Today I'll tell you about some adorable monsters that will trick your heart open and make you want to forgive their every action. They are... my students.
Korean 3rd and 4th graders.
Heart-controling, mind-bending Korean 3rd and 4th graders.
To help you understand the current situation first you need some information:
It's now Day 88.
88 days since I came to Korea. And I've been teaching at my school for over a month now!
The tour of the school itself will have to wait because I still haven't taken any photos of the grounds… But I have more than enough to share for this post!
My desk is in the school's English classroom - a really awesome room with tons of materials for English learning. The 5th and 6th graders have class there, along with the after school club classes.
Me at my desk. Photo credit to Jiwon (you'll learn about her soon…)
Since our desks are part of the classroom we don't exactly have the same kind of privacy as the other teachers' office rooms (the best personal, American equivalent I can make is the mysterious and forbidden teachers lounges that we could never enter as elementary schoolers, except here, teachers have their desks there as well and do most there work there). Every morning, lunch break, and any other chance these little rascals get, students always come running to our classroom to clamor around our desks and/or play games in the classroom. This makes lesson-planning and prep rather difficult since the students constantly want attention…
With one exception! One of my 4th graders is actually kind of helpful!
Meet 지원 (Jiwon), my personal assistant:
지원 complete with her daily green bow in hair.
But~ just look at that cute, little buck-toothed smile! I can't tell her to stop whatever she's doing and end up smiling back at her and thanking her for her "help" every time, whether it's actually helpful or not.
I don't know why she insists on meeting me or even helping me. Other students prefer to hang out with their friends, which 지원 does occasionally as well though not as often as she spends time with me, so it's not that she doesn't have friends… She is the older sister of twin 2nd graders, so maybe she's used to taking care of others/helping out?
Her English skill is not very high, so we speak with lots of gestures and more Korean than English (though I really do try to ask simple things in English to encourage her). Once she clears away everything on my desk, we usually have a moment of awkward silence, when she looks at me expectantly-
Then we usually draw things for each other, or I write things out for her to slowly type into a blank PowerPoint. And we exchange candy very often. ;)
Apparently elementary schoolers (at least the younger ones) are not allowed to use computers. 지원 doesn't really even know how to type in hangul (Korean alphabet lettering), let alone English, much less know how everything else on the computer works.
One day we were typing a conversation (think "Hello Jiwon! Hello Gabby teacher. How are you? I'm happy." etc) when the foursome came. The Fantastic Four. Four 4th grade boys who seriously crack me up.
They confronted 지원 and I when she was meticulously typing a new word in English. First they yelled very quickly in Korean. Then 상근, the most vocal of the boys, decides to explain it to me in English (which I enjoy immensely considering that his English skill is lower than his friends). He says, "Computer. No. No computer. Jiwon no. We no. No computer," accompanied with large X arm gestures and earnest facial expressions. His friends all nod vigorously in agreement. 범규, a boy with better English, then says, "Students can't computer. Jiwon, stop."
I then nodded my understanding and assured them it's okay. No problem. Don't worry.
They insist a bit more and poke 지원 with neck cutting, stop now, hand gestures.
I shoo them away, and because they are boys with too much energy and short attention spans, they promptly run off to bother someone else.
Actually I think all my students have too much energy. By the end of my consecutive four classes every morning, I'm usually exhausted. It's like they suck the energy out of me to add to their overflowing supply of it. It also doesn't help that they always find more sugar. I had some candy in my desk drawer, and some students must have found it because one day, I come to school and it was all gone.
One little 2nd grade girl was bouncing around and asking me a billion questions, all the while consuming this sugar-overdose-invention:
Of course this antique would appear again to spite me after more than a decade of extinction.
I took the Push-Pop away from her as my patience was wearing out, with a strong suggestion: "I think that's enough now, right? Why don't you put it on my desk and go sit down for class?"
Sometimes they put their energy to more creative/productive projects (other than their daily project of gluing themselves to Amelea teacher* and I). My second week or so of teaching, two of my adorable 3rd graders gave me these bracelets they made. I don't think I've ever been so happy about rainbow colored bracelets. ^^
And despite all the trouble these children can get into, the best thing, the reason why I love life right now, is how much they make me smile and laugh.
Seriously, laugh.
The Fantastic Four have a new obsession with singing for Amelea and I during lunch. It all started when Amelea showed them this video of an amazing child singer:
They got really into the song, trying to sing the English lyrics they don't know how to pronounce at all. Then they started their own version. The chorus of "Tomorrow", when the girl belts "TOMORROW TOMORROW I LOVE YA TOMORROW" they start screaming "GIVE ME MONEY, I WILL, I HAVE NO MONEY, I DO" (돈내나, 돈줄게, 돈없어, 돈많다/돈꺼져) or just "TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO".
The reason they are saying all that about money is because the Korean word for 'money' is '돈', like "ton", and the "to" sound is enough for it to sound similar to the word "tomorrow".
Remember, they are fourth grade boys. And they find just about everything that each other say/do hilarious.
They have sang this at least a bagagillion times.
They've also performed their interpretation of "Let it go" and "What does the fox say?" (My favorite is still definitely their "Tomorrow" rendition)
Final student story for the day~ I sort of knew this after my first few days of teaching, but I have one class in particular I love more than all my other classes. One of my 3rd grade classes is full of a bunch of troublesome but hilarious boys and outnumbered girls who hit them more often than the boys hit each other (hitting/violence is very common in Korean schools and doesn't have the same repercussions as American schools. I see them do it so often (and they are so tiny anyways) that I find it more of a sign of affection/friendship/camaraderie than a negative act of violence). Along with several low level students who I tried to connect with and encourage from the first day, and they now are trying so hard and I feel like they are improving a little and that makes me so proud of them. This is the class with the boy who saw me at that KPOP concert a while ago, and I feel like he is super curious/confused by me and it's great because he pays attention in class now when he used to be very troublesome (so my co-teacher says). This is also the class where the girls who made me bracelets are from.
Even though they are pretty naughty, don't all do their homework, and so I can't give them many stickers as a reward, these kids all just click with me somehow. It's like I become instantly happy when I see them. I become happy just thinking about them.
In the cafeteria for lunch, the boys will get super excited and wave at me if we make eye contact. In class several of them refuse to say my name correctly and call me 갈비 instead of Gabby. 갈비 (Galbi/Kalbi) is the word for short-ribs, usually beef or pork (or in my part of Korea, chicken too) and grilled and delicious.
I try to scold them for calling me this. Honestly, I don't think I should enjoy being called meat… but they are so adorable. And I think 갈비 tastes great. And they say it kind of affectionately. And I can tell they just want attention. And did I mention that these kiddos are adorable?
Like… like.. baby penguin adorable:
viola. FInally found a place for gifs in this post!
Alrighty!
And that, dear reader, is the end of my student tales. You have been warned, if you ever try to argue or get angry at these children, you will lose! The cuteness will win! Your heart is not your own!
Feel free to wander back sometime. I might just have a new tale to tell you ^.~
안녕!
~ 갈비 티쳐
*I don't remember who I've introduced, so just in case I haven't, Amelea is another Fulbrighter who is teaching the 5th and 6th graders at my school. She is awesome. We sing and dance and eat and have all the fun together. I'm super lucky~ we are the only Fulbrighters with another Fulbrighter at the same school.
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