Student Profile: Lina and Anna

I haven't done one of these in a while, and as the end of my contract draws near I realize there's so many students I haven't talked about!

Lina and Anna go together because they are sisters. Because of the similarity of their English names, and Korean naming conventions, I assumed they were the rare case where the English name more or less resembles the Korean name. Wrong!

Anna is the older sister, by about a year. From what I can gather she is also the favored child: the one who will get perfect grades and be prom queen and basically be a flawless daughter. Anna is at the point where she's dropped a lot of baby fat, while Lina still has a bit of chub, especially in the face. I have no doubt that this is a sticking point with Lina and her parents (mostly her mother). Anna wants to be a doctor and cure Alzheimer's; Lina I have no idea.

Towards the beginning of my career here, Lina had issues with the other girls in class, mostly about feeling like they were excluding her. There were near constant complaints from her mom, and I tried to handle it the best I could, though I kind of rolled my eyes and thought Lina was being a bit more self-centered than was necessary. This was before I knew Lina and Anna were sisters.

There's no problems now (as far as I know), mostly because with a new semester the classes all got shifted around. After ten months of teaching, I've come to realize that Lina must play second fiddle most of the time—I get the impression she hears, "Why can't you be more like your sister?" a lot.  I go out of my way to give her some extra attention and affection because it seems like she doesn't have many chances to feel good about herself.

Lina and Anna were the sisters I met on the beach in Jeju, They are both cutie pies, and also just about the sweetest girls any parent could ask for. I had a blast playing with them in the water. It was all the fun parts of teaching without any of the stress—though meeting their parents was a bit awkward. They're both at a very high level of English, especially Anna, so I get to have some real conversations with them.

I've been thinking about these student profiles, and how there's so many more I want to write. Under normal circumstances, students like Lina and Anna would be my favorites, but their peers are just as interesting and funny and endearing as they are. This batch of kids has been outstanding, and I'll remember them all, but these two do stand out in particular.

Student Profiles: Beckham

I've been at this job for eight months now and I still don't know how I feel about Beckham.* Most days he is not at all interested in English, but he recently (and in my opinion, prematurely) switched to an advanced class. I wasn't happy about this at first, since he switched into my absolute favorite class. The class I use to take the edge off teaching his old class, actually.

Fortunately, he's now separated from his other two musketeers, so on his own he's much less disruptive.   I have no idea how this is going to work in the long term, though. The first class was an unmitigated train wreck, but that could just be first class of the semester jitters. The second class is worth documenting.

As soon as I walked in the door, he announced, "Teacher! Couple shirts!"

A spontaneous greeting from Beckham? Unprecedented.

We were both wearing gray shirts, you see. Except mine was a light, semi-sheer t-shirt over a tank top, and his was a dark gray long sleeve thing.

"What? But they're very different!"

"Color is same."

"Well, that's true. Okay, couples shirt."

"Okay!"

After some small talk about their recently-finished exams ("Every subject easy, I am genius."), we got down to brass tacks. I had Beckham and Kristin (the only two students that day) use the mind map in the book to think of ways to describe their best friend.

The next ten minutes of class was dedicated to the biggest whopper I have ever heard a student tell. Beckham told me that his best friend was Park Ji-sung, and then from there it exploded into a ridiculous tale of how he was going to fly to England the next day to visit and play for Manchester United. Oh, and his dad is his own private pilot. And his mom comes with them and cooks food for everyone. And his friends are going, too. And I can come, if I want. His plane is so big it can fit everyone in England. It's the size of South Korea; in fact it's so big that when it takes off and lands, sometimes people die.

"But I am always survivor," Beckham explained, "Because Jesus is my father."

Apparently Jesus is his pilot, not his copilot.

Also, Barack Obama calls and asks him to dinner all the time, but he is too busy studying. And Beyonce is head over heels in love with him, but he rebuffs her advances because "she is not my style."

Hopefully I have more classes like this and less like stony silence.



*Yes, the name references what you think it references.

Student Profile: Kristin

Towards the end of my Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a double dose of middle schoolers. The first dose is the worst part of my week. It's a class of three girls and three boys: two of the boys are too cool for studying, and the third is a good student but succumbs to the peer pressure of dicking around with his friends rather than, you know, trying to learn.

The girls are all quiet. One of them is new—just started today new—so I can't blame her much. One of the girls seems to have a questionable grasp of English compared to her classmates, so again, I can't find it in my heart to get pissed off about her. And the last one speaks really good English and makes an effort, but I think the atmosphere of the boys' indifference and the other girl's inability is just so soporific that she can't even be bothered.

But this isn't a post about that class, except to say it's physically and mentally exhausting and every time I leave I wish I had some soju to take the edge off.*

Contrast this with the class immediately following, which is thankfully twice as long.

There are just two students** in this one: Annie and Kristin, both of whom are sweethearts. Annie will get a profile entry later on, as well. I ask them how their weekends were (on Tuesdays) or what they'll do on the weekend (on Thursdays) and they give me answers. If they're not doing anything special, they'll at least complain in English about how they have to do homework.

Kristin's English is at a higher level than Annie's. They are both in the advanced class, but Kristin graduated because she did well on the level test. Annie is in the advanced class because her mother mother complained to the hagwon that she's been at the school so long, she SHOULD be in the advanced class.

She is quiet and exceedingly curious. At least, she is really good at thinking up questions to ask me to avoid studying—and I'm all too happy to field them and go off on a tangent because as far as I'm concerned, they're in my class to practice speaking, not to mindlessly plow through their book. Sometimes the textbook has really great discussion topics (CSI! organic food! New York City!); sometimes they're awful (franchises! India's economy! aging populations!). So we've talked about American food and how it's different from Korean food, popular English names, movies, and so forth.

Aside about the names: I looked up the popular baby names on the Internet (their classroom has Internet connectivity) and topping of the boy and girl lists were Jacob and Isabella, respectively. I died a little on the inside, but then asked her why these names were popular.

"Is it a movie?"

"A movie, and a book. You definitely know it. They're very popular in Korea."

"....Ah! Twilight! 'Isabella' is 'Bella'?"

"You got it."

"Where is Edward?"

Edward did not place anywhere in the top, thank God. I double checked.

"Nope, no Edward."

"Why no Edward?"

"I guess...Edward is a very old name. It sounds like a grandfather name. So, even if everyone loves Edward, the name is still too old to use."

"Ahhhh."

Aside over.

Whenever I show videos in class, Kristin (and Annie, as well) is interested and entertained. She laughs and verbally reacts to things: "Oh, wow!" "Ah!!" "Oh my God!" I show the same video in the middle school class just to break up the monotony and I'm lucky if I even get an appreciative "huh."

 I guess the best way to put it is that Kristin doesn't seem to have acquired the world-weary teenagerly cynicism that middle and high school students all over the world are famous for. There's still things in the world that hold wonder and amazement and humor for her. It's refreshing to talk to someone over the age of ten with that kind of attitude. That's why Tuesdays and Thursdays, while in some ways are my most stressful days, are also my favorite.







*And I don't know, maybe it makes me a bad teacher, but I go in every class smiling and cheerful and asking about weekends and I'm met with dead air. It's not like I'm not trying, or that I don't care. Maybe I'm just an awful teacher who doesn't realize she's awful.


**If it sounds like my classes are ridiculously small, this two-student class is a weird aberration and the only one of its kind. I also have classes near the typical hagwon maximum of twelve or thirteen, so it's really all over the board.  Offhand I would say the average is about six.

Student Profiles: Elline

I'd like to start this one off by saying that my students' English names are very normal, for the most part. I'm not really fond of the whole "English name" idea, or taking a fake $language name while studying a foreign language in general, but that's another post for another day.

So, Elline is one of the stranger names I have, and strange only because of its irregular spelling. (It's pronounced Aileen, if you were curious.)

There's not much to say about her except that she is tiny and adorable and very very funny. I want to put her in my pocket and take her with me. For the first few months she was very quiet in class, and very shy, but she's gotten used to me I guess. The best way to describe old Elline is: Fluttershy.

Now her personality's come out. She's still quiet and a good student (part of why I like her, not gonna lie), but she laughs a lot more and actually tries to start conversations with me and answers my questions.

"How are you guys today?"
"I'm bad." Elline made a face.
"Why?"
"Today, math academy test."
"Not very good?"
"No."

The reason I'm even posting this (aside from popular request) (hi Mom!) is because I had class with her not ten minutes ago. I always play 묵찌빠 (muk-jji-ppa) with this particular class when I finish, it's part of the routine. When I first started teaching, Elline was too bashful to go a round of muk-jji-ppa with me at the end of class. But now?

"Teacher, muk-jji-ppa," Elline demanded after I announced my time was up, her brow furrowed with seriousness. She held out her fist expectantly and I obliged. She lost the first round. Elline wouldn't have any of this and shook her head. "No!"

I played her one more round and she won. She let out a quiet little "yay" and then went about her business.

Doing a Good Turn

I've mentioned before that I tutor North Korean defectors. I've been doing it for a few months now. The whole time I debated whether or not I should mention it here, but I figured there's nothing wrong with encouraging people to do a good thing.

Classes with the North Koreans aren't much different than with my kids, except their English is much more basic and they're much older. They're all rather good-natured and (as far as I can tell) happy to see me. I teach a basic class that has a core enrollment of three students, with two others who drift in and out as it suits them.

The three core students are two men (I'll call them Yunu and Guncheol) and one woman (I'll call her Soon-mi). Pseudonyms are because I'm not sure what their story is so far and I'd rather not inadvertently put them or their families in danger.

Out of all the students, Yunu is the moodiest. He gets frustrated easily, though out of all of them he probably has the highest level. He and Guncheol seem to be good friends, the kind that joke around and give each other shit.  At least, that's what it looks and sounds like, considering my Korean is not much better than their English. They might be actually fighting for all I can tell.

Unlike Yunu, Guncheol is almost always in a good mood. If he makes a mistake or doesn't understand something, he takes it in stride and laughs it off. He also applies himself more than Yunu; even if Yunu's current speaking and listening level might be higher than Guncheol's, Guncheol already understands phonics (yes, we are starting at phonics, that's how basic this is) better than Yunu.

Soon-mi is itty-bitty. I'm sure she's around my age—at most maybe a year or two younger. Yet she stands a full head shorter than me.

In case any of you forgot (or didn't know), I'm damn short. 5'1". Usually I stop towering over people by the time they hit the double digits. I actually have to be mindful of where I write on the board because Soon-mi might not be able to reach it at all. Photos of starving children in Africa are horrible and touching, yes, but something about a grown woman barely coming up to my shoulders is way more personal.

And while Soon-mi is an extreme (the other girls are taller than her), it's still not surprising. The typical North Korean is about six inches shorter than the typical South Korean. (As far as I can tell, Yunu and Guncheol seem average to me, but I am rotten at judging people's relative heights.)

Soon-mi is a sweetheart, though. Her disposition is as sunny as Guncheol's, and the both of them are the hardest workers in the class. The boys joke around with her much like they do with each other, though to a lesser extent.

The classes start at 10:10 in the morning, and while it means I have to get up and out of the house way earlier than normal, I love it. I think it's something every teacher should do, at least a few times. Most of the time, we English teachers have a good life here in the ROK and it treats us pretty well. It's only fair to give something back above and beyond what our jobs call for.

If you're interested in tutoring North Korean defectors, there's a few resources out there:

1. Ask a Korean! has some private connections and will always field inquiries from volunteers to match them with a school. There are also links in the comments.

2. Hana Center, which is affiliated with the official relocation centers for defectors, also accepts volunteers. I'm personally acquainted with Jordan Groh, who works with one of the four centers in Seoul. You can email him (username jordan.groh at the famous Google mail server) for more information.

3. Up here in Uijeongbu, Danny Chung is the guy to get in touch with. If you want to email him @naver.com, he's neukorea.

Min-ji, continued:

Back when Min-ji's class was reading and talking about NYC, I asked them to work in teams to come up with reasons why either Seoul or NYC is the best place to visit. Min-ji and her partner, Kristin, had Seoul.

"Korean food is very delicious," she suggested to Kristin (more on Kristin in another post). Kristin enthusiastically agreed and they started listing delicious Korean food. This class is pretty late in the day so food comes up a lot no matter what the subject is. Everyone always seems to be hungry, myself included.

"Ddeok bokki!"

"Samgyeopsal!"

"Galbijjim!"

"Boshin—" but Min-ji caught herself before finishing. (Boshintang, as you may or may not recall, is dog meat stew.)

"Why not? Boshintang is very delicious," I suggested.

"Really? Teacher? You had boshintang?"

"One time. It was good."

The look on Min-ji's face was a mix of surprise and...not quite anger. Admonishment. Scolding. "Teacher, that is terrible. You shouldn't eat it. I have a dog!"

"But your dog isn't the kind of dog that's in boshintang, is it?"

"No, but that's still bad. My dad really likes boshintang, but my mom says he can't eat it now."

"Well, it was a long time ago. I'm probably not going to have it again."

"Good!"

And then back to work.

Student Profile: Min-ji

One of the things that's been interesting as a teacher is the necessary role-reversal involved (because after all, I had teachers once) and wondering back to my own experiences and pet peeves.

The biggest pet peeve I had as far as school and learning went, which extended all the way through college, was the teacher's expectation that we "participate in class discussion" or otherwise give signs that we were sparkling examples of wit and charm and panache. I am not really any of those things and always resented this (perceived) demand that I somehow perform or prove my worth as a student; it irked me that peers who I knew were less intelligent and less worthy of accolade nonetheless always seemed to be singled out for merit just because they couldn't shut up.

I may or may not have been an asshole. I may or may not still be an asshole.

Now I find myself in the teaching position, and face to face with this reality of "students who don't talk" scenario. Of course, there are significant differences: I'm not teaching in the students' native language, nor do I see them every day (and for hours on end, in the case of the little ones). And the very subject I'm teaching is based, a lot, in verbal communication and, y'know, talking.

Needless to say, I always feel a little guilty about how much I like Min-ji because I feel like she is the kind of student I would have greatly resented when I was her age. She is like a domineering whirlwind of ideas and opinions, and she volunteers so many answers that when I occasionally make a point of calling on other, quieter students, she gets incredibly impatient.

"Teacher, why Angela? Me, me!"

As a grown, adult version of myself, though, I like her. She is bossy, sometimes, but it's an exuberant sort of "I think this will be fun!" bossy rather than a "I like getting my way no matter what" bossy. She's a good student and ultimately defers to whatever I decide to do, should it conflict with her suggestion (which is invariably, "Let's play a game!"). She's also not above playing harmless jokes on her friends, to get a laugh out of both parties involved, and quick to apologize if it goes awry.

In elementary school, Korean girls are (generally) just as feisty and aggressive and un-self conscious as the boys; somehow, by the time they get to middle school, many of them morph into these wilting, passive, giggling things. (Maybe this is true for American girls as well, but I haven't worked with enough of them over the long term to make any worthwhile observations.) The body image issues and self-loathing also seem to start then, which puts Korean girls right in step with their American peers. Even a tad behind (or ahead?), when you read stories about American elementary school girls on diets or with eating disorders.

Min-ji, however, gives no shits. For example, compare and contrast the following two conversations I had right after the new year:

Conversation Number One

Me: "How was your new year? Did you eat a lot of ddeok guk?"

Emma: "No."

Me: "Why not?"

Emma: "Diet."

Conversation Number Two

Me: "How was your new year? Did you eat a lot of ddeok guk?"

Min-ji: "It was very good! I ate lots of ddeok guk, and [enumerates the vast menu of food she consumed over the weekend]. I am having a growth period, so I eat a lot. One weekend, I grow two centimeters!"

I also admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for Korean kids who don't go for the whole "English name" bullshit (because it is bullshit), and who are good at English. Min-ji is both of these things. She also just joined a class that is typically dominated by a spoiled and sullen boy student, so I'm looking forward to her (hopefully) taking the piss out of him.

Student Profile: Minsoo

This is one I've been meaning to write up for a while, but I've always put it off for whatever reason. Which is silly, because Minsoo is a student I want to remember forever. Of course, I think I'd have a hard time forgetting him, but it's surprising and scary what you can forget, so here goes.

Minsoo is not a student I have now. He was in my kindergarten homeroom when I worked at Cassandra Academy, and my first day was his first or second day in the school, so we both were kind of flying blind at the same time.

At first, I had no idea what to do with him because he was so fantastically hyperactive compared to the other children in the class. My foreign partner teacher and I both agreed he was a bit weird. This is the same class as Jaymon and everyone who taught this class agreed that they were the best ever. But Minsoo is definitely the most high-strung of the bunch, forever out of his seat and sometimes incredibly temperamental. Early on I handed back work the rest of the class had done with their old homeroom teacher. Naturally, Minsoo wasn't there, so he didn't get a paper back, and this brought him to tears. Even when I let the kids break the cardinal rule of  "No Korean at Cassandra" to explain to him that this was work they did before he joined, he still wasn't okay.

The next day, of course, he had completely forgotten.

I can't say exactly when I hit a turning point, but eventually he rose to be my favorite in the class (though they were all an adorable bunch that I miss dearly even now). Beneath the spastic energy there was a very sharp and perceptive mind going on. They were all pretty smart kids and, for the most part, quick learners, but Minsoo was easily the quickest. He'd pick up on new vocabulary words almost instantly, or even words I just used a lot. ("Clever boy!" he especially liked to repeat.) He and Jaymon used to have discussions, in English, about dinosaurs. Which one were the biggest, which ones could fly, and so forth. He eventually got to be pages ahead of his classmates in their math textbook and was always the first to finish worksheets—this I dealt with by having him copy his work over again neatly, or just having him flip papers over and draw dinosaurs.

"That's awesome work, Minsoo! Can you draw me a dinosaur now?"

"Okay!!"

 Dinosaurs were Minsoo's favorite thing, and he absolutely loved drawing pictures of them and labeling them and telling me all about them. I kept one of those drawings, laminated it (company time and resources, natch), and I have it taped on the wall of my new apartment.

Yeah, sometimes I'm a lazy teacher.

Or sometimes he'd jump out of his seat and, while I was squatting and helping another student with their work, latch himself on to my back.

"Back hug!"

My Korean partner teacher came to me towards the end of my tenure and said I might have to be a little more strict with Minsoo, as parent teacher conferences were coming up and neither of us wanted a breakdown or anything like he sometimes had (in his other class, he hit his teacher with a pencil and then refused to apologize, meaning a conference with the Korean teacher).

"He likes you a lot, maybe too much. He thinks you are like his mother."

(Aside: just goes to show how great the communication is at Cassandra: this was mere days before I was leaving and my Korean partner teacher HAD NO IDEA I had quit. I managed to get away without having any parent teacher conferences at all, mwuahaha.)

The last day with my kindergarten kids was fun, though a bit sad. Minsoo didn't really process that I was leaving until his other foreign kindergarten teacher showed up, and then (according to her) his face just fell. During the break before the last kindergarten class of the day, he came to the teacher's room to bring me a pencil I had forgotten in class. For a moment, he didn't move: he just stood in the doorway and started sniffling. Everyone's heart broke a little bit, seeing that.

"Aw, Minsoo my boy, come here." He bolted and almost knocked me over with the force of his hug. I gave him a good squeeze.

"Shh, I'll come visit you guys during lunchtime, I'm not gone yet."

I came to visit and sing and play with them one last time, before they left for the day and a new teacher took over on Monday.

The whole class and I, being silly on my last day.

And the man himself.

The teacher who replaced me also is leaving early, but she waited until "graduation" so that she could see this class off until the end. She also got really attached to them, which is easy because they're sweet and smart and adorable. I hope she had as much fun with them as I did.

I worry about Minsoo, and what will happen to him: whether his hyperactive and highly-sensitive nature is just him being young, or if it's something more permanent to his psyche. He's obviously incredibly smart, but—like Travis, though perhaps not as severely—very sensitive and just different as well. I hope he's always as curious and as unflappable for his future teachers as he was for me.

Student Profile: Alex

Alex runs on rocket fuel, in a nutshell.  He is loud, forever wandering out of his seat, a champion nose-picker, and seems to lack a filter between his brain and the rest of his body.  I spend a lot of time tying his shoes because he doesn't seem to have mastered that life skill yet.   His English is also incredibly uneven: he can recall pretty advanced words and idiomatic expressions from the movies we watch much better than most of his peers, but when it comes to spontaneous communication with me, Alex defaults either to Korean or extremely fragmented English.

Alex is the one in the red, grey, and black striped sweater, along with the huge grin.

Despite all of this, I like him a lot.  He does mean well (unlike another Alex I had, who also ran on rocket fuel, who seemed to delight in the discomfort and rage of his peers) and he's surprisingly affectionate.  The best part, though, is that he's just so happy.  Alex always has a big cheerful smile on his face and he always looks happy to see me.   It's like everything around him is just so awesome.

Student Profile: Travis

Travis is a weird kid. He's also incredibly smart. He is one of my favorites among the younger set that I teach, but some days he really breaks my heart.

It's clear that Travis is not developmentally normal. I think he's a pretty good candidate for Asperger's Syndrome/high-functioning autism, but that's only my armchair opinion. Whatever it is, my coworkers have assured me that his mother insists that her son does not need therapy or anything of that kind—even though his outbursts could potentially hurt other children and already mark him as a weirdo to be preyed upon.* It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that South Korea does not handle mental health issues all that well.

NOW THAT I'VE SUFFICIENTLY DEPRESSED YOU, let's get back to the happy bits. Because these are supposed to be happy entries for me.

I cannot overstate how smart he is. He is also, despite the meltdowns that will strike at random, very self-possessed and mature. Yes, he's obviously still an elementary-school aged child, but there are aspects of his mannerisms that are much more like an adult.

One of the public school districts had an English speech contest last month, and part of my job was to help them train: correcting pronunciation and intonation errors, helping them memorize, and so forth. Travis participated and gave a wonderfully non-sequitor speech on pollution, and saving the environment from pollution, because pollution caused his neighbor's leukemia. I don't know how he performed (he didn't get first, but he rated pretty high), but while he rehearsed with me, Travis performed with aplomb. He was impassioned and serious as you don't normally see children get, both in his performance and in his practice. After he handed me the paper with his speech on it, he said to me (in Korean, my boss translated it for me): "Please listen carefully and correct my mistakes, every little thing." I'm pretty much convinced that the only reason he didn't nab first place was because his speech wasn't "rah-rah Korea!" like everyone else's.

Also, he has these awesome pastel plaid pants that just melt my heart every time he wears them. And a perm.

On good days he is sweet and affectionate to boot. None of my kids now are as huggy as my last group (tears and lamentations!) but sometimes Travis will play with the ends of my bolo tie, stroke my hand, or rub my back. The downside is that if he's angry, he will be just as apt to try to hurt me.

Since his mother seems hell-bent on insisting that her son's "special"ness does not require assistance or input from a trained mental health professional, I can only hope he figures out a way to deal with his issues on his own. I love him to death and I don't doubt he has the potential to go far in life. It's just a question of whether or not he self-destructs.




*There's no way to read that sentence without it sounding like victim-blaming. What I mean to say is this: in class, the students are tolerant of Travis up until he has an outburst of some kind that actually interrupts whatever it is we're doing. They're still too young (and, perhaps, too Korean?) to understand that Travis is processing a world that is a lot different from and a lot more intense than theirs; instead they read it as him being selfish or spoiled and react with disdain accordingly. If Travis had help in dealing with his frustrations in a more productive way than shrieking (full-on shrieking) or hitting students, he would get less negative feedback and more POSITIVE feedback from his peers. That's what I mean by that.

Student Profile: Lina

Now that I have the time in my life again (I won NaNoWriMo, by the way), I decided to bring back student profiles.  There's a colorful bunch of students at this school and I like having these sorts of entries to go look on and think, "Oh yeah!  I remember her!" after my job is finished.  Also, my dad complained to me over Skype that I "never write in your blog about teaching anymore."  So, here you go, Pops.  Enjoy.

I'll start with one of my favorite girl students, Lina.  She's in probably the most advanced class at the school, and is pretty much the "leader of the pack," as far as the girls go. Which, since it's a class of three girls and one boy, is most of the class. Lina's very willful and very frank, things which may later make her more frustrating than amusing.  At the moment, though, I like her.

The textbook for this class is a series of essays on more or less random topics, accompanied by writing prompts and a few short answer questions: identity theft, India's economy, artificial intelligence, and most recently, the well-intentioned, if problematic, One Laptop Per Child project.  I started off the class by asking them what they thought was important for a good education:

"Good books."
"Good teachers."
"Money."
"Passion."

And then Lina chimed in with a firm: "Good educational policy.  Changing Lee Myung-bak."

I always like when my students have firm enough political opinions to rag on presidents.

Sometimes the book is pretty dry, though; it gets pretty repetitive and so a lot of times I'll try to find a salient tangent to what we're talking about.  When discussing India's economy, for example, one of the textbook questions asked what problems poor countries face, and a student said, "Crime."

Ah-hah, says I.

"What about crime in Korea? Do you think there's a lot of crime here?"

"There's a lot of..." Pause to consult her phone dictionary.  The phrase that came out made perfect sense, but it was something we'd never actually say in English.  "Sexual violence," I think it was.

"Ah.  Rape."  Second of week of teaching and we're talking about rape!  None of the girls seem particularly fazed by it so I decided to let this one play itself out.

"Yes."  She nodded her head vigorously.  "There's a lot in Korea."

"How can we fix that?  What can we do so that rape happens less?"

"Teach women how to fight." "Stronger punishment."

"What about the American soldier in Dongducheon? Do you think his punishment was strong enough?"

"What was it?"

"Jail, for ten years."

Lina looked like she was going to punch someone.  "Ten years?!  No, that's not enough.  He should have thirty!"

"Some Americans think that ten years is too strong."

"What?! Really? 헐~."

"I think he should get punched in the face every morning while he's in jail," I declared.  Which I do.


Or, while they were copying down some work from the board: "Teacher, your tee is very...uncommon." (This in response to a Ben Folds concert shirt.)  I'm still not entirely sure what she meant by that.  Either I wear it less often than my other clothes, or it's not the kind of shirt you see in South Korea (but by that logic, all of my shirts you don't really see in South Korea, so why this one in particular?).

There's a note from her to the teacher I replaced that he kept on the fridge, apologizing for being a poor student and promising to work harder.  I'm not surprised that she had been a bad student for him; she chatters a lot in Korean as soon as she's bored and will simply not do pages, but I can't exactly blame her.  The book's extremely repetitive and about as engaging as watching paint dry, especially with this class that's so far above it.  The one benefit is that it provides a whole spectrum of topics to talk about—I've just come to realize that to make it at all engaging, I'm going to have to ignore the book a lot.  I spend a lot of time looking for videos to download from YouTube, or extra reading material, or whatever.

There are moments when the limitations of the student-teacher relationship (and my own low level of Korean) make me sad.  I'm sure if Lina were older, she'd be exactly the kind of woman (Korean or otherwise) I like hanging out with: outspoken and passionate and a take-no-shit attitude.  She has a feisty attitude that I hope will get her far instead of holding her back.

Student Profile: Luke

Luke is one of what I affectionately refer to as "my big stupids." He started at Sherlock in the fifth grade, at the lowest possible level, so his English is pretty limited.

He's kind of a portly kid, and very funny in his own little way. He's always very respectful of teacher and always has been, even when the other kids in his class could be jerks. He's also pretty sedate. Even when he gets distracted, as ten-year-olds do, he never gets hyperactive, which is something I can both relate to and appreciate. The first time I sat in and observed the class (back when I was training, and Michael was still teaching the class), he seemed utterly confused by my presence. He asked Michael what a foreigner was doing here.

"She's your teacher," he explained, and Luke looked at me askance.

Great, I thought, I guess I'm in for a treat with this one.

But no, as it turned out, I wasn't. Or I was, but as in, an actual treat. According to Mina, Luke really likes cooking. Early on in my contract she said he might bring in food for us, but that's never materialized.

I can't explain what it is that's so funny about him...it's just his mannerisms and the way he talks. He gets very caught up in things, very serious about them. "Wait a minute, teacher, wait a minute," and you can see the gears in his head turning as he tries to think of an answer in a game. For a little boy he's already got a pretty deep voice, which I guess is part of what is so funny about him. He's kind of like an old man in a 10-year-old's body.

I named him after my friend Luke from Hamilton, who himself was named after Cool Hand Luke. So now there's a child in Korea with an English name that derives, partially, from Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman lives on.

Student Profile: Gina

I no longer have Gina as a student. The Korean school year (at least for this hagwon) ended on Friday; on Monday all the students will have advanced one grade. As a sixth grader, Gina has graduated from Sherlock Academy and moved on to its sister school, Watson Academy. She is probably the only sixth grader I will miss.

At first she didn't really participate in class. She sat towards the back of the room with her friend Sophia, and neither of them would really participate in class activities. It was frustrating. But then Sophia quit, and Gina became friends with another girl named Jenna, and started participating in class more. By the last three months or so, she would smile at me and say hello whereas before she would barely say a word.

She's freaking adorable and will grow into a pretty cute Korean woman some day. She has a great smile that just makes me want to smile, too. Especially when she's making a joke. She's also ridiculously smart. Even though in class exercises she always writes that English is the most difficult subject at school, or that she can't speak English well, she's really the best student in her class and probably that I have. Or had. Mina showed me her across-the-board placement test scores and they were all in the 90s. (Except English, she got in the 70s, but bear in mind that she was one of my "big stupids" and never got beyond the first level of textbooks.)

Gina has tiny, meticulous handwriting that's neater than mine. When she was taking her last "final exam" at Sherlock academy, I was the one administering it, and every second or third answer she would erase and re-write in slightly smaller, slightly neater letters. She ended up getting a 99%, by the way—the highest grade I've ever seen on any "final exam." She wrote "715" instead of "750," that was her only mistake.

She has a great sense of humor, too. One of the units was about "Do you have any ____s?" I went around and asked people if they had a bunch of things: brothers, sisters, cars, arms, tigers. Basically to make sure that they would definitely have at least one and definitely NOT have at least one, to get used to "I have two ___s." and "I don't have any ___." When I asked Gina if she had any tigers, she grinned and said, "Yes, I have three." Or another assignment, they had to write about their best friend: where they were from, what they were like, their hobbies, etc. She wrote about the aforementioned Jenna, who by that time had quit: "Jenna is from India."

"What! Jenna's not from India!"

Again with the smile: "Yes she is! Jenna, India person!"

I don't know how long Gina will continue with English. I don't know if she likes it, even if she is good at it—she seems to be a girl who's smart in pretty much everything. She likes art the best and, based on her doodles, draws pretty well. That's probably why her handwriting is so neat and distinctive, too. Hopefully by the time she's an adult, feminism will have caught on a bit more so she won't feel like she has to marry and have babies to amount to anything. She has too much potential to get hung up on that.

Student Profile: Kyle

Kyle is probably one of my favorites. He's a short, baby-faced third-grader. Mina doesn't like him as much—he can be kind of an arrogant little punk—but his arrogance is lost on me. It's one of the things that the Engrishee filters out.

Kyle is smart, first of all. He's at the top of his class and so he's the easiest for me to talk to out of all of the other students. Second, he also tries to have conversations with me, or at least responds to my attempts to initiate conversations with him. He seems curious about America, too, and sometimes asks questions about how we do things. Kyle also can be pretty funny, and is really expressive in terms of personality. No dead-panned, stony-faced Korean is he. Beyond that, he's just really adorable.

Last week, when I went to class after the Phils gave up game 6, the first thing he said to me was: "Philadelphia LOSE! New York Yankees champions!" It was hard to tell if the glee with which he informed me of the news was a bit of malicious schadenfreude, or just enthusiasm about being able to talk to me about baseball. Probably both.

"I know! Very sad." I mimed crying.

"You, me, same," he offered by way of comforting. "SK Wyverns"—out came a fist—"Kia Tigers"—another fist—"go go go go go" and with each go he punched a fist successively higher, to indicate their rise to the top—"SK Wyverns lose"—he dropped the SK Wyverns fist—"my sad. Same."

Kyle can be a bit fussy, though. He has a strong sense of justice and fairness, and if he thinks I don't call on him enough, or that the other team is cheating at games, he gets pretty vocal about it.

It's just nice to have a student who's not entirely burned out on work and life as a student in South Korea. Any older than third or fourth graders and they start being miserable and tired and can't be arsed to do anything at all related to English—even if I ignore the textbook and try to talk to them about other stuff I'm interested in. (Case in point: I tried to ask my students today about Friday the 13th and bad luck and superstitions in Korea, and they either looked at me blankly or gave half-assed answers.) It's kind of a tragedy.