Category Archives: Common Sense

Um. Enough said.

‘Swinter!

05 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Common Sense, Strange Customs

≈ 3 Comments

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, the answer is “hunkering.”  I hear that winter has been relatively mild in Maine this year, but in Korea it’s been record breaking cold.  Cold with no snow, that is, which means…meh.  Winter blows.

I spend even more time in my classroom now, usually puttering around until almost dinnertime because to leave means going from hot sauna classroom to ice cave hallway, where your nosehairs freeze, in 1.7 seconds.  The Koreans do a lot of things right, but building schools is not one of them.  The hallways are not heated, you see.  The hallways are not heated!  You see?  My day consists of drinking a cup of coffee, needing to pee, walking to the bathroom along the frozen tundra that is the hall, making a cup of hot tea to get warm again, having to pee, walking to the bathroom in the tundra … are you catching my drift?  It can be a serious drag.  Our students come to class with their giant down coats on and never take them off.  The rooms themselves are toasty, but what’s the point, really, of bothering to undress, when you’re just going to have to go back out into the arctic?   Colleagues warned me about this, I admit, but I wasn’t prepared.  So, I spend more time in my classroom now.  And that’s where I’ve been hanging out.

It’s halfway through our year in Korea, so it will come as no surprise (to you who know me well) that I’m attached to my students.  I wake up in the mornings happy and excited to go do what I do in a classroom.  Generally, kids here are very hardworking and serious about their studies.  They are appreciative to and grateful for their teachers.  It still delights me that they thank me on their way out of class.  Not all the time, in an obligatory kind of way, but when I’ve really helped them think.   They are super curious.  They ask fantastic questions, readily participate in class, ask for rubrics ahead of time in preparation for assignments and – get this- hand in their homework more than 96% of the time, on the whole.  I know this, because I kept track to make certain I wasn’t overestimating!   They get upset when they get grades lower than A’s. It’s refreshing, and humorous, and it’s so different from home in so many ways.  Students that care are the norm, not the exception.  It’s cool here to do well in school.  Not cool to not turn in your homework.  Cool to join the study group.  Not cool to not show up for it.  What is also unique is that if we do have a problem with a student, be it academic or behavioral, it is usual to receive a parental note much like the following:  Thank you for letting us know about _________ (fill in the blank).  This will be taken care of.  And then – it IS.   Come on, teacher friends at home!  You know that sounds like a dream come true!

If you’ve been reading about education lately you’ll know that public schools in Korea are in the hot spotlight for their methods of factual drill and kill, constant testing,  enormous academic pressure,  and keeping kids in private study lessons (Hagwon) until midnight and beyond, every school night.   DIS is an international school with an American curriculum, so our students are learning how to think creatively, problem solve, work cooperatively, confidently express opinions and question the status quo.  It is atypical for Korea but is a welcomed, even coveted, educational option.  I don’t have the big picture of the direction the country is heading, having only spent a few months here, but when you match students like these, with curriculum that encourages free thinking, with the support of their families…it’s got to be a recipe for success.  It’s an uncommon experience, doing what we’re doing.  We are more grateful for the learning we’re doing than our students and their families are for our teaching, that much I know.

So.  This is also why I’m spending more time in my classroom than at our little home when it’s so cold.  I want to.  I want to teach the students everything I can.  They give their best, and I give mine. That, too, is a recipe for success.

Purple is the New Black

09 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Common Sense, Out in the Big World/Travel, Strange Customs

≈ 9 Comments

I have a little crush on the cab driver who brought me home from the hospital today.  When I got in his car, I couldn’t help but notice his pimp daddy purple shirt, his white driving gloves, his dapper pinstriped pants and his barely there grey at his temples.  I handed him the only business card I have with my address on it, which was from our principal, Gary Odom. 

“Do you know Bong-mu Dong?” I asked.  Usually this question receives a “ney (yes)” or a gruntish response, but not today.  Not from my dapper daddy.  “Yes, I know it well” he said.  You know it well? I thought.  I think I love you.  Hearing English when I’d just spent a frantic hour trying to navigate the Korean emergency room for Luke’s wrist (which is not broken, thank goodness), was like retreating to the walk-in cooler in the hell-hot kitchen of a restaurant.  Just for a second. 

Then, as we pulled away and our chat continued, he asked, in much more broken words “How big here Korea?” – he wanted to know how long I’d been here – and no matter how I tried, for the next few miles, my answers were too hard for him to translate.  We struggled, and laughed a little, until both of us got a little tired, of straining to simplify and still not being understood.  Plus I get wicked car sick in the stop/start of the city traffic.   “Card again?” he asked me when he stopped at a red light.  I gave it to him.  “Oh, Gary Odom,” he smiled kindly, “You do good. You good principal, yes?”  And then there was that split second, between when I knew I should have tried to correct him (god knows Gary deserved that) and when I decided not to, that I felt so at home with Mr. Purple shirt.   It was something in his kindness that made me think of home.   Yes, I decided to answer – I knew he’d be happy just to get something in the conversation right, yes, I am.  I’m a good Gary Odom principal.  Only I didn’t, I just smiled back. 

He brought me home, the long way, but I forgive him, and when I got out of the car he said ” goodnight, new friend!”   I mean, really.  He just made the whole kooky day a little less scary and a lot more friendly.  A small town heart in a gigantic city.  Don’t you love my Pimp Dapper Daddy too?

 

It’s Gettin’ Kinda Hectic

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Common Sense, Out in the Big World/Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I think I have an inkling of what it’s like to be illiterate.  My days are managed by making common sense connections (oh, that sign must say “stop” since there’s a city bus barrelling at me.  Oooh, that one says “restaurant” – see the pictures of shrimp on the sign?!)  But it’s an illiteracy having once been able to read, you see.  It’s kind of like when the power goes off during a winter storm in Maine.  I still walk room to room and flick on the lightswitch, with genuine surprise the light doesn’t come on.  When you’re reading Korean, the lights don’t come on either, but I keep expecting them to.

I can read it...but what does it say?

So I’m thinking about my students and how difficult it must be for those who either A.) hardly understand English – for there are a few;  from India, from China or B.) still translate the language in their heads, as in, it’s still not automatic to think/answer/write in English.  Oh my.  Their reading lists include classic American Literature (consider the colloquialisms of Huck Finn!), Shakespeare and Chekov, to name a few.  I think I may have planned for more than I can accomplish.  Or hey, maybe not.  I’m in Korea, for crying out loud, I’ve accomplished more than I ever planned.  Maybe these kids can, too.

Guy is picking up the language like a child.  He’s already speaking to the cafeteria staff, albeit in broken sentences.  He’ll say “thank you. breakfast,” in Korean, with a bow.  The ladies delight at this giant smiling American.  “Oh, yes, breakfast.  Wow!”  It’s been 7 days, it’s still a challenge for me – not only to pick up Korean, but to understand a Korean when he/she speaks English.  The same lady, our cafeteria manager, actually, was trying to figure out if we were supposed to be there at all, and I swear she was saying “tomatowi?”  I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.  Try again.”  She repeated “tomatowi?”  This went on with me getting flustered, her turning bright red, both of us smiling and trying really hard.  Guy walks over “yes, dormitory!  We live here.”  Sigh.

This, by the way, has all happened here on campus or down the street at the mall.  We haven’t had time to venture out into the ‘real’ Korea, but I saw an open market yesterday that I’m dying to get to.  I saw peaches the size of cantalopes.  Yum!  Stay tuned.