Friends, Family, Fulbrighters!
안녕하십니까 ~ Cheers from Changwon!
I
hope y'all are doing well and enjoying the change in seasons back
home. We've entered one of the most picturesque time of year here in
Korea - Korean Maple trees are splashed with rich shaded blends of amber
to gold making it difficult justify staying inside to write this
email. 안녕하십니까 ~ Cheers from Changwon!
I've just returned from a weekend Fulbright conference in the historic former capital Gyeongju (경주시). In between the soju-soaked reunion merriment, I prepared a presentation on research I've collected from my students and spoke in front of the 120+ ETAs. I and wanted to share an abbreviated version of the presentation with you here - if nothing else, I've included some colorful graphs~~~
About 8 weeks ago I arrived at Changwon Science High School (CSHS) early on a Monday morning. I toured the facilities and was contractually obligated to view classes for the day to get a sense of how they operated. The first period courtesy bell (read: symphony music) echoed throughout the halls, I found my classroom, and prepared to observe my first class. Of course, I was asked to do the exact opposite and teach. No biggie, I slapped my keychain into the computer and put on an overzealous, animated face. This is the sea of faces I saw. My students and I hadn't a clue how to gauge each other.
I paused
to smile at the acute reciprocal awareness my students and I shared. Today, we stared intently at one another
asking a series of questions, some out loud, some to ourselves. I got
the staple " How old are you? Do you know kim chi? Do you have a girlfriend? How could you get a girlfriend with that beard?" questions. Silently, though, we
all tried to figure out each other’s personalities, values and goals. How would the rest of the year go with me as
a teacher? How would we, together as a
class, turn this (sleeping student) at the break period to this (students
gathered) on a daily basis? At the core
of these surface level questions, we asked:
--> How
do we cultivate a meaningful space for personal development while improving our
English?
--> How
do our different cultural values and life experiences influence classroom learning?
Furthermore, the sociologist in me asked how larger societal and
economic trends had influenced my students in a way that I could simply
not perceive. I'll admit that my knowledge base of Korean society was
somewhat shallow before I arrived in July. Limited to tour books and
online news articles, it was no secret to methe economy had boomed in
the past several decades – the swells in capital and plummets in
unemployment are well documented. Indeed, by many quantitative
measures, Korea produces the smartest students in the world. Yet these
hallmarks of success may overshadow some of the most important aspects
of life. Korea has consistently scored lower on measurements of
happiness – whether we’re looking at suicide rates or self reported
levels of happiness for adults or high schoolers.
Given this well documented troubling juxtaposition, I couldn't help
but ask how I would navigate ethical teaching without formally
addressing some honest pressures my students face. I expanded my unit
planning beyond the scope of my limited teaching knowledge and
incorporated a former Fulbright researcher's work on increasing high
school student happiness into my curriculum. The "Project Haenbok"
(project happy) curriculum suggests that one way for students to
increase their happiness is to recognize their strengths and use their
strengths to accomplish tasks that are difficult for them using their unique strengths.
Why not?! Designed by two big names in the field of positive
psychology (Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson) The Values in
Action (VIA) strengths test serves as an operationalized assessment for
their “Character Strengths and Virtues Handbook.” - Think of it as
the positive psychology counterpart to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM). The idea behind having my students take
this test and positive psychology in general is that instead of focusing
on weaknesses, we would focus on the positives and what people are good
at. Instead of focusing on what is wrong with people, why don’t we
focus on what’s right with them?
For one whole class period, students partnered up and worked through
the somewhat high level English VIA strengths test. The test is a set of
120 statements with likert scale self-identifying response choices.
The test is available to take in Korean and English, so students were
never completely lost and were forced to translate together. The tests
took partners around half an hour to complete, and after receiving their
results, they wrote their top five strengths in their journals, on my
excel spreadsheet, and emailed me the results. I tallied up the results
of my ten classes and found that the top strengths of my students were
curiosity, love, honesty, kindness, and judgment. These results are not
earth shattering – love, honesty, and kindness are interpersonal
strengths, not actions based strengths, and are consistently highly
represented as top strengths worldwide.
Prudence
is one of my signature strengths, so let me speed through a few
disclaimers. First, I was working with a
small sample size (n=174) at a specialized high school for science students. I’m no psychologist – Please, I wanted to
make a lot of money after graduation…so naturally
I majored in sociology. I’m
also very new to Korea – My first bipimbap (비빔밥) was in the airport before hopping on
a bus to Fulbright Training. Statistics wise, I
collected and analyzed only the frequency of the top five strengths from my
students, meaning they are not truly weighted. I didn’t control for socioeconomic status, gender, age, or any
other demographic factor. These results
are likely shaded by the tests’ ethnocentric composition – values like
forgiveness, for example, are bound to be measured differently in every culture. Most importantly,
these results shouldn't be generalized to explain or judge values in Korean
society.
That said, I found comparisons of my students’ strengths with the top strengths in the US to be simply galvanizing.
This first graph is an overlay of my students’ strengths compared to
the top strengths reported in the US. You can notice the 3-4 red
outliers that represent areas where Americans report top strengths more
frequently than my students in blue. Conversely, the second one shows
the descending order of top American strengths and highlights the areas
in blue where my students’ top strengths outshine the American ones.
These graphs are worth a closer look, because they offer a curious
departure from research conducted elsewhere in the world. Whereas the
UK and the US reported similar top strengths and the US and Japan
reported similar strengths and weaknesses, the results from my students
diverge on a few key action-based strengths.
--> They
were thirteen times more likely to score their ability to self regulate as a
strength than Americans, far more prudent, had higher social intelligence, and
were on average more curious than Americans.
--> Conversely, Americans were more likely to report higher levels of fairness, scored overwhelmingly higher on self-reported levels of gratitude, and reported perspective to be a higher strength more often than my students.
Now, I hesitate to spin my wheels and make cursory judgments based on this limited testing. I will say that I believe the high levels of curiosity and prudence might be particular to my niche discipline science students – their curiosity and prudence helped get them to their intense science studies today. Instead, I asked my co teachers and students what they thought of the most drastic differences in between the reported American and CSHS strengths. They the most to say about gratitude and self-regulation.
Gratitude was the least commonly reported strength among my students. I found this perplexing because I felt the compulsory need to show my gratitude starting with advice in our predeparture manual. "Gift giving is very important in South Korean culture. You will create a positive first impression if you bring gifts for your school (Principal, Vice-Principal, and Co-teacher) and/or homestay family. Conversely, you run the risk of creating a very negative first impression if you do not participate in this aspect of South Korean culture." Indeed, about a week ago I bumped into a fellow Fulbrighter on the way back from a weekend bike trip as we each made our instinctive pilgrimage to the gift stand to stock up on regional chocolates.
It seemed to me that Korean culture placed a high value on gratitude. I was directed my my co-teachers and students to dig deeper: What actually matters for gratitude, the sentiment or the action?
--> Conversely, Americans were more likely to report higher levels of fairness, scored overwhelmingly higher on self-reported levels of gratitude, and reported perspective to be a higher strength more often than my students.
Now, I hesitate to spin my wheels and make cursory judgments based on this limited testing. I will say that I believe the high levels of curiosity and prudence might be particular to my niche discipline science students – their curiosity and prudence helped get them to their intense science studies today. Instead, I asked my co teachers and students what they thought of the most drastic differences in between the reported American and CSHS strengths. They the most to say about gratitude and self-regulation.
Gratitude was the least commonly reported strength among my students. I found this perplexing because I felt the compulsory need to show my gratitude starting with advice in our predeparture manual. "Gift giving is very important in South Korean culture. You will create a positive first impression if you bring gifts for your school (Principal, Vice-Principal, and Co-teacher) and/or homestay family. Conversely, you run the risk of creating a very negative first impression if you do not participate in this aspect of South Korean culture." Indeed, about a week ago I bumped into a fellow Fulbrighter on the way back from a weekend bike trip as we each made our instinctive pilgrimage to the gift stand to stock up on regional chocolates.
It seemed to me that Korean culture placed a high value on gratitude. I was directed my my co-teachers and students to dig deeper: What actually matters for gratitude, the sentiment or the action?
- “We have a gift culture that is ritualistic.
- ”“[When I received my last gift] I didn’t feel grateful at all! I knew [they] didn’t really care.”
- “There is an ambiguous line between gift giving and bribery.”
My teachers and students had these reactions,
suggesting that Korean society has experienced a recent evolution from
authentic gratitude to more ritualistic expressions of thanks. Indeed, one teacher went as far a to suggest
that gift giving – at least at our school – has had a problematic history with
bribery. In an effort to distance
himself from any doubt, our principal forbade gift giving among teachers and
staff during Chuseok holiday last month. Although
I’ve witnessed and partaken in showing my gratitude through gift giving, the
results from this test helped me begin a rich conversation about the meaning of
gift giving.
What
about self-regulation? The first week of
school I had a casual conversation about the new “standing desk” trend among
hip young professionals in San Francisco.
I joked that a friend of mine is nearly ready to tattoo “SITTING KILLS”
on their forearm. My co-teacher stared
blankly at my ignorant face and simply said, “When students stand, they don't
sleep.” I’m in a perpetual state of
astonishment with the dedication my students have for anything they commit
themselves to – whether that’s studying into the wee hours of the morning or
clearing Assassin’s creed 4 during the 20 odd hours they have off from school
on the weekend. There’s no question that my students are more disciplined than
I am, but it was only by asking my Korean students and teachers what discipline
meant to them that I could begin to understand the ambiguous line between societal-control
and self-regulation.
I
don't want you to finish reading this meandering email with overly
judgmental conclusions or broad sweeping generalizations; in reality I
just conducted pseudo science research using pseudo science
research. Rather, I conducted this strengths test with my students so I
could learn a little bit more about them. I wanted to and reflect on
how we share similar values and where my students on average excel. I
wanted to help them recognize what they’re good at and discover ways
they can capitalize on their unique aptitudes. This test helped serve as
a remarkable way to begin meaningful dialogue. Regardless of where we
grow up, it’s all too common to focus on our shortcomings rather than
our successes, our weaknesses rather than our strengths. Through
focusing on the positives, we can continue to find inspiration in
ourselves, and cultivate optimism and self-confidence in our
classrooms.
Thanks for giving this a read! If you'd like to take the strengths test that my students and I took, click here! In case you're curious, my top strengths (according to the test) were:
And of course, no one needs another email to read, so please send me a quick response if you'd like me to remove you from my lil' blast!
- Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
- Forgiveness
- Judgement
- Kindness
- Perspective
And of course, no one needs another email to read, so please send me a quick response if you'd like me to remove you from my lil' blast!
Cheers, until next time,
-Robert
PS - Check out the colors on these leaves! A mother-naturely nudge to get outside!
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