What the Orientation wasn’t:

• Orienting
• New
• Knowledge Enhancing

What the Orientation was:

• Exposure to other teacher’s pain
• An opportunity to network
• It will get better, we promise…
• We’re Doing the Best that we can, and it’s not our fault

All in all, it wasn’t too painful, and I’m glad I came.  Didn’t take away much in practical material for lesson planning or any of the hundred different conflicts we must resolve internally and externally, but it WAS nice to hear the other teachers were experiencing many of the same things.  And yes, even that maybe I’m getting the creme de la creme of experiences and managing just fine.

ADDED:

I guess the best thing I came away from this trip is shattering my misconceptions that everyone was crabby like on Dave’s ESL cafe or frat boys out to just party.  The majority are actually really interested in being here and take teaching English seriously – however, some training IS needed to get them to think about designing their lesson plans to get the kids to express themselves meaningfully, vs. just pronouncing English correctly.  As always, I suck at networking, but I’m also pragmatic and I’m too busy to schedule in more socializing as it is.  Just knowing there are some people here with a little substance is enough to recharge my batteries a little.

Some answers from questions I posed to the kids:

• They love their uniforms – because they are comfortable, and they don’t have to worry about what fashionable thing to wear.
• They would rather dress casual than wear a suit if they were salary men (though the thought of suits being the same as a uniform escapes them)
• They love money and would rather have money than job happiness
• They would not be against corporal punishment for their own children
• They don’t mind staying at school so late
• black hair color is the most beautiful
• The boys’ most hated school rule is short hair cuts
• The girls’ most hated school rule is long skirts
• The prefer to live in apartments vs. houses
• All of the students said they would be at university five years from now.
• If a boy had a girl for a boss, he said he would kill her
• One boy said women should not make more money than men, and that it will never change because of their confuscian history and because it is in the Korean blood
• Girls felt girls should be in combat because they can be just as strong

When asked to describe one thing unique about themselves, some of the answers were:

• I am unique because I have small eyes (this coming from the most beautiful girl with the largest eyes – odds are she is thinking about eyelid surgery)
• I am unique because I have long black hair (this coming from a girl surrounded by girls with equally long black hair)
• I am unique because I am good at math (they’re almost all good at math)

One girl whom I love said she would paint her room red, and all the other girls gasped…but then she changed her mind…

When I asked what was their dream profession when they were little, I heard…veterinarian, teacher, artist, pianist, policeman, pastor, CEO, and president.

When I asked them what they would major in they said, doctor, lawyer, and teacher.  The loss of dreams doesn’t seem to be a conflict or bother them.

Oh Korea…

It’s getting pretty lovely outside, and I’ve retired my winter coat.  The cherry blossoms are in bloom, and yes, Rachel, there are magnolia trees blooming as well.  As soon as I get back home(?) I will walk to central park and take some photos for you.

So we’re at GePIK orientation at the Hyundai Learning Center.  Three teachers to a dorm room, and we have to GET PERMISSION to leave the campus – and they want us to stay in – only there’s NOTHING TO DO if you stay.

One of my damned roommates had the temperature up to 30 degrees celsius.  That’s over 80 degrees.  Felt like I was at the damned jimjilbang…

The jimjilbang is the Korean sauna, btw.  Korean families love to hang out there on the weekend, where there are shared public baths, saunas, cold rooms, automatic massage beds, and the body scrubbing adjummas.  It’s also the place where drunk people who’ve missed the last subway and are too cheap to go to a motel sleep it off.  You go in, you put your shoes in a shoe locker, and then you go to a desk where they hand you shorts and a shirt and give you a locker key where you can store your belongings.  Then, you search for a free square of the floor in which to lie.  Hopefully a place far away from the video games or restaurant.  A most unpleasant experience, bodies lying all over the marble floors, people snoring, feet in your face, and the overall temperature being about 90 degrees.  Some day I will go and do the bath and scrub thing, if I ever get over my fear of being naked among strangers, and maybe I will appreciate it.  But sleeping there is one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever done.

Day one of the orientation included a traditional Korean stringed instrument performance, a list of rules we were supposed to follow, (it seems some of the last group of teachers were captured in an empty board room on closed circuit t.v. in compromising positions) a pretty good motivational speech by a guy claiming he wasn’t going to give a motivational speech, some Q&A with veteran Native English Teachers, and a once-over of our contracts with everyone’s favorite, (cough,cough) Dain Bae.    Followed by the attempted teacher lock down and subsequent break out.  All of us pretty offended by the indignity of having to be in dorm rooms and being told we can’t exercise any personal liberties.  Which isn’t such a big deal to me, if they had provided something for us to do for the four free hours afterward, but in the absence of that and given that half the people here are over thirty, a bit unreasonable.  Probably less than half got Ms. Bae’s permission to leave before signing out to leave the building and probably quite a few didn’t even bother to sign out.  Quite interesting to arrive at the first watering hole to find it standing room only with teachers forbidden to go anywhere!  I find it amusing that the Korean admins I’ve thus encountered don’t seem to grasp the concept that oppression CREATES dissent.  Or maybe it’s just this control game they play and how society works here.  I mean, you gotta have something to protest, right?

I did enjoy the Q&A w/ the veteran teachers.  And I also found it interesting that the one my region was grouped with bribed his students with candy and gave the children homework so they would take him more seriously.  Both of which seem like easy outs to me, but which obviously pay off for the short term.   It does seem my teaching experience has been a lot more challenging than most, but I am glad I came here, as I feel even more that I am doing a good job, all things considering…Even if Miss “It’s not my fault, I’m doing the best that I can.” Dain Bae says, “I don’t know why you’re here, but the rest of the people are here to teach English.”  I know that I’m here to TEACH.  My kids are learning so much more from me than just mouthing English.

People keep asking me how many people live in Seattle.  Well, I looked it up and Seattle has just over half a million people, while Anyang has about 100,000 more.   But the Seattle metro population is about 3.26 million, and I believe Vancouver is almost double that.

It’s funny how we forget figures and invent our own fictions.  I always felt Seattle was smaller, but had thought I’d read somewhere that it was larger.  Maybe I was thinking of the metro area figures instead of the city. So for some reason I told the language exchange guy who asked me that it was about twice as big as Anyang.  And then he told me “really?  Anyang’s not a small city.”  He thought Anyang had a million in it.  Okay.  So I’ve sent a couple of people away with the wrong info, and he sent me away with the wrong info as well.

The guy didn’t understand why I wanted to go to the market.  He thought it was old fashioned, told me I wouldn’t see any younger people there (he was wrong) and that nobody went to them anymore.  When we got there, he WAS surprised at how big this one was.  Instead of being amused by the gyopo waygook oohing and ahhing and asking, what’s this?  what’s that?  he was just bored by my enthusiasm.

I asked him if he’d ever met an adoptee before, and he said no.  I explained how the younger adoptees were mostly given up at birth and how growing up as a minority race is hard.  But then I explained how the older adoptees were mostly given up due to social and economic problems, and that many of us were old enough to speak and remember Korea as children.   And that even though I can’t remember, I could speak, and that I feel drawn to the market because it IS part of the culture of my childhood that is locked up inside of me.  Even after this, the dolt asked me why I didn’t just go shopping at a supermarket.  I explained how generic Emart was and how sad it was to have the entire world’s cultures erased by these kinds of stores.  “But they are so convenient – you only have to go to one place.”  I argued about what a treasure the market is, and he told me that the government was trying to preserve them.

We only went through two arcades, because he was so visibly NOT enjoying himself.  I was hungry so suggested eating lunch.  I wanted to find that alley of restaurants, but he pressed for one of the eating places we were passing, which I was not happy about because they were not traditional floor seating places, and I could tell they didn’t serve side dishes.  But I wanted him to stop being so grumpy, so I agreed.  They had all the usual things I can order by myself anywhere, and I tried to talk him into a place where groups eat, because this is the only type of restaurant and food I can eat by myself, so whenever there is another person it is a good opportunity to try different food.  He insisted that this was the only kind of food a place like a market would be serving, and I was tired of arguing with him, and we were already in the place.  We DID order Sundae, which I’d never had before, (sausage stuffed with noodles) and it wasn’t anything to write home about.  There was a t.v. playing the whole time, and I TRIED MY DAMNDEST to engage him in conversation about travels, language, study, his military service, what he likes to do, etc.  but he KEPT ON WATCHING T.V.  And when I would talk to him, he would stare at the wall.  I’ve talked with people who avoid eye contact before – hell, I’m guilty of that myself – but they usually look down and seem a little shy, which I can forgive.  But this guy just stared past me like he was trying to erase my existence.  And it wasn’t due to his English skills, as he actually did listen enough to respond and his speaking was actually very good.  He was just a jerk is all.

After lunch, we walked through the market a little more and before I knew it he had lead me back to his car.  Market done.  See you.  Bye.

I can see this gaining culture thing is not going to be easy.  Almost everyone can spout off history.  Almost no one can tell me anything about Korean culture that I haven’t already read on the internet.  Anyone old enough to know or care about this living legacy can’t speak English.  Anyone who can speak English well doesn’t give a crap about anything that isn’t commercial youth culture.

Change was in the air today…

Seven Star, the funny older guy with the comb-over, was quite the celebrity today.  People kept coming in and out of the office and then there was always a lot of laughing to the point of tears.

Y tells me that the Vice Principal sent a note to everyone, chastising them for being bad employees because they would leave campus without signing out first.  (I guess these kind of notes/reprimands were traditionally on yellow cardstock, so even though it was an electronic note, it is still called a yellow card)  So Seven Star sent a yellow card back to the V.P., telling him he was a bad employee because he covers up his mistakes and embezzles money.  Only he also sent this to every employee AND the principal!  Seven Star has a lot of cajones, and the teachers are all boueyed up by this act of defiance.  There’s a coups in the air.

In other acts of standing up, I took a taxi to school today so I could get there early enough to catch the home-room teacher of yesterday’s boys class taking attendance.  But damnit, it is Friday and the students have to attend a church service a few blocks away.  I tell Y about why I want to talk to this home room teacher:

Yesterday, almost upon entering classroom 1-3, some boy started saying in falsetto, “be quiet!”  Soon a half dozen boys were all parroting some wrong (I don’t say “be quiet!” I say “shhh.”  or “keep it down”) characterization of me in falsetto.  I figured out who the boy was and glared at him, telling him that wasn’t okay.  But meantime I am trying to conduct a game with the whole class, so it is louder than normal and requires my MC’g, so if I want the game to progress I can’t be babysitting these jerks the whole time.  OK.  So it got better, but then later in the class the falsetto parodies of me started again.  I just ignored it and tried to have something resembling a lesson.

But last night at home, I stewed.  Because I’m freaking so disempowered as a teacher here.  My help is gone, goofing off somewhere, (he is like best friends with the principal) I can’t give the kid a bad grade, I can’t call his parents, I can’t discipline him.  So the only thing I could think of was to make a surprise appearance in his classroom, single him out in front of his beating-stick-weilding homeroom teacher, and let the whole class know it wasn’t acceptable.

Sometimes it’s very frustrating explaining to Y about any problem I have because she doesn’t quite grasp how tied my hands are.  I think she spent a long time trying to talk me out of doing this, giving me a lot of alternatives that, though might have meaning to a Korean teacher (because they CAN call home and they CAN mark down grades and they CAN discipline and they CAN lecture for an hour in a way that means something to the student, and they CAN push all the kid’s shame buttons, etc.) would have zero meaning if executed by me.  But she finally came around and helped me find the home room teacher and figure out when he would be in front of the class and to come down and translate for me.  (this was a compromise on my part, as I didn’t want to tell the teacher ahead of time. I just wanted to bust in during attendance and make a scene to have more impact)  As expected, I don’t think either the home room teacher or Y really got what the boy was doing, as I had a hard time explaining what mocking and ridicule was, so explaining just watered down how really offensive the boys’ actions were.  They mostly focused on my use of the word disrespect and left it at that.  In Kyung came by and I gave her a brief overview of the boy’s behavior, and her suggestion was “You should go to the homeroom and have the home room teacher discipline him.”  So that was validating.  In-Kyung was also the one who told me I should go to the church services, while Y didn’t think I should have to go.  I think if we could merge these two women together, you might have something resembling me.  I go to both of them for the validation I seek, get sympathy from both, almost always walk away feeling understood by only one of them, yet they are both very supportive.  I think it’s actually my co-teacher’s role to provide this kind of support – but I rely on this two smart and caring women instead.

Y, the home-room teacher and I, we all show up at clean-up time.  Surprised there are so many teachers, Assessing one of them is really pissed, and knowing this is serious, they all stop what they are doing.  I go and point out two boys, but then eliminate one of them.  I make the falsetto mocking sounds, and ALL HIS CLASSMATES start pointing in his direction, ratting him out, and he is nodding his head and pointing at himself.  Then I rip into how that is disrespectful, how that is unacceptable, how talking out loud is one thing I don’t like but it is NOTHING like ridiculing and making me a joke of the teacher.  That it is the worst treatment I’ve ever had in my life.  The boy says, in perfect English, “I’m very sorry.  It won’t happen again.”  And then I tell him it better not.  Y chimes in, “you must always respect your teachers” and then I throw in that I didn’t travel 5,000 miles to be treated so poorly.  We leave.  I have no idea if the teacher used his stick or not.

“Did you see him?”

Who?

“That boy – he was scared to death!”

Really?  Yes, I suppose he was.

The interesting thing to me is that the boy (large, tall, on the chubby side) is not one of those jaded too-cool types with attitude.  He’s just a nice boy who likes to make jokes and crossed the line, and he was probably drunk on the effect this had and giddy he could influence so many people.  Whether the Korean school system, in the form of his homeroom teacher, beat him afterwards or not, I am not too concerned about.  The only thing I cared about was seeing that look of remorse pass over his face.  I don’t believe this would have happened without the shocking impact of being shamed in front of his peers and his homeroom teacher.  If I had sent him into the hall or sent him to the teacher’s office to sit by my desk for a lecture as Y suggested, this would merely add to his celebrity status and fuel more behavior to impress his classmates.

These are my limits, and I will impress these upon everyone.  I’m not bending over for anyone, even if I am given no power.  I am not / will not be the English show.

On a less chest-beating, fist raised note, my evening class is a joy.  It’s always great to see a light go on in someone’s head, and the light that caught my attention this last class was when a girl thought ending racism was hopeless.  I explained that I was a racist, that we are all racists, that it is natural, and that we must fight that instinct within ourselves and appeal to our higher intellect.  We must recognize the racist within us and others, and through our own awareness we can reduce any negative racist impact we make.  The girl hadn’t thought that she could be a racist before.  Her head was nodding.  I am a teacher!  I love that.

Y has joined my teacher’s class, and I think she approves.  It’s not an easy class for them, as I set the bar pretty high, but I think it’s set up so everyone at any level can improve.  (I think some others will be joining part time as their schedule permits)  I think teaching small groups of adults is really interesting, because you can work more on getting to express what they mean to say, and what they think and how they thing is fascinating.

In two classes yesterday students said my class was their favorite.  And two girls came up to me asking if I knew the name of some actress and told me I looked just like her.  Some of the boys will loudy say, “hello teacher!” in the hall.  This is borderline mocking me, yet also a friendly test.  So I just smile, laugh, and keep walking.