever tell them. The medium I have elected to use in giving all this valuable information is the Microsoft Paintbrush program. So without further ado check this out!
Now I am full aware that mocking the concept of molestation is horrible, but in all honesty if you decide to come to Korea, you will be molested by your students. They will attempt to stick fingers up your rump. Fellas, they will attempt to grab hold of your naughty bits. Ladies they will attempt to cop a feel (there’s a nice term). And they will ask you extremely inappropriate questions. The best advice I can give is always be on your toes, because if you let your guard down for even one second, there will be a finger up your ass.
Having been recently hired by a language school near my house, and due to the fact that my wife also works at said language school, this weekend I found myself in a nearby town for a little on the job training that just happened to go down while I was off the job. This types of events always suck, no matter where you are in the world, but if you have a decent group of people with you can be tolerated. I luckily had that group of people, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but luckily for my co-workers, they had me.
Being an international man of mystery, I’m not going to give the details as to what school I work for (I will let you see pictures), that being said, the orientation we attended was for the Khan English system, since the owner of the school where I am n0w an employee was considering adding the Khan system. Upon learning of this name, I like every geek that came of age in the 1980’s instantly thought of William Shatner bellowing “KHAN!” in the movie Star Trek 2, unfortunately no one else there knew what I was talking about since I was the only non-Korean there.
We arrived at the venue shortly after 1:00 and after signing in, and stealing handfuls of pens, cookies, instant coffee mix, and tea, we were let into the conference hall. The room had 4 person desks arranged in rows of three about ten desks deep. Our group of 12 were seated in the second row from the stage. I looked at the desk. There was a folder with some reading materials, a pen, and a basketball jersey at each seat.
I looked over the basketball jersey. Each one (in our group) was green with a white number 2 in the center. They looked exactly like the basketball jerseys from my elementary school, and in addition to being the exact same colors were the exact same size. After squeezing myself into a tank top that 이효리 (Lee Hyori) would be proud to wear I was ready to be educated in the ways of Khan English…only apparently no one else was ready yet. The schedule listed the start time as 1:30, but since no one else had arrived yet, that was going to be pushed back.
Luckily for us in the audience, Khan English brought some videos…of their recent English Competition (because everything is a contest or competition here). As soon as the film started I was less than impressed with Khan. The contest (and as I learned later, their program) consisted of little more than yelling random English phrases as loud and as fast as one could ten times.
Practice with this phrase: I’m going to the movies with my dad. You did it ten times? I’m sure even native speakers ended up sounding like “I BUHHHH BUHHH BUHHHH DAD!” at the end. Now imagine children, who are not fluent bellowing random phrases as fast as they could. On of the Korean teachers turned to me and asked, “What is that girl saying?”
I replied, “Honestly I don’t know.”
After about 30 minutes of watching video footage of Korean children bellow their way through some scripted dialogues. the Khan seminar began. Like I mentioned before, I was the only non-Korean there, so the entire thing was conducted in Korean, but not your standard issue, straight out of Seoul, but in some sort of dialect that had some of my co-workers scratching their heads from time to time. The first person to speak was a middle aged woman with a horribly annoying voice. For those of you in Korea, or with extensive knowledge of Korean children’s programming, she sounded a lot like the witch on the television show, 하나 둘 셋, which is a pretty horrible thing to sound like.
Upon realizing that she was reading the handouts we had recieved word for word, and not adding anything, I began doodling in my folder, and procended to spend the duration of her presentation doing so. I would occassionally stop what I was doing to check if I had heard something correctly (”Did she just say, ‘one breast training method?’”). After reading to us for 2 hours, occassionally breaking to cackle, she decided that we had endured long enough…so she rewarded us with a five minute break time. Oh how sweet those minutes were. While some in my group used the bathroom, and others prayed for the sweet release of death to come, I spent that five minutes stealing more instant coffee than I could ever hope to consume before returning to America.
The next speaker was a fellow that was all about chatting me up in English. He was the type of character that every white person in Korea has encountered at least once. While his English was not bad at all, he just had no real conversational skills, so talking to him was more annoying than anything else. I understood that he was just trying to make small talk, but please for the love of all that is good, talk about something interesting. If a person proclaims that they don’t watch winter Olympics because they think it is like gym class, move on to another topic, they clearly have no interest in short track speed skating.
So he chatted up the audience with the practical teaching methods of Khan. Basically it worked like this…you, the students and the teachers, learn English by yelling as loud and as fast as you can. Apparently this turns one’s “local speaking muscle into an international muscle,” (their words, not mine). In order to aid in this madness, Khan offers a full line of DVDs that can be used in class to assist in the screaming teaching. These DVDs featured the most mind numbingly dull personalities ever. Each word of phrase would be repeated four times by different people at an increased volume and speed. So it started out with the soft spoken, blonde lady who was kind of like a kindergarten teacher, “Great.” Next was the dork in glasses with a speech impediment, that emoted way too much when he spoke, “Great (facial tick…facial tick…eyebrow spasm).” Next up was the chimpmunk looking woman that was reading for a teleprompter as fast as she could, “Great!” And finally, my personal favorite: guy with a rage problem, “GREAT!” That dude seriously would have veins popping out of his face as he “taught English.” It was so GREAT! I mean great.
So we watched guys screaming junk about watching a movie with their dad, and I became less and less enthralled with Khan (not that there was ever a point where I was enthralled, save for perhaps the point where I saw free coffee and cookies). I think the thing that bothered me the most was that all that the kids doing in the video was memorizing a script (which is different from actually learning a language) and reguritating that script and most people thought these kids spoke English well. However in one scene in the video, the white guy goes of script and the kid gives such a random answer, since they just memorized what they had to say, and weren’t actually listening to what was being asked. The sad part was, I was probably the only one that realized it.
After screaming for a good hour or so, and winning some prizes for being able to speak English (and in one case Korean), it was dinner time. Dinner was rice and kimchi, which was on par with what I expected. After dinner we were assigned rooms. My school had one other man so we ended up bunking up with some dude who had the hair cut known in Korea as a “sports cut,” (basically a crew cut or flat top) and sounded like a frog…I dubbed him “Sports Cut,” since I couldn’t remember his name. I did not care for “Sports Cut.”
Following dinner it was time for more screaming and yelling. We were broken into teams and were given some junk to memorize and then bellow as fast as we could in a race against the clock and the other schools. Khan decided it would be best to break this down into three Herculean tasks. The first task involved reading a short, poorly written passage about computers as fast as we could…as a group. After a couple of failed attempts which came about due to the fact that we couldn’t end at the same time we passed the test and moved onto task two.
The second task involved our teams yelling the slogans “God helps those who help themselves,” and “The early bird catches the worm,” ten times each taking only one breath on each attempt. Needless to say by the tenth time each phrase sounded kind of like, “BAH HAHNNA BBAHAA BBAAA!” Apparently that was good enough since we passed and moved on the phase three.
The third phase involved shouting about the virtues of Khan English and doing some hand motions that went along with these virtues. Our team got the whole song and dance down perfectly and were ready to be tested. Unlike the previous tests, which had been administered in various conference rooms, this final task was held outside on a soccer field under the lights. We were marched out onto the field and positioned in such a way that a member of the Khan S.S. could look down on us, but all we could see was a black outline of a man. We delivered the creed with outstanding prowess. This was apparently not good enough for Mr. Khan, and we were commanded to step back (military style) and practice before attempting it again.
We practiced several times, got our hand motions synched up (since that was where we had a little trouble), and then returned to be judged again. We delivered the creed with a fury and vengence that would have made Mr. “I’M GOING TO A MOVIE WITH MY DAD!” from the video proud. Apparently that wasn’t good enough either. The Khan-hole had us turn around and then either he, or another Khan-trooper moved down our line and made each of us yell as loud as we could. They started at the opposite end from me, and as he moved down the line telling random 40 kilogram Korean women that they aren’t loud enough, I started to get pissed off.
What did any of this have to do with teaching? Why should we listen to this tool anyway? He’s not paying me, he’s not my boss…hell, he’s not even my boss’ boss. I’ve been yelling all day, I’m done yelling…we’re done yelling.
In my time here I’ve been pretty accepting about a lot of stuff. Yes, it’s a different culture, I’m a guest, they do things differently here, but at that time, my inner American asshole bubbled up to the surface. “This is bullshit…we’re not gonna yell anymore.”
Then it was my turn. The man approached me. I looked him in the eye…and did nothing. He looked slightly perplexed, and offered up a command in Korean, telling me to yell from my stomach as opposed to my throat. I stood, unmoving. “Perhaps he didn’t understand,” he glanced at the co-worker standing next to me as if to explain to me in English.
“이해하지만 안 해, (I understand, but I won’t do it.)”
There was a brief moment as the words came from my mouth that I thought the guy was going to hit me, and he did…kind of. As he walked past me, he gave me one of those “good try” shoulder pats that gym coaches give out, or soccer players give the opposing team so they don’t look like jerks at the end of the game. From there he began a speech about how we didn’t give it our all and that it wasn’t Khan style and how bad we were…so I gave it my all and scream as loud as I could.
He paused, looked at me and then started again. “Khan does not look highly upon losers. Are you losers or…”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I bellowed again. It was the kind of a scream that while doing it you know you are going to be unable to speak the next day without horrible pain.
The man gave up and told us that we were done and could go inside. We marched off the field and while the rest of my group headed in, I stayed outside. I’d had enough for the day, I didn’t want to have to go in and take the oral exam about the Khan system and how it worked. If I was a smoker I would have smoked, but I’m not, so I just sat on a rock.
A while later when I went inside the other teachers in my group were in awe of what I had done: telling an authority figure off. Tests were finished, so we were given bread and then we all retired to our rooms for the night…only my group had a different idea involving alcohol. So we had drinks and discussed the merits of Khan, and how rediculous this whole thing was, and the fact that when I left, Sports Cut was in our room studying the Khan system.
The drinking was much better in terms of fostering an atmosphere of team unity than any of the other nonsense we had done up to that point. After many bottles of booze we all called it a night. I went back to my room and off to sleep. I awoke about 3 hours later when at 6:00, Sports Cut woke up. I looked for the bread I was given the night before, but apparently Sports Cut had eaten it. That bastard!
So after a quick shower in a sink, our group gathered together for a quick breakfast before we moved on to more Khan-style hi-jinks. The morning offered two different, simultaneous presentations: one for the teachers and one for the owners. Since I currently own little more than some books and CDs, I was forced to endure the presentation for teachers.
The teacher presentation wasn’t so much a presentation as it was a hands on experience / trip through the darkest recesses of hell. We we broken down into arbitrary groups and each group was sent up to the front of the room, one group at a time. From that group one person had to teach the Khan way while the other people in the group in the acted as students, and the other groups doodled in their books, slept, and cursed themselves for being in the room.
Somehow my group had the pleasure of being the first group to show off what we had learned. The Khan overlord selected one of the other teachers from my school to go up in front and play the part of a Khan English teacher. Perhaps inspired by my act of defiance the night before she refused. The man selected another teacher from my school. She too protested, but this time the Khan overlord was more insistant.
“Screw this…” I thought to myself and then stood up and bellowed (Khan-style), “I’ll do it!”
So I walked up to the front of the room, was handed a strange lesson plan written entirely in Korean (save for the word DVD) and was told, “Ok, teach.”
So I began teaching. Not the Khan way, but my way, making use of Khan materials. In all honesty, I was throughly under prepared to attempt to teach anything, yet somehow I had not only my fake students’ attention, but the attention of the entire audience. The laughed, did what I told them to do, and overall were in the palm of my hand, all of this inspite of the fact that the Khan overlord kept interrupting me to attempt to make me use Khan screaming tactics. “Sorry man, I can’t live by your rules!”
So I blasted through the lesson plan with a lot of “Oh, I guess we’re going to watch some sort of DVD now…that should be awesome and/or loud. Get ready to scream along kids!” Finally I was told to wrap it up…so I did with a “Alright, here’s the homework. Have a nice weekend! Peace out kids!” And I walked out of the room among a chorus of laughter and applause. I should have kept walking, but something drew me to return, so after stealing a few more handfuls of coffee mix I entered the room, and sat down with my commrades to watch the other groups present.
Like I said, I should have kept walking, since what I saw was some of the most painfully tedious teaching ever. I’m not saying every class has to be a three ring circus or a rock concert, but when teaching children, you’ve got to be at least a tad engaging or else kids are going to sleep, doodle, or engage in other non-academic persuits during class time. So on the one end of the bad teaching scale were teachers that were just mind-numbingly dull. On the other end was “S-Tina T-shirt.”
I think she actually wanted to say “Estina Teacher,” but it came out as “S-tina T-shirt.” I’m not one to make fun of the average person’s English ability, since it’s their second language, but if you are an English teacher, you should at least be able to speak the language with some fluency. This woman made the same kinds of mistakes that elementary school students I teach make. Things like “Open book,” (as opposed to “open the books,” or “open your book,”), “eh-buh-ri-ba-ti,” (in place of “everybody,”) and then my favorite, “Look at my teacher’s eyes.” I’m not really sure what she was attempting to say, and I wasn’t the only one, since her spoken Korean wasn’t that great either. A mess of dialectic nonsense, poor English, and the Khan method made her presentation the worst…but for some reason she was given the most time.
Thankfully after some 2 hours or so, the whole thing was over. We were given certificates for successfully surviving the Khan Training Program, a hot lunch, and were sent on our way. All in all, it was a pretty huge waste of time, but at least now I can write that I received a certificate of completion for the Khan program on my resume…since it’s so important.
To be totally honest with you all, I hate Halloween. It’s loud, kids are all jacked up on crappy food, teenagers act even dumber than normal, and bars will inact cover charges under the guise of a “Halloween party.” The only thing I enjoy about Halloween are the specials about ghosts or which that appear on the History Channel, but since those don’t exist here, Halloween has no real redeeming value to me.
So I was a tad annoyed when my boss proclaimed, “Let’s have Halloween parties for the classes at the end of the week.” Fortunately she holds a similar view on Halloween and added, “They can decorate pumpkins, wear costumes if they want, get candy on the way out and we’ll be done with it.”
So on Monday and Tuesday they kids had their end of the semester exams, and on Wednesday the Halloween madness began. Wednesday and Thursday saw the students decorating pumpkins. Since it would have been truly insane to allow kids who come to blows at the drop of a hat to carve pumpkins with knives, the students instead used paint, glue, yarn, googley eyes, and other assorted nonsense to create jack o’ lanterns.
During this process I learned a valuable sociological lesson: girls make better leaders and work together better than boys. Larger classes would be divided into a boy group and a girl group. The girls would talk about what looked good or not on their pumpkin, and would help each other in attempting to impliment their plans. The boys on the other hand would spend half the time attempting to wrestle each other and then when they did try to make a jack o’ lantern, they all had their own vision which they were unwilling to change (if it differed from others in the group) so their jack o’ lanterns looked like complete shit more often than not.
With pumpkins all decorated, Friday was the Halloween party…the worst Halloween party ever. You want to wear a costume? Fine. You don’t? That’s cool too. Special events? Well, we’re going to do a Halloween themed worksheet about some grammar we covered earlier in the week, and then play some pin the nose on the jack o’ lantern game I crafted a year ago…oh and there will be snacks. After that it’s time to get some candy and kick them out of the school.
So thankfully today marks the end of Halloween and the end of kids acting like morons and the end of all frustration.
From time to time in my classes the students will play a game known as “The Hot Seat.” The game consists of one (or two students depending on class size) seated with their backs to the blackboard, in the hot seat if you will. The other students in the class can see the word written on the board, and will attempt to get the person in the hot seat to bellow this word.
Occassionally some kid in a class will be a smartass and request a “hard word” when it is their turn in the hot seat. Usually I will oblige them in this request and offer up some impossible word for their level to explain. Something like Marxism or diplodocus. The students in the class who have to explain these words will groan and I will change it, but the other day something strange happened.
One girl in the hot seat asked for a word that was “a little bit hard.” I wrote “Germany” on the board, a couple kids moaned, but before I could erase it and write something else, one girl bellowed (in English) “It’s Hitler’s home!” and did a Heil Hitler salute. The girl on the hot seat (who is not really the sharpest crayon in the picnic basket) asked, “Uh…Germany?”
Seriously it made no sense what-so-ever. These were 4th and 5th grade students, not high school or college aged students. How were those girls able to guess the correct answer so quickly? Trying to think back to my youth I’m not even sure if I knew who Hitler was in 4th grade, but I know for a fact that being told in a language other than my native language that “this country was Hitler’s home,” would have caused me to sucessfully bellow “Germany” in whatever foreign language is being spoken by me in the alternate 4th grade reality.
I work in a small town…a damn small town. As such, all of the kids I teach attend the same school. Today that school held their annual 운동대회 (運動大會 / Sports Contest). On Tuesday and Thursday I teach three classes, and today, this 운동대회 interfered with each and every one of them.
My first class of the day was a class of first and second graders. This class runs from 2:30 until 3:30, and the sports contest was not supposed to end until sometime after 4:00. “Great! One less class for the day!” WRONG! Earlier this week, a pair of kindergarten kids that had lived abroad (and gone through American kindergarten) got stuck in that class. Since here in Korea, kindergarten is not part of elementary school, this kids were unaffected by sports day. The class itself wasn’t that bad. We reviewed some of the material we had covered before and then played Chutes & Ladders. I actually enjoyed that class a lot more without the mob of first grade boys who have no idea what I’m saying because they never listen.
At 3:30 the kindergarteners took off to their homelands. The secretary was sitting out in the waiting room with one of her friends, and informed me that all the kids in the next class were still involved in their sporting activities. So I had a conversation with the secretary and her friend. It was one of those extremely random conversations that went all over the place. We talked about the upcomming holiday, the lack of a nightlife in the boondocks, ovens, the fact that I can eat spicy food, and the lack of adult English classes in 고양.
The secretary’s friend was attempting to talk me into moving to 고양 for some reason. She claimed it was so she (and other ladies) could “learn English,” but me being so full of myself, think that they wanted other services….hey now!
Anyhow with roughly ten minutes of class time left in the second class period, one student showed up. One kid! Man, what is that? With ten minutes of class, what can possibly be done? Not a whole hell of a lot, so we talked about what went down in the sports contest (apparently the blue team won), and then I sent her on her way.
The last class of the day had every kid come in fifteen minutes late, but they all showed up. So that class went as planned, though a bit shortened due to time constraints. From there I headed on home….to think about a possible move to the sticks to try and score with housewives…man what am I talking about?!
My class of six graders finished all of their work with several minutes of class remaining, so I told them that if they could agree on something quickly we could play a game. As if there was a single mind controling four bodies, they yelled out, “Bingo!”
“Alright, then…Bingo it is.”
Bingo cards and markers were handed out, and the game began. The Bingo game I have is not your standard issue “B-15! G-36!” style Bingo, but rather the Bingo I have is “Sight Word” Bingo, so it’s like, “B-School! N-Bear!”
On and on it went, I-House…O-Cup. Suddenly a voice cried out, “I’M BLACK!”
(Sound of screeching breaks) “You’re what?!” I looked at the student, mainly to check if he had somehow changed his race in the five minutes we’d been playing.
The boy repeated it again, “I’m black…see!” He motioned to his Bingo card, displaying the fact that he had achieved a Bingo.
What he wanted to say was, “Bingo!” or “I win!” Somehow these phrases got crossed with “I’m Black,” and that’s what he bellowed upon his victory. Which got me thinking, how often do I, while speaking Korean, pull similar moves? Because I know I do, and not just when I offer up non-sequitors to random people on the subway. Well I’ll see you later, or as they say here in Korea, 난 흑인입니다! ^^*
Several weeks back I posted a video of my kindergarten students singing some Twisted Sister. Today, they impressed me with their continued bizarre musical prowess. In their classroom is some toy that is used to teach phonics. The toy has the alphabet on it, when the letters of the alphabet are pressed a soothing voice delivers a line like, “G. G says guh…”
Today for some reason, the girls busted this toy and started using it like a sampler. So it was like, “G…G…G…G say H!” “Q..F…F…H…H says huh!!!” And while they were doing this one girl was banging on a tamborine, and another was singing “Jingle Bells.” It was basically a Beck b-side.
Other than that the day was pretty crappy, mostly due to the fact that the day was rainy (or overcast the entire day). Like most people, when it rains, I have no energy to do much of anything other than sit around my house, watch crappy TV / movies, or drink coffee. Couple this with my continued early days, and it is needless to say that I was exhausted most of the day. All I really wanted to do was take a nap, but that wasn’t going on.
Oh also one of the kindergarten student’s mom was totally flirting with me, which was kind of odd. She’d be pretty decent looking if it weren’t for the fact that she sports braces…I’m not even joking. Anyhow after Beck-esque jams, and a Korean mom mackin’ it to me I got on a bus and came home…and typed this, and now I’m going to watch some crappy television and eat 유부초밥. The end.
This week is the first full week of my students’ summer vacation (from their regular school…I still see them on a daily basis). For this reason, many of my students are missing in action this week. It’s amazing how different a class goes when one child is missing.
I have a class (known in my school as the yellow class) made up entirely of first and second graders. This week, one kid (a child we’ll call Kevin) has been on vacation and the class has been a breeze without him.
To call a seven year old a prick is kind of harsh…but I can think of nothing better to call that kid. He talks nonstop in class, doesn’t listen, stirs up trouble with the other kids, randomly hits people, is defiant, and is consistantly out of his seat. Basically a little prick.
I can’t count how many times a day I begin a sentence with “Kevin!” This week, on the other hand has been quiet. Even the other kids who with Kevin’s encouragement are usually boardering on being hell-spawns have been quite well behaved this week. They’ve done all their works, listened to my instructions, stayed in their seats, and have not come to blows with each other.
Oh what a glorious week it has been! Oh and also I surpassed 20,000 hits on this page today. Yay for me!
I have a class consisting of three kindergarten aged girls, and for some reason last week I taught them the chorus for the classic 80’s hard rock tune, “We’re Not Gonna Take It!” by your friends and mine, Twisted Sister.
He’s not gonna take it! No! He ain’t gonna take it!
Today, we here at Kimchi & Me enter the fast pace world of the late 90’s internet technology. I bring you a 6M Mpeg file of Korean girls bellowing about fighting the power 80’s hard rock style (with some vocal cues from me).
So enjoy the vocal stylings of Alice, Sammy, and Kate (featuring Wyatt).
Like I’ve mentioned in the past few work based posts I’ve made, I’m becoming more and more stoked about traveling home, and less and less stoked about doing real teaching, which in a way has made me a better teacher.
Earlier this semester one of my classes read a tale entitled “If You Give A Pig A Pancake.” At the end of the tale there was a bonus activity that included a pancake recipe. So on Wednesday I told the kids we would build some pancakes on Friday, and today is Friday…so it was pancake day!
The kids were totally into making pancakes. I never thought that anyone could get so excited about things like cracking an egg, or pouring batter into a pan, or (and this caused the most excitement) flipping a pancake.
The saddest part of the entire experience was the fact that the pancakes the kids flipped were perfectly round, beautiful pancakes, while the pancake I flipped while teaching my students to word “flip” was a disgusting oblong mess. For shame Wyatt, for shame!
On occassion I stumble across something a teaching tool so awesome I’m surprised that I hadn’t realized the awesomeness of them sooner. Today was one of those days. Today one of my classes had a class assignment which was basically a Mad-Libs rip off. It went something like this.
1. person in your family
2. your favorite food
3. verb (past tense)
4. something you find in your house
5. an animal
One day, (1) and I decided to make (2) for the whole family. It was hard work.
First (1) (3) everything in a big bowl. It was so hard to mix she had to use a (4).
When we were finished, no one wanted to eat the (2) so we gave it to our pet (5).
Now, perhaps because I grew up with Mad-Libs I didn’t really think it was that funny, but to hear about moms and sisters punching or studying things into bowls that require a TV or chair mixing, didn’t reallly strike me as that funny, but these kids totally lost their shit. I had each student read their version of the above story, and each time the other kids errupted in laughter.
Note to myself, pick up some Mad-Libs books while I’m in the States…and milk them for all they’re worth when I get back here. Additionally be prepared to teach the kids the all so important verbs fart, poop, and piss.
I love the end of the semester! Not only do I get to create, administer, and grade tests, but I have report cards to fill out. This is the most pointless and time consuming task attached to my job.
I’m not against report cards for say, since those can be fairly quickly completed. What I am against is the “teacher comments” part of the report cards. This is the most time consuming part of the process and the biggest waste of time. Of the parents 50% never see the report cards (since they are given to kids to take home). Of the 50% that do see them, I’d say that 95% can’t understand English at all (and therefore can’t understand what I’m writing). Of that 5% that do understand, some 99% misunderstand what I’ve written and take offense. When it comes down to it 1 mom can read English well enough to understand what I’m writing.
If not for the fact that my employer is Canadian and can understand English, I would just write some “fake cursive” and be done with it…but alas.
Fake Cursive
The other thing is what I’m writing is very similar and more often than not, kind of dishonest. Since parents don’t want to hear negative things about their children I have to be nice in my writing.
For example when I really wanted to write something like, “Jenna is dumb as a rock. Stop wasting you money on all these hagwons and teach her how to cook, clean, and please her husband since she is destined to be a housewife,” I end up having to writing something like, “Jenna is a polite student who gets along with others. She has some difficulty with the material, but with continued hard work will continue to improve.”
Now if you’ll excuse me I have more of these complete wastes of time to work on.
Last week a new girl joined one of my classes. The first couple days she was kind of quiet, but today for some reason she decided it was high time she asked a ton of really random questions (in fairly decent English) about Mr. Dunn.
“Mr. Dunn…how do you write your name?”
“Mr. Dunn…when is your birthday?”
“Mr. Dunn…what is your hobby?”
“Mr. Dunn…what is your umm…고향 (hometown)?”
I answered her questions, and she jotted down notes in her notebook, like she was interviewing me for a fanzine or the 고양초등학교일보 (Goyang Elementary School Daily). Probably the weirdest question and answer session I’ve been subjected to since arriving here.
Fast forward an hour to a different class. Today they were covering “I” and “me” and when to use each of them. After some practice and verbal exercises, the students had to create a sentence using “I” and a sentence using “me.” Allow me to present what would have to be the best two sentence combination ever drafted: “I am hungry. Give me a cat.”
Today while teaching, I came across not one, but two incredibly lewd expressions expertly concealed in the various reading text books, much like the boner in the cover of The Little Mermaid video.
First up, in the story “What A Trip!” (about a deep see dive), there was the line, “It is not fun to get pricked.” I know some ladies, and fellas for that matter, would beg to differ. Additionally there was a line that “Some fish can prick,” which prompted a class full of Korean children to yell “prick.”
A short while later my higher level class was reading the epic tale, “Ant,” and in this tale they learned about “munching carpet” or at least ants that are like a “munching carpet.”
Seriously, what kind of perverts are writing this crap?
This morning while on the subway I was studying 漢字 while on the way to work. In the lesson I studied today I they introduced the word 靑少年 (청소년) which in English would be “teenagers.” The book included, as an example, the phrase, “靑少年 (청소년)은 나라의 미래이다,” (Teenagers are a nation’s future.) I thought this kind of odd, since growing up in the west in the early 80s I was bombarded with all manner of “children are the future” touchy feely bullshit from all angles: Sesame Street, my social worker mother, Michael Jackson songs. And here on the subway I was learning that it was not children, but teenagers, that were the future.
“How can this be?” I asked myself. Fast forwarding roughly 2 hours, a higher power finally heard my question and saw fit to provide a tangible answer. I was begining my class of second and third grade students. One student, let’s call him Tony (since that’s the English name he goes by), feels the need to “hide” under a table in the classroom. He does this fairly regularly for the sole reason that he’s clearly totally fucked up in the head, so instead of giving him the attention that he is looking for I usually choose to ignore this preschool-esque behavior. Today, the other students in the class kept pointing under the table and proclaiming, “Mr. Dunn, Tony is under (the) table!” So I told the students, “Well, I guess he wants to be a baby. Leave him alone.”
Being hit with the truth (and called a baby) prompted Tony to crawl out from under the table and return to his desk. With that taken care of I went on with the business at hand. The boy next to Tony turned to Tony, and pointed, laughed and said, “Baby Tony!” So what does Tony do? Smack the kid? Start crying? Tattle? Nope. Tony decides he’s had enought and throws a handful of screws, nails, and other pointy metal things at me hitting me in the face. That was it. I put up with a lot of crap, but when I’m getting hit millimeters from my eye with nails that’s it. I bellowed screamed at the kid, kicked him out of the class and told him to go home. The secretary heard this and came. I told her what had happened, and then she started yelling at him in Korean. I went back into the classroom, and all the other students had that deer in a headlight look.
After about five minutes the mood had been returned to normal, though Tony did not return to class that day (he did apologize as the other students were going home), and I think it will be awhile before anyone in that class acts up. As I was picking up shrapnel that had been lobbed at me I remembered what I had read earlier in the day. Perhaps teenagers really are the future…but what about when Tony becomes a teenager? Then I think we’ll need to replace “靑少年은 나라의 미래이다,” with “우리는 미래 없다 (We have no future).”
※ Editor’s Notes: Skrew Attack (with a K not a C) is an outstanding Korean band. Check them out…this I command!
Yesterday and today I met with the parents of my students for some good old fashion parent-teacher-translator conferences. For the most part, the parents were happy and said their children enjoyed my classes. It’s always nice to hear that you are doing a good job, and it’s even better when you get presents.
That’s right kids, the moms came bearing gifts. I ended up with some cake, cookies, vitamin drink, tea, and assorted soft drinks. In addition to these gifts I recieved some pretty odd compliments. Of course there was the ever popular, “You understand Korean very well,” but in addition I was told things like, “My son / daughter hates to study, but loves coming here,” and “My son said that you are not mean like his school English teacher,” and then there was, “My daughter says that Mr. Dunn is handsome.” Now this particular mom’s daughter is five years old, but it got weirder, as she was leaving she proclaimed to my boss that, “My daughter is right, he is very handsome.” I’m glad the conferences are over, because if I hear more stuff like this I might end up with a swelled head like Peter Brady after saving that girl in the toy store.
Anyhow on my way home I picked up a coat from the dry cleaner (not that I’ll need it since it’s now summer for some reason). Anyhow the coat had some fake fur trim that I had removed before dropping the coat off. Today when I picked up the coat the fur had been replaced, so now I have two pieces of fake fur trim for the hood of my coat. One is dark and one is light, and I have no idea why a second piece appeared.
Today began the testing week at my school, which is totally awesome since it means all sorts of extra paperwork for me. In addition to creating, administering and grading tests, I have report cards to fill out this week as well. This is not a problem, but for some reason I have to fill out a teacher’s comments area inspite of the fact that this Saturday I have to come in and do parent teacher confrences…in which I will be telling the parents the exact thing I’ll be writing. Additionally my comments are written in English, and the bulk of the parents can’t understand English at all, and those who do often misconstrew what I write, and end up getting angry.
On the plus side of all of this (and there is a plus side), classes are extremely easy this week. The kids have testing for two days, and then the last two days this week are game days and “funny money” shop day which makes preparing for class a lot easier. Additionally I mentioned having to work on Saturday, but next week I’m going to have a four day weekend.
Now if you’ll pardon me, I have some teacher comments to fill out that will be misunderstood.
When I first met my girlfriend, her English skill was miles higher than my Korean skill. Wait, who am I kidding, her English still is vastly superior to my Korean. Anyhow, because my Korean was so poor when we met, I made a lot of progress in the year we’ve been dating. There was so much I didn’t know, that it was easy to see a lot of progress in a relatively short ammount of time.
Like I said, my girlfriend already had a pretty good grasp of the language, so her improvement was not as noticeable. She didn’t make glarring grammatical mistakes, or have to create her own English words when not knowing an object or concept’s actual name. Therefore she was under the impression that her English has not gotten any better.
Well, let me tell you that she is wrong. First of all her comprehension is a lot better now. When we first met she would occassionally stare at me for awhile while attempting to comprehend what had been said, but now it’s almost instantaneous, but my comprehension improved a great deal as well. Since meeting me she has learned all kinds of useless useful expressions such as “I have to break the seal,” “Hey man,” and “Dammit!” She on the other hand has educated me on proper verb tense, indirect quoting, and countless other grammatical concepts. In all it’s a pretty fair trade I think.
“Hey Wyatt, lately you’ve been posting a lot of pretty lengthy jazz. What’s been up?”
Ah you’ve noticed. You see a couple weeks ago 유림’s (man that looks weird…let’s use U-rim’s instead) mother came up from the sticks that are U-rim’s hometown and is now staying with her…sometimes. So for the past two weeks or so I’ve been flying solo most days, which accords me a lot of time which I spend living it up like a bachelor with strippers and drinks and fast cars…oh wait I’m not Vin Disel; I spend it studying, watching movies, reading, and writing insane nonsense here (drunken movie reviews, outlines to quasi-academic papers about monsters, lengthy rules and regulations for escalators, and the like). So that’s why there’s a lot more content as of late. When If U-rim’s mother ever leaves I’ll be back to one post a day or so…and they’ll probably be shorter and contain more typos. Anyhow I’ve got a wacky story that could only come from a Korean school for you, so enjoy.
Today one of my classes read a story which featured the line, “He was a famous dog.” The students didn’t understand what “famous” was, so I explained it to them (actually I just said “유명하다” which is Korean for “to be famous”), and I then went around and asked students about various famous people.
“Who is a famous singer?” “Who is a famous soccer player?” “Who is a famous ‘gag man?’” “Who is a famous baseball player?”
Each of my questions was answered with one or two names. “Boa is a famous singer.” “Seven is a famous singer.” For some reason of the students asked, “Who is a famous gamer?” I said I didn’t know, and posed the same question to the class who blasted through a million names.
“Wyatt, What’s a gamer?”
Good question buddy. Gamers are professional video game players. Here in Korea that usually means professional Starcraft players, but based on the various game channels I have there are gamers who focus on other games (Counter Strike comes to mind). So we have a class of 3rd and 4th grade boys who could name one baseball player only after I’d nearly said the entire name myself (Park Chan-ho if anyone cares), but knew the names and ranks of entire Starcraft league clan rosters. What the crap is that?
In my collection of books I have a phrase book targeting Koreans who want to learn English. There are some decent expressions in the book for both Koreans learning English, as well as English speakers learning Korean, but it is obvious that the author did not consult a native speaker at all, as there are several mistakes, and countless oddly phrased expressions, anyone familar with English would have noticed immediately. So as a service to 박선화 (the woman who assembled this book), I am going to point out, mock, and subsequently correct some of the more obvious mistake.
Original English: My sister get higher salary than I.
한국어: 제 여동생이 저보다 금료가 높아요.
Comments: For starters there is not subject-verb agreement in this sentence. It should be “gets” as opposed to “get.” Additionally in English to say “I get a salary” doesn’t make sense. “My sister makes more than I do,” or “My sister’s salary is higher than mine,” would be better.
Original English: Would you mind if I just call you a Duck?
한국어: 그냥 당신을 ‘덕 (오리)’ 이라고 불러도 괜찮겠어요?
Comments: The grammar in this sentence is fine, but I have no idea why this sentence is included. Why would you ask someone if you could call them “a Duck?” Sentences are broken down thematically and the other sentences grouped with this are things like “Can you do me a favor?” and “May I ask a favor of you?” So I really have no idea what this is all about.
Original English: He has a good hand in riding.
한국어: 그는 승마를 잘합니다.
Comments: Except for the fact that no one uses the expression, “has a good hand in…” this sentence is fine.
Original English: I’d like to see an affective movie.
한국어: 애장 영화를 보고 싶어요.
Comments: Affective movie? I’m pretty sure the author was going for “an affectionate movie,” which still is wrong. “Romantic movie” or “love Story” would have been better choices.
Original English: What was the movie you saw lately?
한국어: 최근에 본 영화는 무엇입니까?
Comments: The Korean question would have been better translated as “What’s the latest movie you have seen?”
Original English: I’m hungry for hotdog.
한국어: 핫도그 먹고 싶어요.
Comments: The Korean version has nothing to do with hunger, nor should the English version. This is one of those cases where the author is trying to be too complex, keep it simple people! The Korean is “I want to eat a hotdog,” the English should be the same thing.
Original English: Could I burn a cigarette?
한국어: 담배 한 대 태워도 될까요?
Comments: If “I’m hungry for hotdog,” suffered due to the author not being literal enough in the translation this one suffers from being too literal. It seems that the author was simply rocking a dictionary to look up words on this one. ‘태우다’ literally means to burn, in this case a cigarette (담배). The sentence however in English would be “Could I smoke a cigarette?” or “Could I light up?”
And here I chose to put an end to this madness, for now. There are countless more mistakes in that book, and that book is not unique at all. In Korea, there are countless text books, phrase books, and television shows that “teach English,” but many of these educational tools have not consulted any kind of native speakers, or if they did, consulted really ignorant ones.
It’s been quite a long time since I’ve actually learned any Korean profanity. Since I worked for Koreans will still living in America, I learned most of the more extreme words before I ever set foot on Korean soil (or in a Korean language class for that matter).
Even the childish name calling (which I hadn’t heard in America) I learned with the first couple weeks of arriving in Korea. These phrases were fairly easy to learn since they were just different combinations of the word 바보 (babo / fool), and 똥꼬 (ddong-kko / butthole), with the occasional 돼지 (dweji / pig) thrown in for good measure, but today I learned an outstanding new elementary school insult. I give you: 짝궁뎅이 (jjak gung deng e)!!!
Today in my kindergarten class, one of the boys drew a picture similar to the one above. When I asked him what it was, he proclaimed, “짝궁뎅이!” which resulted rawkus laughter from the other students.
I made a further inquire as to what this picture actually was. He went on to explain in a combination of Korean and English, that one ass cheek was big, and the other was not big. Basically the ass was uneven.
Ever meet a Korean with one cartoonishly large ass cheek and needed to insult them? Need a really specific term with which to mock them? Well, my friends, now you have it!
editor’s notes: Please bear in mind this is a definition I pieced together from a five year old’s explaination. If you have further explaination as to what 짝궁뎅이 is, or if you know someone who actually has an ass like this, drop some comments.
Yesterday began with an exciting trip to the bank to pay my bills. You see, here in Korea there are no such things as personal checks so when it comes time to pay the piper, there are a couple things that can be done. First off the company can withdraw the money from your account directly. This is the most convient, but to my knowledge only phone companies will do this. The second thing that can be done is go to the post office and give the clerk there the money for you bills. The final option is use the awesome bill paying machine at the bank. I’m not sure if all banks have this feature or just mine (KB), but anyway that’s what I did yesterday…or at least tried to do.
When I arrived at the bank there was already a line of people at the two bank machines. Finally when there was one woman in front of me, she did something that put the machine out of commission. A bank employee began work on it and told us to use the other machine. Again, ten minutes pass, the woman steps up to get her bank on and lo and behold, the machine crashes again. I believe at this point I proclaimed, “You gotta be kidding me!” After another 10 minutes or so a machine was up and running and I could final pay my bills…Hooray!
Now yesterday is the day I have my kindergarten class. They come in we read a story, play some games, sing, have a snack, and use a workbook in which 90% of the activities involve coloring. Yesterday’s class was really good. The kids were well behaved, and were doing really well. The workbook activity for the class was a connect the dots puzzle, that when completed formed a desk (they were learning about “classrooms” and “schools” this unit). Upon completion of the puzzle the students called out, “I’m finished!”
When the students finish their work (and after the proclaim loudly that they have done so), I check the work that they have done, and either give them a sticker or write something like “Awesome!” or draw a happy face or a star…something to show them that I approve of their work. Yesterday the two girls in the class finished first and wanted me to draw, “Princess please.” So I drew a couple of hastily assembled princesses. The boy asked for a prince. Below is an exact replica of the drawing the boy recieved.
Upon seeing this drawing the boy burst into tears. Granted I’m not an great artist, and I will never be doing police sketches for America’s Most Wanted, but there was nothing wrong with this drawing to bring on uncontrolled sobbing. I asked him what was wrong and between sobs he was able to give a one word answer: “수염 (su-yeom)…”, which means “beard.” “코밑수염 (Komeet su-yeom)” is a more accurate translation for “moustache,” but I got the picture, and learned a valuable lesson: moustaches make small Korean children cry.
I have one class of students who as of late are obsessed with my nationality. Each day I can expect a couple questions to come my way about America. One day a student had a quarter and question me as to the identity of the Washington. Another day I was asked as to the availibility of various Korean foodstuffs in America. The students are usually impressed, but today my tidbit of life in America caused them to see that not everything in America is bad.
One of my students asked me, “Mr. Dunn what is 학원 in English?” Now 학원 is one of those Korean words that doesn’t really translate into English since there’s not really an equivalent institution in English speaking countries. I told him that he could call it an “institute.”
A different student then asked what kind of institutes they had in America. I told her that there weren’t any. The students all began asking me if I was telling the truth. I proclaimed that it was, and then about 100 other questions came in.
“Where do you study if there is no hagwon?” “At your home.”
“When can you go home?” “When school is finished…like 3:00.”
“What do you do when school is finished?” “Go home. Play. Do team sports. Study.”
When the conversation ended one of the boys proclaimed: “America…no hagwon…GOOD!” Oh yes it is buddy…oh yes it is!
I’m not going to lie to you…like most boys my age I was a video game junkie through the 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, I play a lot of games, but hands down my favorite games were the RPGs for Nintendo (Dragon Warrior and the original Final Fantasy). One of the reasons I liked these games was the fact that you could name the characters. Where in Super Mario Bros. you were Mario, and in Zelda you were Link, in the games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, you could give the characters any persona you wanted. The first time I played these games the characters were named after my friends and I (or the Ninja Turtles), but later on (middle school) the names become insane; either lewd or totally bizarre.
Middle school humor at its finest.
And for this reason my favorite part of teaching is when I get to give English names to new students. The only thing is, none of this kids want really awesome names. They all want to be “Tony” or “Andy” or “Dkembi.” None want truly innovative names like the ones depicted bellow, and this makes me sad.
Why can’t my students pick names like this? A pox upon “John!”
Well it’s back to school time here in Korea, so that means in addition to middle school girls not being on the bus being loud when I go into work, an assload of new students have joined my classes. The bulk of these kids seem fine but there’s one kid that is super annoying. Let’s call him Jim.
First off he’s in fifth or sixth grade, but never shuts up or stops moving. Yesterday in class the students were doing their daily journal. Everyone was working quietly, occassionally raising their hand to ask, “Mr. Dunn how do you spell Novemeber?” or “What is 예쁘다 in English?” Not Jim. He was sitting in his chair poking a pencil through the paper and making animal noises.
Second off (I can say that right? ) this month all the classes are starting to do a weekly show and tell, so yesterday while I was explaining how it would work he continually interrupted me. He would bellow random crap that had nothing to do with what I was talking about, and ended up making the 5 minute explaination take about 15 minutes.
Thirdly, during class he was constantly moving. He got out of his chair more often than the kindergarten students (4 and 5 year olds) that I had taught earlier in the day. If he was in his chair, he was tapping his foot against the metal part of his chair making a lot of noise.
The last thing that really annoyed me more than anything else, was the fact that he was a know-it-all. Apparently he had lived in the Phillipeans for a couple years. He could speak English fairly well, but because of this thought he was better than everyone else. At one point he turned to the girl next to him, scoffed at something she had said, and said, “That’s wrong,” and then laughed like Nelson from the Simpsons. I turned to him, looked him in the face and told him, “Seriously, just be quiet! If you talk again you can go home!”
So that’s what I have to look forward to every Tuesday and Thursday for the time being. Yay…
) this month all the classes are starting to do a weekly show and tell, so yesterday while I was explaining how it would work he continually interrupted me. He would bellow random crap that had nothing to do with what I was talking about, and ended up making the 5 minute explaination take about 15 minutes.