Teaching, and more interesting things...

The title "English Teacher" is not quite accurate. Most of the students know English at least decently if not very well. Rather, I am more of a "utility teacher". I do private essay tutoring, SAT review, TOEFL test taking skills (English proficiency test), and college application/essay review. For some reason, I like the college application essay classes the most. Remember all those papers you got back in high school with red ink all over them and "Where's the thesis??" underlined three times near the top? That's what I do. And I can definitively say now that yes, teachers DO get a sadistic pleasure out of tearing into a student's essay that took four hours to write, but only took me fifteen minutes to destroy with a red pen.

I'm not actually that harsh in my comments, but I do enjoy the essay classes. I imagine it's because I'd rather be brainstorming for questions like: "Who belongs on a modern day Mt. Rushmore?" than going over another SAT passage-based reading section about abolition and women's rights. By now I might be qualified to teach a college seminar on the connection between Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony.

Sometimes I get applications from students applying to very prestigious American Universities, and their English is so poor that their writing is completely indecipherable. Every now and then, however, I get an application from a student whose English is just *barely* good enough as to get an idea across but couldn't describe his ass from his elbow. These are the gems. They can, and do, amuse me for hours on end. One such that I just graded is from a Stanford application short-response question:

9. What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed or participated in?

I really wish I could see the birth of a missing link, the first mutant chimp that finally evolves into human because I'm very interested in the origin of human and it may provides much information to settle my curiosity. Though it's not recorded historically, what a historical moment it is!

What a moment indeed! Almost as historic as Stanford accepting your application...

Teaching English in Korea has been a pleasure, for the most part. The kids are disciplined, studious, and well-dressed (nearly all in immaculate school uniform). They are never wild and crazy like children from other countries (Amanda). They also don't do something that kids from any other part of the world do: talk. It takes a Herculean effort to pull the words from the closed mouths of some the these students. They are very shy, especially when they first meet you, and it takes time to get them to open up even a little. And when I mean "a little", I mean even just one word like "yes" or "no". Nonetheless, as introverted as they seem, they are indeed quite diligent about their work, moreso than I can believe of kids. Mom, if you had tried sending me to an after school program six days a week to take the SAT test and review it each time, I would have, well, politely refused. Korean school children are at regular school from 8 am until about 4 pm, at which time they take the buses to our after-school program and take the SAT or TOEFL (English proficiency test) from 5:20-7:15, and we review the tests with them until 10 pm. They then go home to do homework. Some students, however, go to an ADDITIONAL hakwon (after school private education institute) from 11 pm until 2 am for the sciences. I am good at recognizing these students in class now. They are the ones who are pale faced, sunken-eyed, and seemingly narcoleptic. I pity the fools.

By the way, the above pictures are some fireworks in Seoul and a bartender breathing fire for us. They were inserted to maintain reader interest. My marketing research shows that you are less likely to continue without explosions and fire every so often.

When I started teaching, I began trying to learn the students' names by handing out a piece of paper and having them all sign it. When I joked to the other teachers about how difficult some of the names were to remember/pronounce, most of them looked at me blankly, telling me they had never tried to learn names.They simply pointed to students and said "you" in order to call upon somebody. I found that extremely awkward and made it difficult to manage a class full of students that are so shy that they stare directly at their desks while you speak and don't realize that the "you" might be them. Though, inevitably three or four Yu's will look up (OK, that's my one Korean joke for this entry). I am actually enjoying learning names now, though I accidentally called one student the Korean equivalent of "romantic horse" and I think his friends are making him pay for my mistake. Don't you miss high school?

These pictures are from a street celebration that we stumbled into last weekend. Or, it stumbled upon us. We were eating/drinking at a restaurant when suddenly these long conga-lines of red- and blue-shirted college age Koreans begin pouring down the street, chanting school songs and taunting each other. There were thousands of college students doing this in this neighborhood, and they would form groups of 15-20 students and go from restaurant to restaurant (bar to bar), stopping in front of each one and singing a song until the owner would bring out at least a few bottles of soju (Korean alcohol) and plates of food. If the owner did not bring out a sufficient amount of either, they would chant until he did (we were told later that the universities paid all these establishments ahead of time for this night). All of this would be devoured in a matter of seconds before they moved on to the neighboring establishment and a new group came up to sing their song and wave their flag until their food and alcohol appetites were satiated. I saw over 40 bottles of Soju given out over the course of an hour at one bar. Our Korean friend attempted to give us a rough translation of the songs: "We are Yonsei! We are Yonsei! We are poor college students! We are hungry and thirsty! Bring us food and Soju!" Perhaps something was lost in the translation. Or perhaps not. Despite the creative dearth of song lyrics, this was an amazing display of a great way that colleges interact with their surrounding neighborhoods (the two schools were Yonsei University and Korea University). For some reason, I can't quite see drunk Yalies going from bar to bar in New Haven in a long conga-line, demanding food and alcohol in iambic pentameter. Maybe one day...
Also, the celebration was either the culmination of a sporting match between the schools...or a science fair. Seriously. Our translator wasn't sure which. That doesn't count as a Korean joke, because I didn't make it up.

One other funny note: white people all look the same to Koreans. While at the bank I was asked if I was David Beckham. And at a bar we got rounds of free shots because a heavy-set balding man we were with was mistaken for Bruce Willis. "Broo-suh! Broo-suh!" He denied nothing.

GO ROCKIES!!!!!!!!!