My coworker, who liaisons with the financial office, has yet to confirm or assuage my fears about my two years worth of severance pay.  My contract with SMOE is also unclear about when I will receive the severance pay. My coworker says that I’ve received the pay after I’ve finished every contract year, and I say (and I’m paraphrasing) “Bullshit.”  I’m of course worried that I’m irresponsible enough to be wrong, and that a couple of thousand dollars has disappeared under my delinquent observation. I attacked Mrs. Kwan today with more questions, hopefully thinking that the problem was the language barrier.  She apologized for the confusion, for which I don’t hold her accountable, and she asked me to not worry.  I replied, “Oh I’m definitely going to worry.” That surprised her.  But Monday – Monday is to be the day when the necessary staff will be in the office and can answer my questions.  Cross your fingers for me.

My departure date is getting closer now; I have just two more months in Seoul.  I am not amped up and nervous like I was in the summer when I thought I was going to leave in August. I’m pleased, all in all.

My English camp classes are going well. The kids are great, and the teacher training provided by my district last month, surprises of surprises, was actually helpful. I feel like a much more competent teacher than I did during my last summer English camp.

In the summer my life just wasn’t very grand.

Oh yeah, and happy new year.

Related Articles

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Gosh gee golly, I have been one tired lady all week.  On Monday night a few mosquitos got into my room.  Where they came from beats me.  Uncharacteristically there hasn’t been a single mosquito in my room all summer, so why they decided to show their horrible little selves on one of the first cool weeks of the fall is beyond me.  Korean mosquitos have a bit of a temper. Their bite hurts much more than their passive relatives in North Carolina, so I lost half of my sleep that night tossing and turning and scratching and slapping.  I’ve had a sleep deficit all week.

At work we were preparing for Wednesday’s Halloween party. It was an after-school event, and I only had to have one party. Some of my friends had to have Halloween parties each period of their classes.  Exhausting for them!  We played Halloween music (Thriller, some tracks from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and spooky noises), and provided the students with an array of masks, hats and headbands with which they could dress themselves. Only three students brought their own costumes.  Then we herded them into a circle, had them sit down and turned off the lights.  I had a flashlight under my chin. I told them about my dear, dead friend Sam. When Sam was alive he loved to share his food and his money, but now that he’s dead he has another gift. (They, of course, didn’t really understand any of this.) Then we offered them the opportunity to feel Sam’s “gifts” and guess which body part they were.  Ramen noodles for brains, spam for his liver, two skinned grapes for his eyes, a peeled tomato for his heart and, my personal favorite, vermicelli rice paper for his skin.  They were enjoying being grossed out and I walked around the circle with the flashlight under my face making stupid faces at them.  Afterwards we broke a pinata that was left over from my summer camp and which I decorated for the occasion. That was also a success.

While I could see that the students were having a good time, I am never satisfied with the Halloween party. Why? When I first started working at this middle school there was another foreign English teacher who had worked there for a year.  Her name is Jennifer. Jennifer had seven years of teaching experience from back in the states and was a drama major. Those are some big shoes to fill.  She even persuaded the students to dress up for Halloween.  There was a very excellent Joker, some vampires and some princesses.  I don’t have the same work ethic or ability to inspire kids.  She was definitely talented.  She was even my teacher, in a way.  She helped me through the first awkward months without an ounce of judgement showing.  She was also an outspoken Libertarian. I haven’t heard from her since I told her about applying to the Peace Corps.

My friend Phil has been back in Seoul for a vacation.  Last Friday he took me to my first casino.  He’s apparently quite a fan of casinos, black jack in particular.  It was lovely to see him, and he waxed philosophical about life and gambling and the mutability of success and failure, all the while with a self-deprecating grin on his face.   I lost 40,000 won and on the taxi ride back to my neighborhood I had to ask the taxi driver to pull over.  That was a first for me, which should be regarded as phenomenal given the amount of imbibing I’ve done in this city.  They’re incredibly gracious about that kind of thing here.  He gave me some napkins and smoked a cigarette while I did what nature intends one to do after many long island iced teas.

But alas, Molly will leave Seoul this coming Wednesday. We had what may be our final Friday night romp, which naturally ended at a noraebang. Looks like I’ll have to join a gym.  Come back to me soon Molly so I won’t have to fill my time with such mundane things!

And now, some photographic evidence:

Ms. Molly and me

Nice frames you got there, Molls

Silly face

Pig snouts for sale. For the adventurous diner.

Fancy that. After a night of drinks we end up at a noraebang.

Self-deprecation!

Sing it, lady.

No doubt I am singing Desperado. Oh don't you want to go to a noraebang with me?

Some of my middle school girls at the Halloween party. I love the face the girl is making on the far left.

School Halloween party

Pinata time

When you teach in the Seoul public school system you will always have a co-teacher in the classroom with you.  That’s a Korean English teacher.  They run the gamet.  You may have a teacher who is unable to control their own classroom, let alone assist you while you are teaching, who struggles with English, the language in which you communicate, and spends your entire lesson with their backside in a chair.  Or you may have an experienced, delightful co-worker whose control of the students make them a joy to teach and the teacher a joy to teach with.  I’m lucky because I have mostly had excellent co-teachers who I’ve learned (am learning) a lot from.

But I have had to also learn to control my anger toward the impotent teachers.  I am not saying I have mastered that yet.  When a teacher fails to control the students the brief time I have with them and spend reprimanding them is frustrating and probably ineffectual.  When I am calling for everyone to wake up, pay attention, and the Korean English teacher’s mouth is agape and does not follow my lead, I get pissed.  When, from across the room, she watches me try to quiet chattering students who are right in front of her and she doesn’t contribute and pointedly looks the other way, I get super pissed.  Limp fools!  Where is your backbone? Where is your sense of duty?  Tee hee, duty.

One of my favorite English teachers is also one of the teachers who I’ve had problems with in the classroom.  Poor thing.  She seems totally beat this semester.   Our first class this Monday was a low level boys class.  All of her classes are low level, no wonder she looks unhappier.  There are three or four boys who muck it up for the rest of the kids.  I can’t teach until these handful of boys sit down and shut up, and I don’t think anything but an act of God could do that.  I see the bored faces of the potentially good students and feel bad for them all.  Well, the ringleader of the annoying boys lit some paper on fire in the classroom while I was teaching.  Then his pal turned on a fan on the wall to disperse the smell of smoke and the ringleader tossed the singed paper out of the window.

At least this isn’t the US.  It would be so much worse.

The ban on corporeal punishment, which was to begin in October, already seems to be wildly failing.  The older, male gym teacher in my office still regularly whacks the boys with a stick.  Not to say that I don’t see the benefit to myself if I was allowed to wail on the little fucks who won’t shut up and who light fires in the back of the classroom.  Stress relief!

My friend Amanda who has taught in Korea and in the US told me that yes, it is much worse in the US.  Especially because they can talk back to you.  Maybe there are some benefits to speaking a language most of your students can’t understand.  She also said that the favorite topic of the teachers at her school is the kind of mood lifting drugs each takes to deal with the stress.  Damn.

It’s fun to talk about the outrageous stuff that happens at my school, but mostly my students are really good kids that I really enjoy interacting with.  And I really enjoy my job.  Also, to people unfamiliar with corporeal punishment, it seems like the halls would be filled with wailing and fear, but that isn’t how it is at all. My objection to it is that it legitimizes a kind of violence that I think is bad for a society and for individuals, and also that it isn’t an effectual form of punishment.  Teenagers value their time way more, and if you took that from them it would be a much better punishment I think.

Autumn is nice! I was so worked up about the approaching winter that I distracted myself from fall’s comforts.  The temperature is mild and it’s sunny and dry.  And the foliage is still green.  It’s only blushing with a little red and yellow.  It’s chilly enough to even get me to drink my first hot coffee in ages.  I’m a cold coffee kinda gal.

Last weekend I, as usual, spent a hefty sum on some books.  Just this afternoon I finished The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  Blarg. It’s a cloying parable.  It’s some super cheese.  Follow your heart, God gives you omens on how to fulfill your dreams, everything happens because that’s God’s will.  Just sickly full of quotable, uplifting things about life and God.  Lots of capitalized, flouncy nouns like Language of the World and Personal Legend and, I mean, just not the kind of thing for an atheist, would-be story telling snob.  Anyone want to read it? I’ll give you my copy with pleasure. And not just sarcastic pleasure.  I hadn’t heard of the author before a few months ago.  My co-worker Ms. Choi was reading it in the summer and we talked about a place name from the novel (though now I am not sure why she wanted to know where the city of Santiago was – to which I replied, I am sure there are a lot of cities with that name – because though the author is Brazilian, the book took place in Spain and Africa, and the main character’s name was Santiago and he didn’t go off and found his own city or anything.) After talking with Ms. Choi about the book I started to notice other people reading him, and a lot of his books on display.  Anyway, screw you, Paulo.  You want people to think there is only one person in the world they can love? I know it’s a popular sentiment, but how depressing.  Sounds like the kind of thinking about the world I’d expect from people with their head in the sand.  Yeah.

I need another novel to cleanse my pallet.  (I should probably stop eating my books, huh?)

Actually, before that I read I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.  Hmm.  I am Charlotte Simmons is pretty much the opposite of The Alchemist in every way.  In Wolfe’s novel your personal goals are shitty and make you become a shitty person.  Plus it was a study of people’s pyschology and the culture of a certain kind of collegiate.  And the writing was good.  And, in the end, romantic relationships don’t save you, they further the girl’s journey in becoming an image-obsessed social climber.

At work I’m testing all eleven of my third grade classes.  It’s a lot of paperwork.  Our Halloween party was scheduled for tomorrow, and thank goodness they moved the day because this lady is not prepared.  My English teachers were really generous with our budget and bought me a really nice Halloween costume.  What will I be wearing?  I’ll be wearing a hanbok.  That’s traditional Korean women’s garb.  Isn’t that thoughtful of them?  Yes, yes it is.

I have an ear infection. This afternoon Shin Minyoung went with me to a nearby clinic so I could get antibiotics.  They stuck things deep into my ear which tickled and hurt too.  Afterwards they sat me in a chair in the lobby and before I knew it the nurse has thrust two things that look like blow driers over my ears.  I had to hold them there.  It felt as ridiculous as it sounds.

Photos!

This ginkgo tree at my school turned yellow before most trees even got a hint of it.

Look-they stare at me all of the time. So I can photograph them doing laundry or washing veggies.

On the train going over the Han River

I'm a millionaire. In won. (Hey Kristi, do these bills look familiar?)

Unhappy Campers

Teaching the English summer camp is more tedious this time around.  There are seventeen students, and many of them don’t understand me.  I feel so awful that they don’t understand me.  How alienating for them!  Their lack of comprehension isn’t doing any wonders on my personal appraisal of my teaching ability either.

Ms. Choi has been lamenting the students’ obvious boredom with the reading material I’ve given them.  I agree!  They are bored, and four of them are totally lost.  I thought it appropriate to reminded her that I wanted to choose a comic book (pictures are enlightening and engaging for ESL learners) or a small novel which had annotations in Korean.  I was overruled, however.

I still miss the elementary school kids.  They were such a sunny spot in these English camps.

The pinatas we’ve been making haven’t suffered any disaster so far, like the balloon popping prematurely or someone knocking one off of the table.  Unless a student decides to brutalize theirs before they’ve been decorated I think we’re in the clear.

I’ve been spending my ample free time after camp doing nothing of use.  (Oh, only a month ago I was dying for direction and ready to pursue something.  And what now?  I’ve been watching all of the Joseph Gordon-Levitt movies that I can.  Mysterious Skin was awesome.  Watch it.)  Consuming is much easier than creating anything of my own, but I know which one would be more engaging and fulfilling.

I’ll have my summer vacation in a week a half.  I don’t know if it will be possible to go to Shanghai.  I’ll need to renew my Korean visa, which probably won’t give me time to get a Chinese visa.

Comfort Zone lets me down and an NSET’s educated (though not formally educated in education) opinion on education

Comfort Zone, a restaurant in Hyewha, is one of my regular weekend haunts.  It has an appealing atmosphere, a  staff who speak English, and western style food that, if not quite the best around, is at least quite inexpensive and significantly closer to my neighborhood than Itaewon.  I’ve never said a word against it, but this is the second weekend in a row that there credit and debit card machine hasn’t worked.  How a business can go nine days without fixing something as integral to their pocket books, I don’t know.  They’re chill and have just added it to a tab for me because I didn’t have cash.  I’ve worked my fair share of service industry jobs back in the US, and a malfunctioning credit card machine is fixed in hours at best, within 24 hours at worst. Your boss wants to kill you (even though you are blameless for the fickleness of technology) and the customers want to kill you too, just because you’re the messenger.  Just another case of the rampant incompetence I see in this country.  (Disclaimer: I don’t hold anyone personally responsible for it all.  As much as I gripe about these things in my daily life and in my work life, I work with several extremely competent and amazing English teachers.)  Take away: I like this place.  Fix your damn machine.  They are new to modernity and all of the systems that come with it, a fact which I was more apt to remember when I thought I would be able to join the Peace Corps.  I was even pissing in the squattors with relish.  Look how adaptable I am!  Ah well.

The students take their all important final exams starting Thursday.  (This exam is the only grade that matters.  It’s especially important for my 3rd grade students who will be applying to high schools soon.)  I don’t have a lesson plan for Monday and it’s Sunday night.  Boy I’ve been here before.  On Tuesday and Wednesday I have to continue the speaking tests, so I wasn’t motivated to bust my balls making a useful review for the students.  I asked Ms. Choi about the material they would be tested on which we’ve covered in my class.  There are two questions.  Two.  I’d mentioned to the impeccably dressed and forever nervous Mrs. Kwan that I would produce a review for our classes, but with Ms. Choi’s information looks like a review shan’t happen.

Elizabeth has referenced something on her beautifully designed journal implying that I shouldn’t disdain the Korean educational system for passing students no matter what their grades because grades don’t motivate students.  I emphatically disagree, though I can only draw on my experience in one Korean public middle school and my own experiences as a student.  Here is the quote she snagged from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :

The student, with no hard feelings on anybody’s part, would have flunked himself out. Good! This is what should have happened. A large amount of money and effort had been saved and there would be no stigma of failure and ruin to haunt him the rest of his life. No bridges had been burned.

A rebuttal: Firstly, this is way out of context so I’m not terribly sure to what age of student they are referring to.  Moving on. Grades are not arbitrary.  Ideally they should be a reflection of what one has learned but also, and probably even more, the effort and responsibility one puts into the assignment.  (I’ve been on both sides of this fence.  I’ve been a student with good grades and with bad grades.  It was never about my intelligence but about my work ethic.)  Work ethic is something you have to teach.  You have to teach organization and responsibility, because those are life skills too.  Ahem, even I could use a few refresher courses about organization.  Besides, a grade in itself can also be a reward, because at best it is positive reinforcement.  If a student’s grades are low, that should be a sign to their parents, their teachers and themselves that they have to alter their habits to keep up and actually get something like an education while they are at school.

You are doing a student a disservice by promoting them into higher grades when they can’t perform decently at their current grade.  They haven’t learned responsibility or the material which will be built upon by the higher grades.  It’s ensuring that students who are behind or get away with being remarkably lazy will continue to do so, or be unable to get their work together.

If a student isn’t motivated by the material, does that mean there isn’t value in learning it?  Of course not.  Emphatically of course not.  There are things to be learned in material we don’t find interesting because we aren’t omniscient beings and don’t know what can move us.  Maintaining a narrow world view is nothing to be proud of.  Plus one can learn things from a teacher or a material that one didn’t expect.  That’s true for everything in life, so there.  It’s also good to learn to attempt to understand and care for things which one doesn’t have an immediate passion for.

Failing is failing is failing, grade or not.  There are things I’ve failed at when a grade has never been possible, and it feels like crushing failure.  A bridge has been burned.  In work life and personal life those failures can be more monumental to overcome because unlike school,  you may not be given an extension.  A friendship, for instance, doesn’t have summer courses.  Education will give people many many many extra chances.

I do agree that motivated students would be motivated if there weren’t many grades or many reviews.  But educational systems don’t get to pick and choose.  They can’t, nor should they, only take the brightest and most motivated students.

I’ve said it before, there may be a thousand flaws in school systems, but god damn I believe in education.  It’s a beautiful thing for an individual mind, and it’s essential for a nation’s development.

The Dreaded Lesson Six: Pot Calling the Kettle Sexist

The final lesson I’m responsible for from the text book this semester is Lesson 6: Men and Women in the English Language.  In this lesson, the text book wags a disapproving finger at English speakers for the sexism imbedded in our language.  The first time I cracked the text book to this chapter, there was much protesting and disbelief.

The texts give examples of this sexism in the English language.   Like how the meaning of men’s and women’s names define what is expected of each gender.  Men have names related to strength and dominance, while women’s names are all airy fairy and docile.  (Incidentally, my name means strength.  It comes from the Scottish word “brae,” which means hill.  Okay, my name is derived from a men’s name.  Whatever.)  Anyway, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that this isn’t probably true.

The text book also says that gendered words are coupled in English with the masculine word leading.  Like “brother and sister,” “king and queen,” “dick and cunt.” You get the picture.   While simultaneously pointing out the English speaking world’s sexism, the textbook has role plays where kids get to discuss if women should have safe jobs, if their are jobs only men can do, etc etc.  The core listening material for this chapter has one male speaker asserting that yes, there are jobs women can’t do.

These criticisms are pretty rich coming from Korea.  (According to a map I saw on a TEDtalks episode, Korea is ranked with the countries who have the highest incidence of slavery.)  Slavery and sexism are pretty related.  Women and children usually are the main targets of slavery.

(PS: Go here to read more about sexual slavery in South Korea.  The target of the slave trade is the sex industry, and predominantly women and children.)

There is fodder for criticism of the English speaking world’s attitude toward women.  But pointing to the language and not the current society is misleading because language can show you the history, but that isn’t an intelligent analysis of the current culture.

There may be something else going on here, something a bit more sordid.  I get the feeling that they are pointing out these things in the English language to prop up the idea that yes, women shouldn’t have these jobs, and yes, women should be bright sparkling angel flowers of domesticity.

Whatever their point is, though, I’m aghast.  Let it be noted.

I love my ESL job, I hate my ESL job

The job has been really busy recently.  I have to do a butt load of preparation for the morning English broadcast-so much so that I should be paid overtime for this work.  (My contract requires me to teach 22 hours a week.  Anything above that is time and a half, anything below has to be made up with extra curricular activities. I have three different weekly schedules.  During Week B and C I work 22 hours, but  during Week A I work 21 hours.  Therefore I need to do some extra work that meets this 1/3 of a class I don’t teach.) But this morning English broadcast work is too much-this should count toward overtime pay.  I really feel like I’m getting fucked.  I have to find a relevant article, rewrite that article so my Korean counterparts can understand it, make a script for myself and a student to read on air (they’re bat shit crazy if they think I’m going to practice and memorize this crap), prepare a powerpoint with pictures, and choose two words or phrases to teach them that will appear on their writing test in their English classes.  And they’re trying to pressure me to practice the morning broadcast before we do it.  Once again, they’re bat shit crazy if they think I’m going to do that without being paid for this work.  The Korean English teachers overhauled the broadcast- it’s different from last year.  It’s always been fairly informal.  They had a meeting about this broadcast while I had a class to teach.  When I found out about it I protested.  But they went ahead and had the meeting without me!  I’m the one responsible for the damn thing, and they have a meeting that I can’t attend to discuss it and have my opinions considered.  Fuck yeah I feel fucked.

I mentioned before that my extra after school class isn’t paying me the proper overtime.  I found out last week that if I’m to get supplies for the kids it has to come out of my pocket.  No budget!  Today we made (on my dime) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  The kids liked it (and I love giving them a break.  These kids are in school 12 hours a day.  Jesus.)  My class wasn’t advertised to the students like it should have been-someone somewhere neglected to do something so I’m losing money on the whole thing.

I do love teaching.  I fucking do.  I love the people I work with.  Even the ones that drive me a bit nuts sometimes, I love them too.  I want to join the Peace Corps and volunteer and teach someplace where I might be lucky to find crayons for the students.  But here, in Seoul, I signed up for a paying job, and I’d like to get paid for the work I do thank you very much.   And I fucking insist, impotent as my insistence seems to be, on being included in decisions about my work.

Third grade has leveled classes.  The highest level is A, the lowest level is called C, but we might as call it F for FuckifIcanteachthem.  These are kids that need to learn the alphabet, or go to military school for a semester, or both.  Having a teacher who does not speak their language teach an entire class-I might as well herd cats.  It’s pissing into the god damned wind.  They don’t understand anything I’m saying.  It’s god damned bad for them.  It throws them in deep water.  It discourages them from learning English.   A native speaker should be for kids of a higher level who can benefit.  Instead of having me teach these low level third graders the second graders (whom I don’t have any classes with – and don’t mind too much because they are always the worst students) anyway, these second graders who are A level should have classes with me instead.  It is hands down the best use of me as a teacher.  The only reason I teach these lowest level classes is because the parents would think its unfair if their kids didn’t see me.  As if you can learn a language through osmosis.  Touch me and speak!  And then this goes back to being an objectified foreigner-always on display.  Somedays I get it and am culturally sensitive, and other days I’d like to pluck their eyeballs out and I lash out at the teacher who once again is photographing me and my classes and no, I’ve asked, the other teachers aren’t photographed.  Look at our school!  We have a foreigner here!  Wow.  Maybe the constant photography and display are for reports they send to another organization (say the one that funds the foreign teacher program)- but it’s hard to get a straight answer when the woman I’m asking doesn’t have the strongest grasp of the English language.

I love teaching, but fuck.  Fuck.  I’ve tried to address some of these complaints several times to my English teachers, but I’m shit at it.  I have two buttons- on and off.  I’m either bellicose (dubiously, not exactly directed at them personally) or I squelch it and put on a happy face, no, not just a happy face, I am happy.  I vow that I can work a little bit harder and then see who is really at fault.  My Korean English teachers, afterall and sadly, always do a shit ton of work.  It is pretty touchy to complain to them about my work.  See, Americans and Koreans have very different ideas here.   I’m trying to learn diplomacy and better tactics.  I’m a would be artist!  How do I have a rational discussion?  I failed logic in university.