North Korean - South Korean translator app

It should surprise nobody by now that the languages spoken in North Korea and South Korea are not the same. The two countries have been geographically separated for decades, with no free communication allowed across the border between them. In addition to that, North Korea's government initiated purges of the language long ago to get rid of foreign words or borrowings (from English, Chinese, or Japanese) and replace them with pure Korean translations. As a result, while South Koreans might want to eat 아이스크림 ("ice cream", transliterated) on a hot summer day, a North Korean will dream instead of 얼음과자 ("ice snack").

When I visited North Korea last year, I found myself unable to understand much of the Korean that I heard being spoken. Of course, my Korean listening comprehension level is fairly low, but it wasn't just me -- even the Korean-Americans in my tour group who were fluent in (South) Korean had some difficulties. Most of it was due to the differences in vocabulary, but there was also the intonation of North Korean, which would have been considered a mere dialectal difference back when Korea was unified, but is now one of the markers of the two languages' divergence. (The line between "language" and "dialect" is a fairly blurry one, even for linguists.)

Anyway, when I came across this advertisement/PSA for a new app called 글동무 ("classmate"). I like the name -- the whole phrase means "classmate", which directly references the app's usefulness for North Korean students struggling to keep up in South Korean classrooms, and encourages a camaraderie among youth. Also, the first word (글) on its own means "writing" or "knowledge". The second part (동무) on its own can also mean "comrade", but I don't think that was intentional.

I have taught camps and tutored students from North Korea in South Korea before, and I can say that an app like this would be very helpful for most of them. (For others, especially younger students who basically grew up in China while their families were in hiding, it would perhaps be less useful than a Chinese-Korean dictionary, but those already exist.)

And in addition to the app's usefulness, its beautiful, simple design and hi-tech programming (it can use the phone's camera to identify unknown words automatically and offer translations immediately) are really compelling. This amazing app is the brainchild of linguists, computer programmers, and sociologists who saw a need in South Korea and came up with an elegant solution. I hope that the work I will do in the future can be as beneficial as this!

Good Words

My taekgyeon master is already a very hardworking man, but lately his schedule has veered toward slightly insane territory. Since he began working toward his doctorate in sports psychology, he's had to drive to Daegu, one and a half hours away, each week to attend classes. But now he has to complete the English language requirement, which has taken the form of a three-week long intensive English course that meets Monday through Friday. So now, every morning, he drives to Daegu, listens to a lecture he barely understands and takes notes in a language he barely knows how to write, and then returns to Changwon for the start of afternoon taekgyeon classes that run until 11pm. It's an insane schedule, and after just one week, I can already see how fatigue is taking its toll.

At 11pm each night, after my taekgyeon class, I tutor him for an hour on whatever the day's lecture covered. And I'm almost appalled by the difficulty of the content of this English class. It's a crash course on formal grammar that covers things like SVO word order, past perfect versus past participle, and the different varieties of subject complements. Today, I had to explain the six forms of the English subjunctive to him... in Korean.

I'm not surprised so many people have an aversion to English. If this is the way it's taught, if this is the English that aspiring academics are required to master before even knowing how to ask for the time, then how can we honestly expect anyone to enjoy learning a second language?

What's worse than the fact that my taekgyeon master is being forced to sit through this no-holds-barred, all-or-nothing course for three weeks is that his English level is very low to begin with. Imagine that you have a basic grasp of the American Sign Language alphabet and knew a few popular stock phrases, like "I love you" or "Thank you." Now learn the structure of ASL in three weeks in a class conducted only in ASL. There are two exams. If you don't pass them, you fail the course and can't get your doctoral degree. Capiche?

My taekgyeon master is visibly stressed and probably feels a little bit hopeless. I've realized over the past week that not only is he a complete novice at English grammar, he doesn't have a firm grasp on Korean grammar, either. I find myself explaining why a word can be both a noun and also a subject at the same time -- or at least, trying to explain in my very limited Korean. It's a struggle for both of us.

On the bright side, he's making measurable improvements. Sometimes he comes across something that he knows he's studied before, and it clicks perfectly. Also, his reading fluency is progressing nicely. It's sheer desperation that's doing it, I think.

And as for me, well, my Korean is getting lots of practice, and I'm learning useful terms for grammatical concepts, like verb infinitive (원형) or prepositional idiomatic expressions (전치사 숙어). Of course I'm glad to be helping my taekgyeon master, but it's nice for me to learn from this, as well.

At the end of our tutoring session tonight, as the clock struck midnight, my taekgyeon master sighed and expressed his concern about his first exam on Wednesday. "힘들어요," he said. "It's hard."

"Right," I replied. I then paused as I searched for the right grammatical form to use, one I'd just picked up fifteen minutes prior as we reviewed the subjunctive. "하지만, 쉽더라면 할 가치 없을텐데요?" I said. "But if it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing, would it?"

I probably made some errors in that statement. (Correct me if that's the case.) But my taekgyeon master nodded his head thoughtfully. "고마워요. 좋은 말이예요," he said. "Thanks. Those are good words."

제 생각에는, 사람이 예전에 할 가능 없다고 믿었는 것에서 성공하면 가장 좋은 성취감을 들 수가 있습니다. I think our greatest sense of achievement as human beings comes when we accomplish that which we were once certain we could not do.

Now if only all my English lessons could double as character-building lessons...

A Visit from Old Students

Always a pleasure when old students come back to visit! Now that colleges have let out for summer break, the stream of visitors has noticeably increased (seven in two days, in fact). SY, YJ, and EJ hung out today, and it was curious to see how much they'd grown up. Well, it's only been a few months since I saw them last, but college can quickly change a person, can't it? They all reported that they missed their high school friends a lot and that university-level English was very difficult. At the top schools in the country, all of the freshman year classes are conducted in English. Ridiculous, isn't it? But they seem happy and healthy, and I'm so glad we got to catch up.

Windy Hill and Camellia Island (바람의 언덕과 지심도)

Continued adventures on Geoje Island! The first half of my weekend wasn't so smooth (see previous post about transportation fails), but I had a blast spending Saturday night eating good barbecue, playing Cards Against Humanity -- the most hilarious and inappropriate card game -- and falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing on the beach.

On Sunday morning, my friends and I headed out onto the peninsula to visit Windy Hill (바람의 언덕). Supposedly it's very windy there, but I didn't feel so much as a breeze. Jeju Island is infinitely windier, that's for sure. But Windy Hill has an adorable little windmill at the top of it. Actually, it's not very little at all. But it sure is picturesque. The seven of us took photos, just like the hundreds of other tourists there, but we also turned a few heads as we filmed a few short segments for a music video we're making...

From left to right: Carly, Anna, Amy, Neal, Rachel, and another Andrew, at Windy Hill in Geoje.

After Windy Hill, we taxied up to Jangseungpo and got tickets for a ferry to go to Camellia Island (지심도). A few scenes of a recent mega-hit Korean drama called My Love from the Star (별에서 온 그데) were filmed on this island while its camellia flowers were in full bloom. Of course, my K-drama obsessed friends Amy and Anna were beyond thrilled to be setting foot on the island that Kim Soo-hyun pretended was his own alien planet.

Well, 지심도 really is quite pretty! And although the skies were threatening to rain, it was cool enough that a brisk walk along the secluded and forested paths was more refreshing than exertive. I believe that nobody actually lives on the island; some people run shops and restaurants for daily tourists, but today it seemed almost deserted. All the better for us to film some extra scenes for our music video with nobody around to accidentally walk into a beautiful backdrop!

Our small ferry to Camellia Island. Side note: there are no trash cans on the island at all! All trash must be carried down to the boat each evening to be taken back to the mainland.

Well, there isn't much else to do on 지심도 than 산책 and look at the ocean or the camellia trees (동백나무), which weren't in bloom, so after a few hours, we headed back down to the pier to wait for our boat. The round-trip fare is ₩12,000 and boats leave about every hour until around 3pm. And that's all for Camellia Island!

Fulbright friends on Camellia Island!

It was nearing 5pm by the time we returned to Jangseungpo, so I decided it was about time to head back to Changwon. After grabbing a quick snack at Lotteria (and realizing to my amusement that it was my first time eating at a Lotteria since Fulbright Orientation... way back in August 2012!), I hopped on a bus home.

To my great surprise, I ran into two students on the bus when it stopped at Tongyeong! YJ, who lives in Geoje, and HY, a first-year who lives in Tongyeong. I was very happy to see YJ, who never shies away from talking with me and also asks me really interesting questions about life in the US. "Teacher, in Korea, the curriculum at Seoul National University and Geoje University are actually the same; they use the same textbooks and the professors aren't necessary better teachers at SNU. So it's only the reputation of the school that makes a difference. Is this so in the United States?" ... What a conversation starter, huh?

When we arrived in Changwon at 7:30, the three of us took a taxi back to school. Students have to return to their dorms by Sunday evenings at 9pm. Since we had some time to kill, I invited them both to dinner. HY had already eaten, but YJ accepted, and we got chicken at the local chicken joint, cleverly named ChiKing (치킹). Fried chicken fit for royalty. I am sure that this is the place my students call when they break the school rules against ordering takeout from their dorm rooms at night.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with the trajectory of my mood this weekend. Yes, it started off kind of low, but the steady increase went exponential by Sunday evening. Treating one of my favorite students to dinner ended it on a high note. I wish I could do this every weekend!

A view of the ocean from Camellia Island.

Disce aut discede

I'm a little bit sad because I found out recently that two of my second-year students have left our school. One decided to take a year-long leave of absence, and the other dropped out entirely. According to my co-teachers, the academic pressure was too difficult for them to handle.

I wondered for a moment if there had been anything I could have done to prevent these two students from giving up. There were, of course, warning signs. The student who dropped out (henceforth S1) had always seemed overwhelmed by everything. Both of them had underperformed consistently for three semesters, and the student who took the leave of absence (S2) was clearly depressed. In his very first journal entry, he wrote that he hated this school. If I'd taken these things more seriously and spoken up, could I have kept them here?

Let's be real, though: it takes a brave student to recognize that he's not a good fit for the two-year academic boot camp that is our school. While they certainly could have used more support and encouragement, ultimately I think it's better that they knew their limits and got out before they stretched themselves beyond their ability. I'm not disappointed; I'm relieved on their behalf.

I'm also somewhat irked that I didn't learn about the situation until now. S1 hadn't come to class in about three weeks before I learned why he was gone. Actually, in his first week of absence, S2 wrote in his journal that he was worried about his classmate, S1. I wrote back, asking what the matter was and offering my well-wishes. But S2 never got that feedback, because he didn't show up to class for the following two weeks.

So this week, I asked one of my co-teachers if she knew where S1 was; I wondered aloud if he was perhaps sick. My co-teacher hesitated and then put on her quiet, serious tone. "Well, the truth is that S1 is preparing to leave the school." I was taken aback. But then another teacher overheard and chimed in: "Preparing? No, I think he has already left. He left a few weeks ago."

Three weeks, to be precise, yet nobody bothered to tell me! And nobody told my co-teacher, either. She knew his situation, but the details were hushed up. The reality is, she told me, that people tend to keep very quiet about sensitive matters like students leaving school. We don't want to risk losing face. Typical Korean channels of communication: as blocked as the roads leading into Seoul during rush hour.

I wish that I'd had the opportunity to say goodbye to my two students. I'd give them back their journals and tell them to keep writing in them, even though they won't be in my class anymore. I hope that they will rest up well in their time off and, when they're ready to study again, come back to the game even stronger than before.

Learning in Fear

"Life is going to present to you a series of transformations. And the point of education should be to transform you. To teach you how to be transformed so you can ride the waves as they come. But today, the point of education is not education. It’s accreditation. The more accreditation you have, the more money you make. That’s the instrumental logic of neoliberalism. And this instrumental logic comes wrapped in an envelope of fear. And my Ivy League, my MIT students are the same. All I feel coming off of my students is fear. That if you slip up in school, if you get one bad grade, if you make one fucking mistake, the great train of wealth will leave you behind. And that’s the logic of accreditation. If you’re at Yale, you’re in the smartest 1% in the world. […] And the brightest students in the world are learning in fear. I feel it rolling off of you in waves. But you can’t learn when you’re afraid. You cannot be transformed when you are afraid." - Author Junot Díaz, speaking at Yale

These are some incredible words! I've never read any of this man's books, but there are a few in my school's library, and I'll get to them once I've finished my applications. (One month to go!)

I want my students to know this. Their education is not (should not be) for the end goal of a stable and high-paying job. They should not be turned into numbers for national high school rankings, which are based on how many graduates go to Seoul National University. They should be learning in order to change and be changed.

수능대박!

It's that time of the year again... the Korean quasi-national holiday when schools close, streets are shut down, police escorts are on the ready, and 650,000 high school students take the college entrance exam that may determine the course of the rest of their lives. The 수능 (sooneung), or Korean SAT, was today, and this whole past week, my fellow teachers on Facebook have posted optimistic notes for their students and photos of various 수능 "celebrations": underclassmen gathering to cheer on their 선배 (seonbae), school cafeterias serving cake at lunch decorated with words of encouragement, and the like.

The phrase that seems to have become this holiday's standard greeting is, "수능대박!" (sooneung taebak) It is short for 수능 대박나세요!", which translates roughly to "Good luck/Succeed on the KSAT!", although "대박" alone can also mean "to hit the jackpot" or, in slang, "awesome".

Only a handful of my science high school students took the 수능 today: one third-year and around seven second-years. Most of them don't bother with the 수능 because they take individual entrance exams for the science universities to which they're applying. In fact, about half of them have already finished the university application process and are currently in the throes of Senioritis. In any case, I ran into one of my third-years before leaving school yesterday and, knowing that she had the fateful nine-hour exam looming ahead of her, cheered her up with a quick, "수능대박!"

So I've mostly missed the fervor that envelops most Korean high schools around this time. However, I haven't been oblivious to the way advertising has taken advantage of 수능 season. Pretty much every bakery in Korea has advertised 떡, Korean rice cakes, which are a traditional gift to test-takers because the stickiness symbolizes information sticking to their brains.

수능대박! Bakeries use the Korean SAT to advertise.

I snapped a photo of this bakery window this morning. The cute handmade poster on the left says: 다양한 합격선물로 마음을 전하세요... 수험생여러분 수능대박 나세요~! Translation: "Say how you feel with various exam-passing gifts... Dear exam-taking students, good luck on the KSAT!"

The glossy professional one on the right says: 힘내라, 힘! 11월 7일 2013 수능시험. Translation: You got this! November 7th, 2013 KSAT. It's sponsored by some association whose name at the bottom I can't decipher, but look: delicious rice cakes for your stressed-out student! Must be a dessert company.

Another, more blatant, advertisement...

 And here's one more. It reads: 젊은 그대! 한산인. D-20 수능막판스퍼트! 행사기간: 2013년 10월 17일 ~ 11월 7일. 지금은 집중력 강화와 컨디션조절이 중요한 때입니다. 한삼인이 수험생 여러분을 응원합니다... 수험생 여러분 수능 대박나세요!!

Translation: You young people! Hansamin (which I think is a brand of red ginseng drink, used as an energy supplement). D-20 (twenty-days before D-Day, the day of the exam) KSAT last-minute spurt! Promotional period: 10/17-11/7/2013. Now is the important time to reinforce your focus and regulate your condition. Hansamin is cheering on exam-taking students.

Then... blah blah blah advertising "A+ red ginseng" as a KSAT gift set, 20% off (is still 100 bucks for a box of thirty), etc. There's also a gift for your mother, to thank her for being the most supportive of (read: tyrannical regarding) your education.

The cheering way-too-old-to-be-a-high-school-student is giving the popular refrain: "Dear exam-taking students, good luck on the KSAT!"

Well, that's that. The 2013 수능 is over and now second-year students all throughout the country are going to begin their year-long prison sentence of studying 24/7 until the 2014 수능. Someone buy these poor stressed-out kids some red ginseng...

Marxism

A few things happened today that would have astounded me when I first began teaching, but after a year and a half of experience with the Korean school system, I hardly batted an eyelash.

First, my schedule changed. This was completely expected; my class schedule is adjusted several times in the beginning of the semester, and then once more towards the end of the year once most of the second-year students have been admitted to various universities. Instead of teaching each of the four second-year homeroom classes once a week, I will be teaching one section of the early-admitted students five times a week. I did the same thing last year, and it was actually quite fun. Being able to see my students every day and to build lessons upon other lessons (the way I was taught English and French in high school) was a positive change that yielded some good results. What's different this time around, though, is that there are more students who have been accepted to university, so although my section is currently about twenty-five students, it's going to continue to grow as more admissions decisions are announced. Eventually, my class will either become too large to hold in a classroom and we will move into the small auditorium, or I will have to take over two sections, which will mean five more classes per week. We'll see how that turns out.

The second thing that happened was unprecedented and slightly unwelcome, but not at all surprising. I was looking forward to teaching the third-years again after the schedule change, but it looks like I won't be doing that. Instead, however, I was informed right after lunch today that the head teacher of the third grade wanted all his students to be administered speaking tests (sort of like a short oral exam) by tomorrow. Again: he wanted all the students to take a speaking test in twenty-four hours. I haven't even been teaching the third-years all semester! What the heck was I supposed to test them on? I argued a bit with the co-teacher who relayed this message to me, protesting that the idea was absolutely ridiculous and that there was no way for me to make this fair for my students. Apparently, though, there was some deadline for grade submissions that the head teacher had to meet (and had probably forgotten about until today), so the tests had to be this week at the latest. I managed to push it back to Thursday -- the day of the 수능, by the way, which a few of my students are taking -- and then threw together an assignment and rubric to guide the students as they prepared for what I hope will be the easiest 3-minute conversation with Andrew ever. I'm so sorry to drop such a load of bricks on my students' heads, especially because I really like my third-years and it's completely unfair to do this to them... but what else can I do?

Lastly, a funny story: every student was called to the auditorium today for a hastily-announced assembly on school violence during fifth and sixth periods. Consequently, my afternoon classes were canceled. I found out, however, that there was an ulterior motive to the assembly. As our vice principal lectured for two hours about nothing, essentially, the homeroom teachers and class captains went through every student's locker and dorm room to look for prohibited items (like snacks, electronic devices, pets, etc.). The second- and third-year students totally saw it coming, but my first-years were in for an unpleasant surprise. My co-teacher confiscated a few granola bars and brought them back to his desk. I thought the whole thing was hilarious, but also just a bit unethical. What about students' rights? I suppose they're waived when they decide to enter a school with a reputation for being like a prison. (I mean that in jest!)

Ah, the vagaries of Korean education. It's funny how lightly I can take all of this when the hyper-task-oriented and inflexibly organized me from one year ago would have taken the collapse of his meticulously-planned curriculum, the delivery of one shiny new pile of extra work, and the flagrant disregard for privacy with utter alarm. On the contrary, teaching here has never ceased to entertain. This is just one of the many reasons why I love my school and my job.

P.S. The title of this post comes from class today, when I played the "Six Degrees of Separation" game with my students. They had to link two random words using semantic associations with other words, like: Roy Kim/music/iPod/Apple/fruit/Jamba Juice, connecting the singer to the smoothie. I challenged my students to come up with the most difficult words they knew, and long story short, one poor student ended up having to connect "Marxism" with "anthocyanin". Those nerds. I love them.

Good at English

JH asked me after class for "help with English". What sort of help do you need, I asked.

"Just... help."

Poor JH. Here's a good example of a student who is enthusiastic for English, has been exposed to it often and thus speaks it with fluency -- a slight British flavor to her minimal Korean accent -- who is struggling with the system because her knowledge of formal grammar isn't on par with her peers.

"Everyone thinks I'm good at English, but I'm not," she lamented. "I get low scores on tests. When you have a question to choose which answer is incorrect, my friends look at the sentence like Subject, Object, Verb, but I just try to read which one doesn't sound right."

I, for one, think her English is excellent. Most of my students can't put together an utterance the way she did without first writing it down and asking me to "check please Teacher." Even the ones who get high exam scores are often too shy or scared in class to actually say anything in English out loud. Truth be told, there is more than one way to be "good at English".

"'Good at English' and 'Good at grammar' are different," I told her. "Many native speakers -- many Americans -- speak fluently, but they still make grammar mistakes. In your case, I think that choosing an incorrect sentence based on how it sounds is not a bad method -- it's what native speakers do all the time in non-exam situations. That said," I continued, "I would only suggest it for a native speaker taking a test made by and for native speakers. You are a non-native speaker taking a test made by a non-native speaker. In this case, in order to succeed, you must know the grammar rules."

"It's so hard..."

"Yeah, it's hard, and it's unfortunate, but don't let it get you down. In college, my favorite science subject was biology." (I didn't tell her it was the only science class I took.) "It was difficult, and I was not happy about getting low grades, but I still enjoyed it. Hopefully your grade doesn't affect your feelings too much. I know this is hard, because your scores are very important for you. But I think you are just fine."

And to think I can only successfully communicate that kind of advice to a student if they're already really advanced...

JH tried to look encouraged. I told her to come to my office to ask any specific grammar questions any time she wanted. Honestly, I wasn't sure how to help her. She could bring her tests to me so I could show her what went wrong and how to fix it, but my co-teacher, the one who actually teaches the grammar class, could do the same and better. Here's the thing: I've learned after a few semesters that my role as "the native English teacher" is not to teach my students the English that they'll need to pass the English portions of the 수능 or any standardized tests, but to focus on conversational English, "useful" English, and bits and pieces of American culture. I'm also here to cheer them on every day, because English class is hard and high school is even harder and life at a science high school is the hardest of all.

In any case, I'm glad JH reached out to me first, because now I know a little bit better how I should support her and cater to her learning style. Sometimes I wonder if the most I can offer my students is a feeble "화이팅! You can do it!" as they stare down the barrel of an academic bazooka, but once in a while the opportunity to really make a difference in a student's life presents itself. I hope this is one such time!

KTX

This past weekend was one of those rare ones where you have a fantastic time yet don't dread the week to follow, because said fantastic time was had at an education conference, and you learned so much that you just can't wait to get back into your classroom and get your teaching groove on!

I'm not going to write about the KOTESOL Conference right now, though, since it's late and I need to sleep early tonight. The week that I'm really looking forward to is also going to be a very tough one -- it's bookended by conferences, one of which I need to process and write about, the other for which I need to prepare a presentation and baked goods. This ordeal begins tomorrow. And I haven't finished my Monday afternoon lesson plan. So! It's off to bed for me...

But not without some photos, at least!

Changwon Station at 6:30am. It looks grand, but Seoul Station is even grander...

The first (of many) cool things about last weekend was that I took a train in Korea for the first time. Now, Seoul's metropolitan train/subway system I'm quite familiar with, but I've never taken regional trains, such as the Mugunghwa (무궁화호), or the high-speed rail, called KTX. For the past fifteen months, it's been all buses, all the time. Buses are much cheaper than trains, and for me, the travel time difference isn't much of an issue. It takes 2.5 hours (and 52,000₩/$50) to ride the KTX from Changwon to Seoul, which is already such a long time that when I want to spend a weekend in the capital, the extra two hours that a bus ride requires is actually... negligible? That sounds ridiculous, I know, but what I mean is that the four hours I would save by taking the high-speed rail is not worth the extra $40-60 for the round trip.

Anyway, the point is that I've never taken the train before, and this seems to surprise a lot of people. The reason I got to ride the KTX this past weekend, then, was that my school's English department scored some cash to fund our registration fees (등록비) and transportation costs (교통비) for the KOTESOL Conference.

I had to wake up at 5:30am to catch my 6:50 train, and Changwon Station looked quite beautiful in the early morning light. (I have not been awake to see the sunrise in a very long time.)

When I arrived at the station, I ran into four of my first-year students. They were also taking the early morning train to Seoul! When I asked why, they explained that they were entering a national mathematics competition for which they had to use algorithms and equations to replicate a famous drawing, theirs being Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer. Right: my geniuses were going to draw a Dutch Golden Age masterpiece with math.

I chatted with the students I ran into at the train station. I hope they did well at their competition!

I enjoyed chatting with them, especially since I rarely see my students outside of school, and it was cute how excited they were to try to explain what their project was about to me with their limited English. But their seats were in a different car on the train, so I said goodbye when our train pulled up.

The last and most important thing about my KTX adventure is that I hardly remember the rest of it, since I fell asleep in those gloriously comfortable seats. I do have one complaint: not enough legroom. The seats were better than those of regular (일반) buses, but when compared to "luxury" (우등) buses, well, I actually think the luxury buses are more comfortable, because I can recline and stretch out my legs quite a bit. So even though the KTX is faster, I think in the future I'll still stick to my good ol' buses.

P.S. Another bus story: about a month ago, I ran into one of my students on the bus. As it turns out, he has been attending a hagwon (private academy) for extra science classes in Seoul every weekend since July, and the course will end in October. That's sixteen weekends in a row of the 8-hour commute for the sake of extra science classes. I was dumbfounded. Not only that, he said that he wasn't the only student who did it: one of his classmates attended the same hagwon-for-kids-whose-parents-can-afford-to-be-this-crazy, but he wasn't on the bus because he had taken the KTX. The KTX. A hundred bucks a week for the sake of extra science classes. Un-교툥비-lievable. My co-teachers and I agree that this is absolutely nuts, but that's Korean education for you, in a (forgive me) nutshell.

Reading Comprehension

The bells were quiet today because the second-years were taking a national aptitude test of some sort. My co-teacher explained that it was not a practice 수능, or Korean SAT, but something both similar and much, much worse. The reason this test is the bane of many teachers' existences is that students' scores on it affect much more than their personal academic records. The Ministry of Education compiles the scores from every school and crunches the numbers to determine which schools are succeeding and which are falling short of certain standards. This in turn directs the flow of money and other resources to schools.

What's wrong with this? In short, setting stakes on national standardized testing is good in theory but doesn't work well in practice, because not every school is the same. Not every school should even be the same. Even high schools of the same size and in the same city could have very different student demographics, and thus might have different goals for their students. Vocational high schools, for example, should not have their funding dry up because the majority of their students will perform extremely poorly on the English section of a national aptitude test. Rich students in Seoul whose parents have the resources to send them to private academies for extra tutoring are taking the same test as kids from the Korean boonies; which student actually needs more financial support?

My co-teacher also told me gravely that in the past, teachers who have protested the implementation of the national aptitude tests have been unceremoniously fired. It seems as if those who actually understand the complexities of education are not the ones in charge of how it is run, and that is a travesty.

어쨌든... Anyway, I went off on a tangent there. I actually wanted to write a short, goofy post about the 수능 itself and my random involvement.

Some of my co-teachers have an interesting side job: creating practice reading comprehension questions for the English section of the Korean SAT. The passages they write and the questions they come up with are put through a rigorous editing and selection process and end up in yet another SAT prep book for Korean students to read cover-to-cover. During a particularly hectic few weeks, I was asked to help out and write about a half dozen questions of my own. I did so warily at first, not knowing if I would regret what I'd signed up for, but as it turns out, creating the reading passages was tons of fun. I spent an entire Saturday browsing the Internet for great articles and lectures (from TED talks, journals, news sites, and more) and adapting them for the exam. I covered environmentalism, psychology, language, technology, history, and, yes, even education:

"The problem with many educational systems today is that they fail to accurately measure aptitude. We can collect all the raw data we want: hours spent in school, average scores on the college entrance examination, percentage of graduates with a certain degree. Yet to use these statistics as the only benchmark for educational achievement is a misguided notion at best and a serious flaw in the educational system at worst. One need look no further than the ever-increasing numbers of unemployed college graduates listlessly roaming the streets while potential employers wring their hands over the complete lack of skilled workers to hire. This indicates that higher test scores and better degrees don’t always translate to better jobs, better lives, or better societies. Perhaps we should consider testing our students on their ability to use what they have learned from their textbooks in a real-life situation that mimics an actual workplace. That way, we could better understand if they are __________ and ready for the world outside of the classroom." (Adapted from “Use data to build better schools”, by Andreas Schleicher, TEDTalks)

Give that passage a read and then choose the best word from five choices for the tiny blank at the very end. This is what the English section of the Korean SAT is like, and yes, it's pretty brutal. My co-teacher was impressed with the questions that I had come up with. (To think reading comprehension was always my worst section in the aptitude tests I took in high school...) He was also really grateful that I'd lightened his load a bit: he'd had a quota of fifty questions. Whew.

That notwithstanding, I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed creating these test questions. I mean, I would do it again. I think this adequately proves that I am an incorrigible nerd. Among other things, maybe.

The Guest Teacher

Hae-in and me at Yongji Lake.

I had a special treat today, and I just had to share it with my students: my friend Hae-in came to visit! Hae-in and I met at Swarthmore our freshman year; we were in the same Chinese class. She and the other Korean international students were the first South Korean nationals that I'd ever met, and they also taught me how to read the Korean alphabet, hangul. I guess you could say Hae-in was one of the first people who helped spark my interest in Korea so many years ago, so I am here now partly thanks to her influence.

Hae-in is back in Busan for summer vacation after finishing her first year of law school in the U.S. When I heard that she'd be in my neck of the woods while the Korean school year was still in session, I asked if she'd like to come visit my school and chat with my students. Although my high schoolers apply exclusively to Korean schools and don't really have plans to study abroad -- unless it's for their Ph.D. many years down the road -- I was sure that they'd find Hae-in and her story really interesting.

She came to talk to two of my third-year classes. They were quite surprised and excited about having a guest, and they were impressed that a Korean national (who wasn't an English teacher) could speak English so well. This realization also seemed to make them very shy, even when giving basic self-introductions, but they all did well. A few students in each class were actually incredibly enthused and asked question after question during our informal Q&A: What kinds of culture shock did you experience when you went to the U.S.? What do Americans know about Korea besides PSY and "Gangnam Style"? How much do American university students study? Do they party a lot? Are American universities ranked in the same way Korean universities are ranked? What do you think of the different educational systems? Can you tell us about Andrew's past?

Although Hae-in's experience was in economics and law, and my students study nothing but math and science, they connected well over the fact that their high school education was similarly rigorous and competitive. But I'm glad that Hae-in also strove to give my students the message that rather than study all the time simply for the sake of getting into the best college, they should find what their passion is -- what makes them excited to get up in the morning? -- and focus on that. We've all been blessed with an excellent education; my students have such overwhelming privilege already and they're essentially guaranteed academic success. With this in mind, why worry so much about your next test? Take the time instead to build relationships that will last. Do some extracurricular activities that you enjoy; they'll give you the added benefit of a more well-rounded application. And relax.

These are all things that I want to tell my students, but since they heard it from the mouth of a fellow Korean, I'm hoping that it'll stick better, even though it was in English. After each class, I'm sure my students left feeling encouraged.

Also, they were so cute when they talked to her, calling her "Hae-in Teacher" and generally giving off airs of awe or confusion or both. My co-teachers were excited to have her around, as well.

After school, Hae-in and I hung out at Yongji Lake, where the roses are in full bloom and the ducks and fish are lazing around as if it's already summer. We caught up on old times and then had 닭갈비 for dinner. It was such a wonderful day. 고마워요, 해인 티처!

Kvetch First, Ask Questions Later (Then Answer Said Questions, Then Do Something)

As I work for the Korean-American Educational Commission and am about to... air some grievances, in a sense, I'd like to remind my dear readers that: "This blog reflects my own experiences and viewpoints and should not be mistaken for an official Fulbright blog."

Toward the end of last semester, I began to feel like I had become the sounding board for my English co-teachers to voice all their woes about the Korean educational system and this country in general. At our twice-weekly teatime, which was officially a teachers' conversation class, we might have started with an interesting article to discuss, but the conversation always inevitably derailed into a discussion of politics, education, and societal issues. Well, actually, there was usually less discussion and more... allow-us-to-explain-why-everything-is-All-Wrong.

Some of those sore areas included the extremely rigid gender roles in Korean society and how women were expected to take care of childcare and all household duties, as well as remain in the kitchen all day during traditional holidays like Chuseok; the drawbacks of high-stakes testing, which cause high amounts of stress for all students, especially those who don't do well in an academic setting but must suffer through it anyway; the obliviousness of the government as far as how to properly manage its schools, as they reward well-performing schools financially when the money should actually go toward aid for the failing ones; not to mention the corruption of the government, in that its associations with administrative offices and educational boards rests securely on a network of money. My co-teachers especially had a bone to pick with the hyper-conservative superintendent of our province's educational department, who was apparently a substandard English teacher himself but now gets to dictate what is "best" for hundreds of schools. Whew.

I should probably give a concrete example lest you think I'm just parroting complaints sans evidence. My co-teachers confided in me their suspicions that some kind of shady deals were going on at a Certain Secret High School (name withheld) when its principal asked its English department to purchase a specific publisher's textbooks for the English classes. Now, both the principal and the teachers knew that the English teachers create their own teaching material. They don't directly use any textbooks, so their purchase is literally a formality and a way to use the school's budget. Hence, it didn't matter what publisher was chosen; maybe the one that created the best quality book or one with a good reputation.

That's why it raised some red flags when this principal strongly suggested -- or basically commanded -- his choice of English textbook. Who exactly would benefit from their sale, we wondered as we sipped our tea.

Another bit of dirty laundry aired during teatime was the pitiable state of teachers' unions in the country. The teachers' union, such a strong and belligerent presence in the United States, was in fact not legal in Korea until no more than two decades ago. During the dictatorship-like presidency of Park Chung-hee, teachers were commonly fired for belonging to unions and had no public support. My co-teacher believes that the previous generation of teachers made great sacrifices in order for unions to exist today, yet bemoans how union chapter meetings these days don't do much more than get together once a month for a 회식 (hweshik) and a long, Misery Poker-esque kvetch sesh. It's easy to list the myriad of problems with their professional field, but the impetus to actually do something about it has shriveled up sometime in the past twenty years.

Anyway.

I'm writing all of this now mostly because I've been trying to clear out the cluttered mess of drafts on this blog (there are some snippets of posts I started months ago but have never finished...). But in addition to that, yesterday, during this semester's iteration of the English teachers' conversation class, we brought up the subject of education again. And this time, everything was surprisingly very pleasant and personally satisfying. I'd say that in the past few weeks, there has been considerably less lamentation over our tea. (That in itself is neutral to me; contrary to what you might think from what I've already written, I enjoyed being the confidant and continue to hold a great interest in what seem to be the inner workings of the system in which I'm just another cog.)

So yesterday, in lieu of discussing an article, the English teachers watched Sir Ken Robinson's lecture on changing educational paradigms, which was brilliantly animated by RSA and which I will now share with you all:

Now wasn't that enlightening and quite inspiring? (Ten million views in two-and-a-half years... while PSY can rack up twenty-five times that amount in two-and-a-half weeks with a video that highlights the hilariousness of male chauvinism. Ugh.)

After watching the video, my co-teachers and I had a lengthy and spirited discussion about education in both Korea and the United States. I think that the way we shared what we knew about our own systems instead of just focusing on All of the Problems in Korea was a nice change. I think Robinson's ideas apply to both countries, anyway. (Actually, they probably apply everywhere except in the utopian Scandinavian countries.) We had a nice, long think about what we thought contributed to the problem and, more importantly, what we could do as teachers with not much power (I don't even have TEFL certification or belong to a union or anything) to motivate and encourage our students within the confines of this brutal education factory.

I decided that I am going to hammer into my students the idea that a test score, good or bad, does not determine their value as a human, and that there are others ways to be smart and/or successful outside of the path they're currently stuck to. I will also continue to try to make my classroom a bit different from the norm: less emphasis on knowing answers, and more on how to knowing how to get answers, or correct wrong answers, or see multiple answers. Maybe I alone can't change the educational paradigms, but at least I know I'm going to do a lot more than just kvetch.

Thoughts?

Fulbright Spring Conference 2013

This entire past week, I have barely had the time to process all the information thrown at us during Spring Conference. It was a lot to digest, and there was such a huge variety of lectures, workshops, and presentations, that it was hard to keep track of it all. Fortunately, I took notes! They started off as doodles, but as soon as I started jotting down points and ideas that interested me, I must confess I reverted straight back into student mode and started mad scribbling. Before I knew it, I had a page of fascinating information, provocative questions, and great new ideas for my classroom. I'll share just some tidbits:

Why is Korea "Real Life"?

Program Director Anthony Cho encouraged all of us teachers, especially the first-year grantees, to rid ourselves of the notion that our grant year was just a "break" between college and so-called real life (i.e. grad school or a job back in the US). Even if our stint in Korea is just a gap year, we shouldn't treat it as if it doesn't matter in the long run. Why not? Because our impact on our students is real and will have real consequences. Because we are discovering and will discover new and important things about ourselves while we're here that we will surely bring home with us, even if we don't pursue careers in education. Because, unfortunately, we're only young for so long, and to discount twelve months of our lives as merely "some time I spent dicking around in Korea" would be simply absurd. It may not seem like it, but what we as teachers are spending one year doing is real -- just as real as the lives of our friends who are already in med school or climbing up the corporate ladder -- and very, very important.

What are some strengths of the Fulbright ETA Program?

During a segment of the conference that was meant both to pat us teachers on the back and to prod us into reevaluating our successes as teachers and cultural ambassadors, the program director and executive assistant revealed that they had sent an assessment survey to our schools. The results of this survey were shared, albeit only in anonymous statistics, to our collective amusement and a bit of surprise. Fortunately, we ETAs earned fairly good grades all around: 85% of us received A's in class preparedness, and 86% received A's in "observing Korean courtesies". It seemed like the biggest strengths were that Fulbright teachers actively engaged their students, were well-prepared, taught quality lessons that catered to student needs, and were very polite and well-mannered. On the other hand, weaknesses included insufficient classroom management, insufficient cooperation with our co-teachers, and insufficient hours spent at school (which, factoring in our contract, is not actually our fault at all; but if a school doesn't like that Fulbrighters get three full months of vacation a year, they can take it to Mrs. Shim).

What are some new things I'd like to incorporate into my classroom?

Great teachers steal. I caught and held on to dozens of great ideas tossed around during conference, including, but not limited, to: encouraging art in my students, but not limiting this to drawing on scrap paper (make a video! write poetry!); playing games that emphasize speaking with emotion, not just speaking correctly; having students encourage one another in the classroom, as in applauding correct answers and learning encouraging phrases ("Good idea!", "Great job!"); and allowing more time for any activity, since it always feels longer for the teacher than it does for the students. I was also very charmed by the idea of considering one's fellow classmates as "learning allies", instead of as competitors, obstacles, or nameless, faceless Others. During the small group session for LGBTQ folk and allies, one common grievance aired was the inability to bring up queer issues in class in a constructive and educational manner. On the bright side, we shared some ideas on how to incorporate respect for sexual diversity in lessons such as family, dating culture, or current events.

How can US education and Korean English education learn from each other and improve?

These notes were taken from a long and thorough workshop session on education. Now, I have never taken a course in Education, and the only experience I can claim is a month of job training and six months of teaching, but I'd like to offer what I can.

Korea has the lowest illiteracy rate in the world, and its overall educational quality, according to the Pearson index, is ranked second in the world, after Finland. 98% of Korean students graduate high school, supported (or pushed) by their families and societal pressure. A huge proportion of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree -- 98% of those in the 25-34 age bracket, according to a 2010 OECD report -- although many people are underemployed in an economy that can't support the ever-rising number of college graduates. Generally speaking, the stats are good, right? But Koreans students are among the world's unhappiest, and they have an alarmingly high suicide rate. Suicide is the leading cause of death of Koreans aged 10-19 (in fact, it's the leading cause of death of all Koreans up to age 40), and the infamously stressful academic environment does not help this.

With regard to this, I believe that the Korean education system needs to step up its game in mental health support and treatment at schools. If mental illness becomes less stigmatized, students with suicide potential will be able to freely get help. Also, there are lots of ways to keep students succeeding without being locked into a rigorous, constant-testing method of education. Especially for EFL education, the absolute dependency on test scores instead of any sort of holistic evaluation is misguided. To get into college or obtain any government job, you need to pass some sort of English aptitude test -- even if you won't use English at all in the post. Those who test well in English will often find more success than those who don't (even if their speaking skill is really quite good). I feel like the stakes are too high for arbitrary numbers to have so much sway over one's future!

While I love teaching English and I love my job, I feel like I could be more effective as a teacher if I taught leveled classes. That is to say, instead of teaching homeroom classes in which a handful of students are conversationally fluent, another handful don't understand me when I say, "How was your weekend?", and the rest are scattered somewhere in between, I would prefer a smaller class for the most advanced students, another class specifically for those who are behind, etc. Foreign language education in the US is leveled in this way with no exceptions; it helps every student learn at their own pace instead of being swept along beyond their ability to understand or feeling trapped and bored in a class that's too easy.

Another change I might implement to the classroom is to simply make classes smaller and meet them more often. Most of us Fulbright teachers only see one class once a week; sometimes only once every other week. This doesn't add up to enough opportunities to actually use English! I use every minute I can outside of class to chat with my students in English so that they can practice, but it would be awesome if I could just have more class time with them.

On the other hand, we have the mess that is the American education system, which I think could also take a few pointers from its Korean counterpart. One thing's for sure: American students and parents need to respect teachers and schools much more. While helicopter parents -- those who not only hover over their children but also descend upon schools to (verbally) attack teachers for failing them -- are on the rise in Korea, it's nothing compared to the levels of crazy you can find in the States. And students in Korea treat even their classrooms and hallways with respect, cleaning them weekly. They contribute so much to their own educational environment. I can't imagine American students keeping their campus clean unless it provided them with service learning hours.

Also, I believe that the US should implement higher standards for its teachers, as well as a better environment for them. Teachers are very highly regarded in Korea, and this is due in part to the difficult and intense process of becoming one. Education programs in the US don't always give fledgling teachers enough classroom experience before throwing them out of the nest, so to speak. Then, when they arrive at their schools, they find paltry institutional support, ridiculous demands from the administration, and not enough resources to invest properly in their students. (This op-ed by Randy Turner in the Huffpost illustrates expresses appropriate frustration at the current situation.) This is all to say nothing of the thousands of simply crappy teachers out there. I think teaching should be elevated in the US. Teachers ought to have the same respect and reputation of all those doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs, and in turn the quality of the teachers our education programs churn out must also improve. It'll take a while to get there from our current situation, but it can happen.

Doodle-notes from Spring Conference! (Click to enlarge)

Whew. That was a lot to write. If you're interested in more, I've posted a scan of my doodle-notes from the ETA portion of the conference. I have another whole page for the Fulbright researchers' portion of the conference, which I will post tomorrow. And, of course, I'd love to continue discussing any of these ideas. Feel free to leave a comment!

The Graduation Situation

CSHS' 1st graduating class! Congratulations!

Yesterday I escaped from -16°C Seoul to visit sunny Changwon. Well, Changwon was sunny, but it was still cold. The reason for my visit was twofold: 1) to visit my homestay, give them gifts and grab some extra clothes, and 2) to attend Changwon Science High School's graduation ceremony (졸업식/jeoleopshik).

As a reminder to my readers unfamiliar with the Korean education system, the school year begins in March and ends in December. Graduation, however, usually occurs in February, before the new year. Since I've been absent from my school for the past month and a half due to Fulbright winter vacation, I really wanted to go back and visit. Furthermore, my school is so new that this graduation ceremony was actually its first ever. Some of my second-year students whom I taught last fall were among CSHS's first graduating class, and I wanted to be there for this special occasion.

"Second-year?" you might ask. "Aren't Korean secondary schools three years long?" Yes, that is true: Normal middle and high schools are three years long. However, my school is caught up in the recent trend for specialized science high schools to put students on a fast track through an intense science and math curriculum that only takes two years (and does not include the 수능). It's increasingly becoming the norm that these students will apply to universities during their second year and even be accepted. In fact, science high schools are now evaluated by how many students they can get accepted into university early.

CSHS's first graduating class numbers 56. That's fifty-six second-year students who were accepted into college early. They're leaving behind 33 of their peers who were not accepted and must remain in high school to complete their third year.

This is all that I knew going into the ceremony, which began at 10:00am in my school's auditorium. I didn't know what else to expect, so, per my usual attitude, I just went in expecting nothing.

The first thing I really took note of was the group of students sitting in the front and center, fifty-six students dressed in maroon caps and gowns, and it made me do a double take. I fully realized then that this was a graduation ceremony: I wasn't here just to see my students, but to see them finally take that huge step out of high school and into the world beyond. Eleven years of extremely intense education and thousands of hours of studying and research projects was culminating in this. When I saw my students in their graduation garb, I was amazed. That, plus their new hairstyles and, for some, their new double-eyelids (thanks to plastic surgery), made them all look so grown-up.

Then, I greeted the other teachers, all of whom were pretty excited to see me. After all, I hadn't been on campus for almost two months. The small commotion caught the attention of the students, who were sitting ahead of us, and there was lots of head-turning and whispering: "Oh! Andrew Teacher is here!"

Finally, the ceremony started. The vice principal gave a speech explaining the (short) history of the school, the students' names were read, and they went up to get their diploma. This was followed by individual prizes and then maybe half a dozen more speeches, given by our school principal and a bunch of representatives from the various prestigious universities to which the students had been accepted. During these speeches, I obviously couldn't understand anything, so the gym teacher, next to whom I was sitting, tried whispering into my ear what was going on, but he didn't get very far, as English is not his forte. He then leaned over and whisper-asked me what "graduation situations" were like in the US. There were two things that struck me as being very different from a typical American high school graduation.

The first was that it was very calm and quiet for the entire hour. At my high school graduation, friends and family brought air horns, pots and pans, and posters and screamed in appreciation when their graduate's name was called and they walked across the stage. Here, there was merely polite applause. It was almost boring. I was later told by my co-teacher that many Korean high schools also had more boisterous (even violent, sometimes) graduation ceremonies and that CSHS was an outlier in its placidity.

The second thing that I had to wrap my head around was the heavy emphasis on college throughout the whole event. The graduation program didn't include a list of the graduates' names, only a table of statistics on how many students the school had and how many had been accepted into university. There was also a table that detailed how many graduates were going to which of the top research institutions in the country: Seoul National University (one), Yonsei University (three), Ewha (three), KAIST (nineteen), Postech (four or five), GIST (two), UNIST (two or three), and more. Then there were all the speeches. Every prestigious university offered congratulatory remarks, some gave awards, and no one could refrain from mentioning how wonderful and impressive it was for these students to have been so successful in the college application process.

All I could think about was how much that sucked for the thirty-three third-year students-to-be. Essentially, they were being subjected to a celebration of their peers' achievements and a reminder of their own "failure" at the same time.

There were, however, some touching moments. One representative from the first-year class, JP, gave a speech (which I didn't understand, but it elicited laughs from the audience from time to time) about his 선배들 (seonbaedeul/upperclassmen), and one of the graduates, YS, also gave a few words. At the end, there was a short slideshow video (set to Vitamin C's "Graduation Song", obviously) that gave everyone the feel-good vibes. But on the whole, this high school graduation was overwhelmingly... formal and stiff. It was ceremonial in the blander sense of the word.

Until the ceremony ended, however. Then, the picture-taking began, and everyone got their smartphones out to snap away nonstop. (This only added to the crazy number of cameras and video cameras already in the auditorium courtesy of local news agencies who were here to cover this important occasion. Yes, the first 졸업식 for this city's first specialized high school is totally newsworthy!)

Eventually, my students caught sight of me and dragged me into a bunch of photos. Quite a few of them were rather emotional, and all they could get out in English was, "Teacher, I miss you! Take a picture? I will really miss you!" And I am going to miss them all, too. My college prep students! Finally going off to college! It's such a grand milestone, and I am very gratified for having been able to witness it and share in it partly with them.

"Congratulations!" I said to every student I saw. "How do you feel right now?"

"So happy," said JY, who was in tears. He couldn't say anything else, but simply gave me a big hug.

"I'm... I'm... I'm sorry, Teacher," said YG. "I can't speak English well. I feel confused; I am happy and sad."

"Good," said WJ. "This is just commencement. It's the start of something new."

The End of the World

And by "world" I really mean the fall semester. Yup, today was my last day of school! Unfortunately, for my students, it's not their last day. They still have one more week.

Actually, it seems like it's just a series of unfortunate events for my students. I had previously arranged to have a "last class" for the second-year students who are entering university next spring, but it was canceled on me at the last minute, because they needed to review their exams and finalize semester grades. But despite final exams being over, they still need to study! Students going to university need to study to prepare for university-level science courses, and the students who are still going to be here for the next school year are already preparing for it. They hardly even get a break. Yes, Christmas day means no classes, but they have classes on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday next week, and I can almost guarantee that they won't be "party" classes like mine have been this past week. Not only that, but because my students live on campus, the single day off doesn't warrant any of them going home. Yes, most of my students will be at school on Christmas Day, with nothing to do besides study. When the semester ends next week, they have one week of break, and come January, academic "winter camps" begin. I'm going to be traipsing around California, Taiwan, and Seoul for two months while my students study. Dang, their lives kind of suck.

Okay, but my role is not to emptily pity them, but to encourage and teach them as much as I can. Now that the semester is over, I really wonder how effective a teacher I was this semester. When I get home, I need to do some major reflection and assessment. But now is not the time. I actually meant to make this post about class parties today, but I got sidetracked by my students' abominable holiday situation. I'm totally serious. When I asked my students, half-facetiously, what they wanted for Christmas, 50% of them answered, "I want to go home for Christmas," "I want to see my family for Christmas," and variations thereof. Help! What can save them from their misery? I tried bomb games (worked like a charm), movies (Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special, a very lucky find), Christmas music videos (the best of which I'll post below), and food! And I guess some of it worked.

I've been keeping track of participation points all semester, and the 1st-year and 2nd-year classes with the most points earned a small Christmas party, which meant cookies, Nutella, hot chocolate, and candy. I think I definitely earned points of my own in their eyes as a result (hehe). After class 2-4 (very likely my favorite class) had their party, a small group of them decided to skive off their afternoon self-study and we hung out in the English classroom, watching more Christmas music videos and making snowflakes. It was terrific fun. It's little moments like this that I really enjoy as a teacher, mostly because they are so incredibly rare at my school. The students are just too busy. Yet I still feel like I've gotten to know most of them pretty well, at least enough so that they chose mindless crafting over their familiar routines for a short, rainy afternoon. I'll miss them a lot when they go off to university and I never see them again.

Some of my class 2-4, making snowflakes. They're holding up "4" to represent their class.

And now... Christmas music on YouTube! Here are some of my classes' favorites:

Jason Mraz - "Winter Wonderland". Everyone in Korea loves Jason Mraz, it seems.


Jimmy Fallon, Mariah Carey, and The Roots - "All I Want for Christmas is You". This is super-cute.


Lady Antebellum - "A Holly Jolly Christmas". I used this cute video to teach my students about mistletoe!


Pentatonix - "Angels We Have Heard on High". Seriously, Pentatonix, STOP BEING SO PERFECT thanks


Kina Grannis and Joseph Vincent - "The Christmas Song". Gotta include my love for independent Asian YouTube artists! I showed them Kina Grannis, Joseph Vincent (both looking and sounding spectacular above), David Choi, Clara Chung, Cathy Nguyen, AJ Rafael, and Gabe Bondoc.

Then, ever mindful of cultural exchange, one of my students wanted to show me a duo of Korean musical artists called "J Rabbit" who created this adorable thing:


Well, December 21st is almost over here in Korea, and the world is still very much here! I'm very glad, too, for had it ended today, I would ever have been able to go home for Christmas and I would also never see my students for another semester! You see, winter break has just begun, but I'm already looking forward to coming back next year.

College-bound

There are at least two sides to every situation.

My college prep kids. My poor college prep kids. They are suffering from an intense collective Senioritis. They don't have to study anymore, and even though they have final exams next week, their grades no longer matter, so they're not trying. And unfortunately, this week, all of the second-year students had their speaking tests: three-minute speeches on their opinion on one of a number of social, political, or philosophical issues. When I administered the speaking tests for the first-years, I basically held their hands through the entire month we spent perfecting the drafts before the dreaded test day. With the second-years, I was less of a "helicopter teacher", because I figured they didn't need as much guidance.

As it turns out, dozens of students failed to memorize their speeches and instead read sheepishly from their scripts, still riddled with grammatical mistakes, in front of the entire class, with only the slightest hint of remorse. These students all got terrible scores. Even worse, three students didn't even prepare anything at all. They got zeros. It hurt me to give one out the first time, but by the third, I was so over it.

I become pretty upset at one of my two college prep classes after one too many students started their speech with, "I'm sorry, Teacher, I didn't remember [memorize] my speech." I made it very clear that I was disappointed in them and that I expected the rest of the speeches (later on in the week) to be better.

Two students from this class came to me personally to apologize and explain the situation. One claimed that the college-bound students wanted to help out their peers who will move on to the third grade by doing poorly on their tests, the idea being that the two third-year-bound classes would get relatively better scores.

No, kids, that's not how it works. If you don't prepare for your test, the only person it affects is you. You're only shooting yourself in the foot, and nobody else will benefit from it, because I don't curve. I told YG, who was very sweet in her attempt to justify her classmates' mindset, that I knew the grades didn't matter, but that the inevitable low scores weren't what bothered me. What bothered me was their attitude, the irresponsible notion that when the goal (college) has been met and the stakes (grades) no longer exist, effort can also just be tossed out the window with no repercussions. It's the transgression of resting on one's laurels -- well-earned, but, well, they're being worn on the wrong end.

I thought I made it so easy for them to do well. I gave them an outline and twenty topics to choose from. I told them I'd correct a hundred additional drafts if they gave me a hundred additional drafts, but only a handful of students took advantage of my office hours, and many didn't write a single draft at all. Remember that my college prep students have no classes besides English and haven't had anything to do besides self-study for the past three weeks. But their work ethic has simply vanished. And they're sleeping in class. And it's discouraging.

But... But!

But on the other hand, as I've realized, these lamentable students are, in fact, the students who are going to college. And that, my friends, is awesome! They have slaved away in the grueling high-test-scores machine that is the Korean Educational System for their entire lives, and now, finally, they're free (basically). I'm very happy for them.

I'd have to say that it really hit me today, when I realized two things: depending on my schedule, which has changed about every other week for the past six weeks, today may have been the last time I see my graduating second-years. And they are really not high schoolers anymore; they're college students. College students. Heck, I was a college student six months ago. This is ridiculous.

I saw WJ after lunch today in a hallway by the lockers. She was jumping up and down, looking like she'd just won a Golden Ticket. It turns out that she had just found out that she had been accepted off the waitlist into Ewha Womans University (not a typo) for their biology program. Score! Up until today, WJ thought that she was going to have to go into her third year of high school, another poor "leftover" student that everyone involved in Korean secondary science education seems to pity. But now, she gets to graduate and go to Seoul.

Upon hearing WJ's wonderful news, I gave her many high-fives. What I really wanted to do was give her a huge, congratulatory bear hug, but I don't think that it would have been appropriate. I just wanted to express how incredibly happy I was for her. I'm so happy for and proud of my students -- all of them, but especially the ones who have been accepted into college early -- and I almost forgive them for having lost their work ethic completely in my class and driving me nuts.

I tried to make it up to the college prep class I had scolded earlier in the week by teaching them a lighthearted lesson about Senioritis after they had finished their speech tests today. I am happy to report that they understood the concept instantly and that they laughed when I told them that when I was in high school, I also suffered from acute Senioritis. (AP Calculus was a hot mess.) Then, we watched YouTube videos on the theme of Christmas and mistletoe.

Yet there are still more sides to this. I remember telling WJ, "I'm really happy for you! But this means that I will not teach you next year, or ever again." I can say without reservation that WJ is one of my favorite students. (She works hard and it shows: her essay was probably the best in her class of nearly ninety.) Many of my favorite students -- the friendly, inspiring, and hardworking ones -- are the ones who are leaving. Cue the big sigh...

This afternoon, I ran into another student, MC, and made him stop to talk to me.

"What's up?" I asked.
"So-so," he replied.
"What's wrong," I asked.
"Oh, uh... it's garbage day..." (In an instant I remembered that this is the student that I embarrassed a few weeks ago when I misheard his heavily-accented English as Korean during a game.) "... My friend is cleaning."

I thought for a moment. Right, today is cleaning day, when the entire student body is split up into groups and assigned different classrooms and areas of the school to sweep and tidy up. In addition, I had also seen some second-year students cleaning out their lockers. And then I made the connection: the students who have been accepted into university are cleaning their lockers of all their books and work from the past two years. A lot of it will be taken home. The rest will be gal-bi-ji: thrown away or perhaps given to the underclassmen. They're cleaning things out because their time at Changwon Science High School is very nearly over.

"Your friend is going to university, then?" I asked.
"Yes," MC replied. MC is not in my college-prep class.
"Well, you can be happy for him! Are you sad?" I asked.
"A little," he replied.

Hey, buddy... me too. 섭섭해...

More Drafts

I had to deal with a case of cheating today. Fortunately, it went as smoothly as I could have hoped for! Here's what went down:

My students are writing reports on their scientific research (Research and Education project, or R&E) that they must present in an oral exam styled after speech-giving. We've been working on this for the past five weeks, actually: the result of my seeing each class only once a week, plus the massive amounts of free work time I gave them, because I wanted these speeches to be as perfect as possible. Well, I shouldn't have been surprised that some students still had very little to work with after a month, and accordingly, some of the speeches have been horrendous. Others have been absolutely perfect, which brings me joy.

But one student in particular, who will remain anonymous, showed essentially no effort. He handed in a first draft that was just a few sentences, and didn't bother to hand in a second draft. Two weeks later, he had his speech test, and stumbled through it, not really having memorized whatever was on his paper. And it was when he turned in this paper, the third and final draft, that I noticed something was up.

The final draft the student handed me was written in nearly impeccable English and I instantly suspected (more like knew) that the student had not written it. Or if he had, then he had to have written it in Korean and had someone else translate it. What I read simply could not have been produced by this student, a hunch I confirmed when I asked my co-teacher, and she said that this student normally had extremely low scores in her class.

We briefly discussed what we should do, and we knew we had to confront this directly. My co-teacher said, "You know, if this makes you uncomfortable, just know that it makes me uncomfortable, too." There are two things I'm sure you all know by now: grades in the Korean education system are the Most Important Thing, and parents can be insane. In extreme cases, the opprobrium a student caught cheating for good grades faces is nothing compared to the scandal churned up by the parents against the school, as if teachers are somehow responsible for students who have to resort to such measures.

In any case, we called in the suspected student, and I asked him to sit down and tried to deal with the problem as professionally as possible. I showed him his paper and asked him, "Is this your final draft?"

He knew what was up immediately. He said, "Yes, but... someone helped me to write it. But, I-"

I interrupted him. "Who helped you write it?" I asked, fearing that it might have been another student.

"My father," he replied. His face was completely expressionless, but there must have been a lot going on behind it. "He is a teacher at hagwon."

"Well, your father has very good English," I said, relieved, "but this is not good. I want you to write another speech, by yourself. And you will give your speech again, next week. Do you understand?"

He understood. In fact, he told me that he had already begun to write another speech. I let him go, and when the door closed behind him, my co-teacher (who had been in the room, watching and listening) chuckled. She said he looked so cute when he confessed. We were both glad that it didn't turn into anything uglier. I mean, part of me really wants to call up the student's father and chew him out for what he did, but I'm going to let it slide. He's going to be punished enough by the points deduction; in fact, both of them are being punished by this, in a sense. And this way, I was able to give him a second chance.

- - -

So, just because they fit thematically, and because I'll never get around to posting them otherwise, here are some choice excerpts from my students' first drafts. They're funny. (And they've all improved dramatically since.) Enjoy.

#1: First, make a box
There are so many surface structures such as honey comb, lotus leaf, etc... and it's very useful in many ways. In order to research about this, we made some surface structure by chemical experiment. We'll test many things. Materials: Many types of polymers, water. Method: First, make a box in which we will do experiment [...]

#2: We meet propessal (professor)
Title: "beams go down and Tables go down with Glass" -- we start our R&E since September. We already study force's blance. I will explain go down, beams, go down is [Korean] beams is [Korean] our R&E which search go down table with glass we studied material physics to reaseach and we meet propessal. We don't finish experiment. so we don't have data. Our R&E find out Glass and table is go down when our R&E finish, the table which have glass on elastic is not important

#3: We've released a lot of chlorine when junior tied the goat (The Google Translate Essay)
Title: "English Speech Drart1" -- The angle at which the subject of my math R&E traces of the endpoint of the segment under study for a change. In this study, we've released a lot of chlorine when junior tied the goat comes from the problem of saving the trace to move. Moons of the planets also orbiting around the planet and at the same time orbiting around the Sun when I was wondering about what draws the traces. Research first, computer programs to obtain a graph satisfies the condition. [...] Three ways to save a relationship with us through trillion, depending on the ratio of the segments of the expression cos values yielded different anchor points increases, the coefficient in front of the cos value has changed.

#4: Last but not least, the one that was handed in to me entirely in Korean.

I don't know, A for Affort, I guess?