This was a written note from one of my better than average 3rd grade middle school students (14-15 years old). I couldn’t understand what she meant when she was saying the word “geäst”, so I got her to write it down for me.
I’m pretty impressed with this girl’s vocab. In class her listening comprehension is better than most. After me demonstrating how to pronounce “ghost”, I got her to read this sentence to me again and with her gestures that came with that, I came to understand that I have “ghost hair” (so either I need to get a hair cut, or else I just shouldn’t wear it out untied maybe, hehehe) but I still have the face of a pretty princess.
My colleagues at school keep telling me how incredibly poor people who live in Bansong are. One teacher said it’s one of the top ten poorest places in Korea. That means their English (and often their results in other subjects too) is mostly below the national average, due to no private lessons at hagwons. They don’t have any money for that. Most of them receive financial support from the government.
So how does that affect the classroom? Problem #1 is that the lower level students cannot and maybe will never be able to understand me. Even with beginner class style instructions and demonstrations, the less motivated ones have the attention span of tired teenagers. There’s also the special needs students who are normally in their own classes, but they join mine for fun?! They look the same as any other student and have varying capabilities in Korean as well as English, so I have to try to get them involved without spending too much time helping them. One of my co-teachers strictly tells one special needs student to stay out of my group speaking activities. I feel so bad for her, because she sits there all by herself, but my co-teacher doesn’t want any of the other students to have to “waste time trying to talk to someone who can’t talk back”. I feel like the material in the text books is above what a lot of my 2nd and 3rd graders can do. But do it we must. It’s the curriculum.
Yes, then there are problem kids. Is there any school that doesn’t have problem kids though? There are girls who don’t have mothers and are basically brought up by their grandmothers, since the fathers apparently don’t care. Or often they are without a father and their mothers are busy working. The teachers are constantly disciplining kids, in a variety of ways. I’ve seen students kneeling on the ground, doing lines; making them stand up with their hands in the air in the corridor; clapping the student’s face lightly with both hands to show them they are too chatty; crossing out previous stickers the student has earned on their award sheet. I’ve even seen the old-school rap on the hand with a ruler. Save the last one I’ve also considered using these methods – although so far I haven’t had to. I remind them and drill them on the classroom rules we’ve agreed upon constantly. With only one 45 minute lesson and 31 – 38 students in a class, it’s so important to make sure they’re all listening, understand and are participating in their one speaking practice class a week. The students generally respect teachers for punishing them though. I’ve heard it’s something to do with Confucianism and teachers being like parents to their students – they want their students to grow and do the best they can, so it’s their responsibility to keep students on track.
Generally, girls from Bansong Middle School are happy, quiet and shy or loud and boisterous, generally well behaved and respectful girls. I can’t tell they’re any poorer than anyone else. After all, they are in school uniform.
Please pray for them, my colleagues and I though, because some of my colleagues have to deal with the problem of the stealing of expensive items from some students. A handful of students refuse to follow guidance and continue to disrupt other students in a variety of ways. (There was a before school protest against violence amongst students before school earlier this week.) And it may be that for that handful of them, teachers are the only caring (younger than 50) adult guidance they have in their lives. I wish for teachers to not have to make them hurt to make them think about their actions and for their peers not to be scared and consider them outcasts, but to be brave and encourage them without being used or abused in the process.
I’m really looking forward to having my English classes in my English Only Zone (EOZ) from April. I can’t wait to put some new posters up and take some photos to show you. The resources there are fantastic. More to come on that later. They’ll also be sitting in teams then and class motivation and self/peer discipline should be remarkably easier then. Rob’s already got that situation right now. I have to go to their home rooms, where they sit in pairs or in single file. 31 – 38 desks!
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Today whilst exploring a new part of Busan for us, we saw students from a richer school: Busan International High School (for foreign languages) out on a field trip. Rob’s going to post photos. They learn English, and one of Chinese, Japanese or German. So we were talking with them on basic topics in English and Deutsch. Even the richer kids only speak about Elementary topics, it seems, albeit a little more fluently than most of my students – but these girls are a little older (and maybe only started learning German this year, to be fair). I mean, we were walking with these 400 or so girls for about 20 minutes to the same destination. They screamed with excitement to learn where we’re from, to hear we’ve lived in Germany and to hear that we’re married -only in Korea!!! “I envy you” said several girls after the screaming subsided. I also got told again that I have a small head (a Korean obsession) and that Rob is handsome and I am pretty. (I’m told this regularly from my girls too – they see Rob on the street after school.) We were pulled into a lot of their group photos being taken by teachers or friends, introduced to their Korean English teachers (the Native English teachers don’t work Saturdays without being paid overtime), just so they could scream when they heard their teachers and us conversing in English. It was very funny and a lot of fun. Rob and I are pleased we can show Korean kids they have the opportunity to practise English outside of their classrooms.
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