Back from Bangladesh
There’s been a lot happening lately. To summarize quickly:
- Regular classes ended the middle of July. After that, I taught two weeks of half-day “camps”. The first week was for students. The second was for general (non-English) teachers and people from the community. Both weeks were much easier than I’d expected.
- The first week of August, Erin and I taught classes at a teacher-certification course in Gangneung. Our topic was “Listening and Speaking Activities”. We didn’t really know what that mean, and neither did our students. It went alright, but was surprisingly stressful. We were well-paid, however. The extra money from this week completely paid for our trip to Bangladesh
- We went to Bangladesh! This was a hell of a trip. We were only there for nine days, to attend a friend’s wedding. It was quite an experience. I won’t go into details now, but look for a longer update (with pictures) tomorrow.
Our time here is winding down quickly, and we’ve got lots to do. Packages must get shipped home, paperwork must be filled out, the apartment needs to be cleaned, and eventually we’ll have packing to do. We’ve also got one more week of teaching, and some additional grad school work to accomplish before we leave.
We’re both pretty excited for the next step.
Why it’s OK to sleep through my classes
I’m feeling a bit upset about the education system in Korea right now. Midterms are coming up, and it seems to bring out the worst in everything.
In case you’ve forgotten, I teach English to first and second-grade students at a boys middle school. This is equivalent to seventh and eighth grade in the U.S. My students are 13 and 14 years old in western ages.
Next week they will have three days of testing, during which they will take examinations consisting primarily of multiple-choice questions. This is a big deal, even for my first-graders. In Korea, high school is competitive. Everyone knows the ranking of the various high schools, and poor scores in middle school can mean attending a vocational high school. This makes it very difficult to attend a decent university, and mostly relegates one to a blue-collar job.
Obviously, this creates a lot of pressure for middle-school students. As I mentioned before, my kids are in school from 8:30am to 4:30pm. After school, most of the students attend private academies called hagwons. It’s pretty common for my students to study at academies until 10:00 or 11:00pm. With the upcoming exams, however, parents are pushing the kids even harder. Yesterday I was told that many of my students are tired, because they have been at hagwons until 12:00 or 1:00am.
12:00 or 1:00am! These kids are 13 years old! I just don’t get it. What kind of parent allows their 13 year-old kid to stay out that late on a school night, let alone forces them to do so? As you can imagine, the kids are exhausted. They fall asleep in class, and I really don’t care to wake them. When they are awake, they’re bouncing off the walls, which is equally excusable. If I had 16 hours of structured work every day, I’d be going crazy too.
I’m painting the system with a pretty broad brush, which probably isn’t right. Not every parent does this, and not everyone agrees with it. In fact, I’d say that most of the adults think it’s pretty sad, but you’ve got to keep up with the Joneses (or perhaps the Kims). Nobody wants to limit their children’s opportunities, which I completely understand.
But they are limiting their kids’ opportunities. One complaint I’ve heard from some teachers is that the emphasis is entirely on preparing kids for good jobs, which means good grades, good test scores, and a good school. But skill at regurgitating facts onto scantron forms does not equal a good worker. In my (limited) experience, the best co-workers have creativity and problem-solving skills. They know how to manage time and communicate effectively in the workplace. They know how to focus and perform when deadlines approach, but they also know how to relax when it’s necessary. In summary, true success in the workplace depends on a set of interpersonal and organizational skills that aren’t always taught in school.
Unstructured play time teaches kids how to interact without following a strict hierarchy. Real-world experience teaches common sense and problem-solving. Spending time alone helps you process things independently. The sheer volume of the academic workload here is really unfortunate. I want to tell my kids to go ride a bike; when the chain breaks, you’ll learn something real. Go climb fences, take apart your computer, start a crappy garage band. Hell, just sit in your room and read a book. No, it might not get you into a better high school. But it probably will make you a better (and happier) person, and when you enter the workforce, you’ll have a lot more to offer.
Thus ends my rant for the day.
Dinner meetings
We’re back from Thailand. It was a great trip, and I have tons of pictures and lots to talk about. Look for updates soon. Also, we had a great time in Korea with my parents. Again, pictures and updates to come.
I hate to rant on my first post back, but there’s something I have to get off my chest. I hate dinner meetings.
Here’s the background: We got back to Gangneung on Friday and had to go to school on Monday. No classes, so we’re sitting at our desks and planning. We’re told sometime in the morning that we have a dinner meeting for the teachers that are moving to new schools. As far as I can gather, this happens about every semester. Teachers have to go to a new school at least every five years, to avoid stagnation and corruption, I guess.
Dinner meetings are pretty common; we have them for all sorts of reasons. This is maybe the 6th or 7th such meeting that we’ve had thus far. Here’s the scenario: Erin and I catch a cab to the beach. We sit down in a big room with all of the teachers from school, maybe 50 total. There’s no formal order to seating, but all the women sit on one side, and the men on the other. (Side note #1: the male teachers at school speak very little English and tend to ignore me.) I have the option of sitting awkwardly with the men, or sitting awkwardly with the women. I opt for the women, because I can sit with Erin, and because they speak English. I side as close too the men’s table as possible though. Regardless, this seems to be some sort of testosterone-related faux pas. Nobody wants to talk to me.
Side dishes come, then raw fish. (Side note #2: I can’t stand raw fish.) At some point, soju is brought out. The drinking begins. The men start drinking heavily, or at least pretending to. Same with the women. They pour water into shot glasses if they don’t want to drink soju. After a few drinks, both the women and the men are getting red-faced and giggly. I’m sitting awkwardly at a table.
A few more drinks, and the third course is served. Some kind of fish soup. Soju is still flowing. At this point, I get flagged over to a different table, where Erin is pounding beers with some of the younger female teachers. I join in, because company is nice. We have a couple drinks, but my head really isn’t in it.
Then the real fun starts. My co-teacher is one of the older male teachers, and seems to be the de-facto MC. He stands up and starts asking teachers to sing. Last time this happened, Erin and I got called up and performed a horrendous rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” for the teachers that were leaving. Thankfully, we were not called on. It should be noted that I have a terrible voice. I’d prefer not to demonstrate that fact publicly. I’m also not much of a drinker. Even if I were, no amount of rot-gut soju could make public singing a comfortable experience. NOT being called up was the best part of the evening.
After 20 or 30 minutes of singing, the group decides to move on…to a norebang. This translates to “singing room.” You guessed it…more singing! (A norebang is a building full of little rooms with screens and kareokee machines. Drinks and food are often served. It’s part of Korean culture that I do not understand at all.) At this point, Erin and I made our excuses and left with another teacher. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to be TOO much of a big deal.
As I’ve made clear, I really hate these meetings. It was better last semester, because one of the temp English teachers was a male who spoke excellent English. He made the whole situation a lot easier. It’s frustrating for me, because I’m pretty sure that if I drank a half-gallon of soju and generally acted foolish, I’d fit in much better. I’m certainly not saying that every teacher does this, but plenty do, and it drinking is a pretty big part of male bonding in Korea. It’s just really not my style.
Enough of my whining. We were able to escape the meeting after 2 and a half hours, which isn’t too bad. At least we avoided the norebang.
Snow Day!
It finally snowed in Gangneung. It started to rain on Sunday afternoon, and by early Sunday evening, it had turned over to wet, slushy snow. By Monday morning, we had maybe 18 inches of nice fluffy powder. Beautiful.
Our co-teacher called and said that classes were canceled. Teachers still needed to come in, however. We tromped to school where we found the other teachers shoveling out the parking lot and the roads that lead to it. Erin and I grabbed shovels and got to work. After maybe 45 minutes, the principal showed up and sent Erin back inside. (“Women shoveling? Unheard of.”) I kept at it for another 45 minutes. It was a lot of fun, actually. Most of the teachers were in pretty good spirits, myself included.
After the shoveling was finished, they set up tables outside the front door and served kimchi, tofu, and malaki (a sweet rice wine). Once that was finished, we had soup and more makali in the science lab. Then we sat at our desks for an hour and went home at noon. I can say with great certainty that this was the best work day ever.
Check out the pictures:
Edit — Erin has most of these photos, along with some others, posted here.
The completely finished newspaper
The last version of the school newspaper that I posted (here) required a few changes. In addition to the missing photo and a couple typos, the school requested some alterations. First, the article about school violence was cut. Honestly, I expected this would happen. It talked about a tragic incident at a nearby school, in which one student accidentally killed another. I gently suggested that the author of the story choose another topic, but he wanted to write about this one. I figured I’d go along with it. I thought it was a story that actually mattered to the kids, and I’d back it until the administration said otherwise.
Because I no longer have the newspaper class, and the kids are busy with exams, I wrote a brief story about the school festival to fill the hole. I hated to cut the kid’s story, and I certainly don’t need to practice my English, but there wasn’t much I could do.
The second correction involved the soccer team story. Evidently, the new team, Gangwon FC, held their draft in December. Because of this, the information in the article was out of date. Again, I can’t really get a re-write from the kids, so I ended up re-writing one paragraph and making a few other changes to the article. It’s not really something I was comfortable doing, but the school wanted things changed ASAP. My co-teacher seemed fine with me doing the writing.
I emailed both students to explain the changes. I know it’s like a small thing, but it’s their work, and changing it doesn’t seem ethical to me. I suppose I should learn from my own lessons. I taught the kids that one of the first steps in writing should be identifying the audience. You have to be sure that what you write is suitable to the given audience. The class decided that the audience for the newspaper was teachers, students and parents, but that’s not really true. The newspaper is a bragging point for the teachers and administration. More than anything, the goal is advertisement for the school and the people who run it. As such, the stories must reflect positively on the school. Unfortunately, this means that accurate information and “appropriate” content are more important than demonstrating the honest (but sometimes flawed) work of the students.
But ignore my cynicism. I’m still fairly proud of the final copy, and it was (generally) a fun project.
The (almost) finished newspaper
Well, I promised I’d post the school newspaper, and here it is. This isn’t quite a final draft. I need to add one more picture, and I’m sure there will be some fussy little details to edit. If you see any glaring mistakes, let me know. (But keep in mind that these were written in just a few hours by Korean middle-school students.)
If you missed my previous post about the school newspaper, you can read it here.
Almost finished with a frustrating project
One of my tasks as a native English teacher has been continuing the English newspaper class started by my predecessor. This has been a fairly frustrating project from the start. On my very first day, I was shown a two-page printed newspaper, and told that I had to edit some things before it could be published. I had to find the file on the hard drive, replace a photo, and make some minor tweaks to the layout. I’d never used Microsoft Publisher before, and couldn’t read the Korean menus, but I’m fairly tech-savvy and managed to get it sorted out.
Then the real fun began. I was told that I would teach a small class 3 days a week, with no co-teacher. The end result of this class should be another issue of the newspaper. The rest was up to me. Along the way, I was given several other assignments. For the first few days, we prepared a script for a skit contest, which was later cancelled. We spent several days in October making decorations for the classroom (because a comittee was coming to inspect the school). In between these projects, I focused on newspaper-related topics. We learned about formal and informal English, the use of statistics, and the writing style expected in a newspaper. This ended up being one of my favorite classes. I was a little unsure of myself, but the kids were hard-working and spoke excellent English. They made things easy.
About half-way through October, we picked topics for the newspaper, and began to work on stories. At this point, I was assuming this was a regularly-scheduled class, and would continue until final exams (the first week in December). I was wrong.
The third week of October, I was told that my class would conclude Oct. 31st. I would then have November/December to assemble the paper and get it printed. This left me only 6 class periods to actually finish the articles. I had planned for 12-18 classes. I recruited Erin to help me work with the kids, and we got busy. In the end, my students did some fairly impressive work. I had 9 stories (1 from each kid). Topics included the local English contest, a new soccer team in the province, the Large Hadron Collider, and the sub-prime mortage crisis. Given the timeframe, it was very impressive.
On the very last day of the class, our co-teacher asked me what topics the students wrote about. I explained that they chose a variety of stories; some were school-related, others dealt with local, national, or international issues. I was told that it is a school newspaper, and as such, it should be about the school. I didn’t say anything at this point, and it hasn’t come up since. The kids did fine work, and the school should be proud of it.
In the last couple weeks, I have typed the articles that were hand-written and fixed typos and minor errors. I contacted the students to approve any changes. I got the text into Publisher, and spent a few hours adjusting the layout. I found a couple photos to use (under Creative Commons licenses, of course). It’s been a surprisingly time-consuming project, but it’s almost done. I’m waiting on a couple photos, and then I’ll need to make some final tweaks to the layout. I was convinced that the end result would be pretty crappy, but I think it looks OK. Next semester will be better, but I’m proud of it. I promise I’ll post a PDF when everything is finished.
Even if the students got nothing out of it, the entire class has been educational for me. I’m starting to realize how difficult it is to plan a cohesive series of lessons. Coming up with ideas that are interesting, useful, and build towards a final product is a hell of a challenge. It’s also been a real eye-opener to learn how time-consuming a small project can be. I’ve certainly got a new respect for good teachers. Effective lessons are rarely easy to execute, and teaching energetic students while meeting the expectations of supervisors is a frustrating and sometimes impossible task.
I guess that’s why I’m making the big bucks…
A plug for holyshitkorea.com
I know most of the people who read my site also read Erin’s, but I thought I’d link to her most recent post anyways. She’s written an excellent post about the way classrooms are used in Korea. For those that don’t know, each class has it’s own room, and the teachers move to different classrooms throughout the day. It seems like a fairly insignificant difference, but Erin and I both think it’s a source of much larger problems.
You can read her post here: Some unsolicited advice…
Small victories
I’m learning to be pleased with the small improvements I see in my students. When we first arrived, our students already knew the question “How are you?” When asked, they would demonstrate their excellent memorization skills and rattle off: “Finethankyouandyou?” The shy kids would simply answer “fine”.
After more than 2 months of teaching, about 50% of my students will respond with something other than fine. Some are good, some are so-so (they love that expression), some are bad. A few are even terrible or great. It makes my introduction/greeting slightly less boring.
On a related note, Erin’s efforts are also paying off. When we started, the students already knew “nice to meet you” (nicetomeetyou). They said it every time they saw us. I’ve “met” some of my students hundreds of times. Erin has gone to great lengths to remedy this, and her students have mastered the more-appropriate “nice to see you” (nicetoseeyou).
I suppose that counts for something, right?
Thoughts on the Korean educational system
After a few weeks of teaching here, I’ve noticed some interesting things about the school and the educational system. My experience is limited to one middle school in a rural province, but these observations seem to hold true in other places, according to other teachers.
Korean students work hard.
Our kids are in school by 8:30am. Most of them have classes until 4:30pm. After school, they go home for dinner. Most of them spend the evenings at private academies, learning English, math, science, or music. If you’re on the streets between 9pm and 11pm, there are kids everywhere returning home, still in their school uniforms. They live and breathe school.
This is less than ideal, in my opinion. Erin’s co-teacher has kids, and says that they have no time to learn anything but school. They can’t cook, they don’t work part-time jobs, and they hardly see their family during the week. Hell, a lot of the kids are at academies during the weekend, too. I might be seeing things from an overly American perspective, but in my opinion, it’s hard to call that a childhood.
On the positive side, they take school seriously. Middle school boys are a handful no matter where they’re from, but I can’t help thinking that these kids get a lot more out of school than I ever did.
Grades/test scores matter, and they matter young.
In Korea, high schools are competitive. You don’t simply go to the school in your district. To be admitted to a well-ranked high school, you need good grades and test scores. I think they typically take an entrance examination as well. This means that young kids are seriously worried about their grades. The kids at my school are 14, 15, and 16 years old. (In Western ages, they would be 13, 14, and 15.) Even the 13-year-old kids take midterms that can determine their future. Poor grades in middle school, and you end up at a vocational school. It keeps them focused, but I imagine it’s rough on the late-bloomers.
Rote memorization is still the norm.
This is something that everyone says about Korean education. It’s important to note that I haven’t seen many classes, and this is a pretty broad generalization. However, I think it’s often true, especially with older teachers. Our co-teachers often stress group call-and-repeat exercises, rather than individual efforts. The kids have memorized responses to typical phrases, but often don’t understand them. It’s interesting to see.
As I said, this is often considered a common attribute of Korean education. In my opinion, this is overstated. I certainly can’t say that US middle school and high school stresses critical thinking. Even at university, it was often clear that students learned to fill in the blanks, rather than think. But overstated or not, education here is often a rote processes. I think this is due in part to the emphasis on good test scores. These kids test amazingly well, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate real learning.
Corporal punishment is still common.
Yes, some of the teachers hit the kids. I’d even say that a lot of teachers hit the kids. This one is changing quickly. I’ve heard that it’s illegal in Korea now. I’ve even heard that in the bigger cities, it’s not tolerated. Parents will complain or sue. In Gangneung, especially with older teachers, it happens. Usually it’s a token sort of punishment, a quick rap to get their attention. Sometimes it’s a bit more. I’ve seen a few teachers really smack the kids hard.
I have mixed feelings. I’m sure the educational purists are dead set against it. I’m sure there are other disciplinary measures that work as well or better. But here, it seems to be part of the culture. The kids obviously don’t like it, but they don’t seem traumatized. It seems to be commonly understood that it might happen if you really screw up. After it happens, they’re generally very well-behaved, and even good-natured about it. They don’t seem to hold it against the teacher at all.
As I said, it’s changing rapidly. The younger teachers don’t do it, and the kids know that it isn’t really accepted. If I had to venture a prediction, I’d say that this will completely disappear in the next 10 years.
Things really aren’t that different.
All-in-all, I’ve been more impressed by the similarities than the differences. Boys are boys, no matter where you go, and teachers seem to have a similar outlook. There’s the same sense of community (maybe commiseration) in the teacher’s lounge. Just like teachers back home, there’s always food being shared.
The more places I go, the more they all look the same.
