A Crazy Work Week and an Interesting Cultural Difference

This week has been extremely crazy.  I've now taught almost half of the kids that attend this school.  I'm constantly getting shuffled around and thrown into new classes without being trained or told what to do, and I've essentially been working between eight and ten hours every day this week, constantly on my feet, and by the time I'm done I'm too tired to do anything else.

Still, I finally started getting to know the kids that I will be teaching for the rest of the year.  They're pretty great kids and a lot of them are really funny.  Anna kept better control of them than any other teacher in the school, so they're well-behaved also, which is good.  I teach ACI Grade 2, which is math, language arts, and science with the high-level eight year-olds, and also ACI Grade 1, which is math, and language arts with high-level seven year-olds.  I still teach seven year-old kindergarten every morning, which is actually with six year-olds because Korean age is measured differently.  

Quick tangential explanation of Korean age: you are born one.  There is no “How old is he?”  “Oh he’s four months.”  The kid is one, instantly.  Then, on January first, every person born within a given year turns one year older.  So a child born on December 31^st will be considered two years old on his second day of life.  That means that when I’m talking about seven year-olds, they are five or six in American age, and six year-olds are four and five, etc.  It can make for a pretty interesting difference in physical and mental abilities when you’ve got students born in January and students born in December.  Though I suppose that happens in schools everywhere in the world.

Back to our regularly scheduled program…

This week I've mostly been with Polar Bear class, which is Thor's old kindergarten.  Some of the kids in there are seriously annoying, but a few of them are some of my favorite kids in the school.  

One kid, Andy, is by far the most obnoxious child I've ever met.  He insists on being on top of me all the time.  If I sit down, I barely have ten seconds before he'll climb in my lap and twine his arms around my neck so that I can't get free.  If I'm walking around, he'll throw his arms around my waist and wrap his legs around my legs so I'm wearing him as a sort of fannypack/ skirt combo.  If I try to get away, he wraps his arms and legs around my ankles so that I have to peel him off.  He climbs on my back, straddles my knees, and just treats me in general as if I am a jungle gym.  Just to clarify for those of you who don’t know me very well, I am not a jungle gym.

Andy is actually a pretty interesting demonstration of a major difference between American schools and Korean ones.  In America, you are taught to never, never, NEVER touch children if it can be avoided.  At Peace Games we were told that we should avoid it, and although we gave them hugs sometimes, it was only if they initiated contact, it was always brief, and there wasn't much actual body contact.  You don't touch kids in order to stave off any sort of accusations.  In Korea, everyone touches children.  Teachers hug them, pick them up and spin them around, and play with them in a more hands-on way.  Students give teachers hugs and kisses, sit in their lap, and say I love you.  That level of affection is not only acceptable, but encouraged. The kids become so instantly comfortable with people that they all climb in my lap all the time, and give me big bear hugs, or tickle me, or hold my hand, even though they don't know me.  It's interesting.  It almost makes me uncomfortable at times because living and teaching in the U.S. has taught me to be so careful, but it isn't seen as a bad thing here at all to be affectionate with children.  It's a really nice change of pace from the American climate of fear and cynicism surrounding adult/child relationships.

At the same time, if you are walking down the street and you see a cute kid and they're staring at you, the parents usually encourage them to start talking to you, and try to get them to wave and say hello or goodbye.  If you want to touch a kid, or take a picture of a random kid on the street, it's totally fine and normal to do so.  Some parents even take it as a compliment, because it means you think their child is good-looking.  At restaurants, kids are allowed to run around and everyone just sort of keeps an eye on them as they play.  Parents keep a slightly sharper eye than others, but everyone looks out for them.  At a staff dinner dinner recently Kelly, one of the teaching partners, brought her son, and he was almost never in the back room with us.  She knew what part of the restaurant he was in, but he ran around alone, playing with his toys.  He's about three.  He wasn't the only kid running around either.  In the U.S. they would kick you out of a restaurant for that.  

Other kids I love:

Robin, who is really smart and funny, but has horrible behavior.  I really do always like the bad boys.  Robin is really quick to understand things and he makes the funniest faces.  He was one that when they were all really bored at their field trip started playing with me until all the kids were engaged and having a great time.  He seriously saved the mood of that day.  He's got big, wide eyes (for a Korean kid) and for some reason this makes him look perpetually quizzical.  His grin is pretty sweet also.  His grasp of English is on the higher level for his class.  

Bin is a lot like Robin in that he is smart and playful, but has a hard time following instructions or listening. Bin is just hilarious.  He has this thick mop of wavy hair that he's always tossing out of his eyes, and he always has lots of energy.  He never listens to anything I say, but he's so fun that I don't really care.  His work always gets done, so it doesn't really matter all that much.  

Ivy is HILARIOUS.  She's this tiny little girl with unbelievable amounts of personality, energy, and moxy.  She loves me back.  It's nice.  Ivy, on the first day I taught their class, was the only one who could remember my name, which is fairly normal for five year olds, but she kept calling me Miss Bibimbap, which is a kind of Korean food.  Then she started calling me Miss Yummy for short.  She is also hilarious because at silent reading time (which is kind of a joke as none of them can read) she always holds up her book facing out, as if she were a teacher reading a story to her class, and makes up a story based on the pictures.  Every so often she looks out at her invisible students to make sure they are listening and understanding the story.  Adorable.  

One teacher, Anna is having a going-away barbeque with the English group tonight.  This week has been work-work-work followed by party-party-party because so much is happening.  Last night was Tonya's birthday, which was pretty fun.  We went to a foreigner/Korean bar and played darts all night, and then the bartenders put on a bottle juggling show, after which they lit the bottles on fire and did the same show again.  It was pretty sweet.  I'm hoping tonight will be just as fun.  I think it will be.