Teaching, Travel, and Thoughts

Friends, Family Fulbrighters – ສະບາຍດີ and 새해 복 많이 받으세요 From Laos!

Since my last update I’ve:

*Apricated in Australia

*Lingered lachrymose and a little lonely in Laos for NYE

*Ritualized layering up for the chilly Changwon temperatures (Read: Not in California anymore)

*Become a legal Irish citizen and secured a stylish claret EU Passport (aspiring Jason Bourne right hurr)

*Parsed through a combined 500+ drafts of student “speaking test” essays

*Coached and sang with my North Korean Defector students in front of over 150 guests

*Stepped up my Dad-joke game to include installations such as “Ah, kids, looks like we gotta amputate my gangrene hand!”

Why the two month update hiatus? What’s with all the travel? Are you finally cashing in on the last laugh for growing a warm, Korean faux pas beard as the temperatures continue to drop?  (Quickly-yes.  And associating myself with Santa was a hit for the once critical students.)  There are a number of exciting gaps to fill – I’ll do my best to be speedy and comical. 

Let’s start with some of my favorite quips from what my Fulbright friends will understand was somewhat of a chronic, crippling excuse of mine – the “speaking tests”

Joe: Eating Chicken in School Must Be Legalized – “While we are in school, we want to eat something delicious such as chicken. Because chicken is sooooo delicious, when we eat chicken we feel sooooo happy. Chicken is love. Chicken is the one belief of CSH students. Chicken is the food which is given by God. So, we like chicken. We want chicken. We love chicken. We must be allowed to eat chicken. Also, we are hungry while we are in school. At that when we are most hungry, we want to eat chicken so we can feel fantastic. We can almost see heaven.”

Minhye: Should Assisted Suicide Be Legalized? - It seems that you are sharing your life with your surrounding people. That’s why your life is not only yours. Actually, your birth is given from your father and mother’s hot night, so it could be a part of your parents’ as well.

Dave: Why Korea Needs More Strict Law - All people who live in Korea must obey a lot of written and codified rules. When they break these rules, they should be punished. But in Korea, there are three magic words that can surprisingly drop the intensity of the punishment, “I was drunken.” and “I’m a student.” “I was drunken” means that ‘I don’t remember about the accident clearly, and it wasn’t my intent”. And “I’m a student.” means that “I’m just a young human and I don’t know the world certainly, so give me a chance and mercy.”

These laughs represent the rare gems prospected from the interminable weekend stretches of essays that bled red with tracked changes.  During an odd month where I made the 4-5 hour bus trek to Seoul every weekend, I was the Korean equivalent of that one guy who leaves the reading light on in a dark plane cabin – hammering away on my keyboard illuminating the otherwise dark bus with suggestions to check subject-verb agreements that would eventually return to uninterested students.  It was a rough stretch, I have to admit.  However, the windfall from the testing process came from emails like this.  As any teacher would admit, the students’ love, energy, and humor help pull the finish line tape closer during those long stretches.  

By and large, the most exciting day for students and teachers alike was our “school festival”.  For reasons that perplexing from a western educational perspective, final exams end two-three weeks before the school year ends.  The cons are obvious – students care less about class, show up late, and are more inclined to test the teachers’ eyesight as cell phones begin to glide out of puffy jackets during class time.  The pros, however, are fascinating to juxtapose with what I often conclude about Korea’s harsh educational structure.  Whereas nearly every waking moment was formerly spent studying or passing out from sheer exhaustion, quiet hallways began to sport the faint sounds of music.  Classrooms floors began to shake with the synchronized rhythms of dance practice.  The last day of classes passed, and the school erupted with positive sensory overload – tasty food, mellifluous music and laughter, a symphony of smells emanating from student-cooked sugar pancakes and savory ramen.  And smiles - almost enough smiles to make up for the deficit that grew during the preceding months. Side note – you MUST watch the video I shot of my early graduating students finding out their acceptances.  We had about 50 students graduate, 5 of whom are attending Seoul National University with a mocking 1% acceptance rate and another 26 who are attending the MIT of Korea – KAIST.  Smart cookies here.

            The school festival was divided into two halves – the morning sported a series of collective classroom collaborations, the afternoon dedicated to a gauntlet of K-pop dances, songs, and awards (even fun has to be competitive here).  Each class was tasked with designing a station to entertain their classmates and teachers.  Most stations were dedicated to cooking – sugary treats, pancakes, rice balls, ramen, French toast, sausage, eggs.  Students sold their culinary endeavors and the money (about $600 in total) was collected and donated to a local orphanage.  The boys who goofed off in my second grade managed to get an OK to bring in laptops and playstations, creating their own game dungeon.  (Highlight of the PC room – watching teachers take over the video game stations from their students mid-battle to pull a sweet, reminiscent, “move aside kid, I’ll show you how it’s really done” antic).

The afternoon sessions took place in the school auditorium (equipped with extravagant movie theatre seating – which I needed for an event this long).  Each of the school’s 3 grades performed skits with varying levels of preparation.  PSY  - Remember Gangamn Style? – has a new hit out called “DADDY”, and my students rocked that one.  Check out the original music video here and the school festival rendition here.  There were a few runner ups – 2nd and 3rd place, which you can watch here.  TW: these students BUST SERIOUS MOVES.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That covers most of the “work” my students and I have been up to.  Now for the more personal stuff.  Here are the bullets.

*I’ve been traveling almost every weekend in an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of this grant year.  This sentiment is seasoned with my current vacillation that has me leaning towards spending my next year in the states. 

*Surprise, Korean is very difficult to pick up inductively.  Half out of guilt, half as a social experiment, I’ve joined a weekly Korean class filled with foreigners from Peru, Switzerland, Ireland, South Africa, and a healthy number of us Migook-Waegooks (American Foreigners; fun to say out loud, right?)

*I applied for a “Fulbright Korea Alumni Fund (FKAF) Community Grant” to give the overlooked, under-resourced school garden a make over.  Korea has a historically rooted (but contemporarily successful) agrarian affinity that I’m hoping to explore with a interdisciplinary (Bio-English) curriculum centered on reducing the cases of apian colony collapse disorder (CCD).  Tl;dr – the Pitzer kid got a few bucks to spend some time outside and plant flowers.  

*Working alongside a highly motivated cohort of Fulbrighters with backgrounds ranging from CS to med school, I’m working on the Fulbright Alumni Relations Committee to help design a little intra-grantee facebook-linkedin amalgamation designed to get this year’s cohort an extra networking avenue & jobs.  On a very related note, hi, I’m on the hunt for my next job in anything from entry level consulting to (even tangentially related) environmental business.  Please DO let me know if you hear any murmurs!

*Because of the chilly temperatures, I've accidentally become that dude from despicable me

  

I’ve been out of the states for more than half a year now.  I expected to gather my bearings, but ended up starting nearly from scratch.  Diet, daily routine, language, norms – it’s all so drastically dissimilar to the predictability I cultivated in college.  I spent 6 days visiting my family and must have started half my stories with “Well in Korea, they…”

Food: From my first update, you might remember the note about me grinning at my first meal in Korea – well, grinning at my sheer naivety.  Not much has changed in the following several months; just last week I emailed a former Fulbtighter admission counselor friend and couldn’t help share photos of the unusual, nameless food I’d had during the week.  The three constants are always 밥, 김치, 국- rice, kimchi, soup – along with innumerable side dishes featuring fermented or fresh veggies, meats, and rice products. I’m often too well fed, finding myself entering in playful kitchen stand offs with my Korean host grandmother to request smaller portions of rice.  “TOO LITTLE!” she’ll say in Korean.  I want to say “I AM A LITTLE”, but the joke doesn't translate.

Friends: I’ve made a few.  The majority of my daily interactions with non-Koreans are with friends from the nearby town Masan or on Jeju Island, although I’d say a big group of us get together every month or so in a cramped BnB for a little reunion (no matter where we’re placed!)  I’m branching out with the new crew in downtown Changwon through my Korean class – right before I left, I giggled at two classmates who starred in a community theater rom com play.  My Co-Teacher and I have finally broken the workplace-only friendship barrier, which I’m pleased to admit has afforded me time to play with his two dogs and indulge in the aspiring sommelier’s wine cellars (yes, the dude has two). 

We call ourselves the "Changwinners" Allana (r) and Anne Marie (l)

Future: A whirlwind two months ahead.   My last day of school was Christmas eve – I brought my steel-framed backpack still tarnished with rich red Ghanaian dust to school before hopping on a plane for a quick sojourn in Australia (knocked out 6/7 continents, on the hunt for an affordable way to get myself to Antarctica).  From there I popped over to Thailand then Laos where I’ve been since NYE, and tomorrow I head on a 9 day jaunt through Vietnam.  I’ll be traveling with a partner – a High School ETA from Masan who’s booked us on a Ha Long bay cruise, a motorcycle tour from Hue to Da Nang, and a spelunking spectacle through the tunnels of Ho Chi Minh (supposedly with a stop to fire an AK-47 as we found out this morning).  Exhale, inhale.  Jumping over to Thailand for 3 days, I’ll meet my sommelier co-teacher to explore his favorite areas followed by a too-quick 30 some hour reunion with the partner I spend almost every weekend exploring Korea with. 

This brings me to January 14^th, where I’ll make the most exotic and exciting leap of my break to Kazakhstan to visit my thesis advisor, professor, and friend Azamat.  Originally from the former Soviet state, he’s back home teaching at the country’s most impressive international school, Nazarbayev University.  The second semester elective sociology class “Contemporary Central Asia” course description caught my eye, and the class itself was far greater than the promised “Fermented mare’s milk, the oil curse, bride kidnapping, dictators, atheists, Islamic radicalism, pipeline routes, U.S. strategic interests and democracy promotion.” Time will tell, I’m excited.

There’s a lull of a full 12 days to fully shake off the inevitable hypnagogia back in Korea before I make another big move (literally) to Seoul for the month of February. I’m exceptionally lucky to have been offered a clerkship at Korea’s largest international lawfirm, Kim & Chang, where hopefully I’ll be more useful than I was at my first clerkship (read: coffee-boy-apprenticeship) Then, I guess I go back and teach another semester?  To me, that sounds outrageous!  I spent the first semester teaching a spinoff social science curriculum, and I’ll spend this second semester designing and teaching a unit curriculum centered on one of Changwon’s supposed core values of “environmental sustainability”.  Considering how well the light sociological research I conducted last semester went, I’ve been slowly digesting a number of published metrics for assessing environmental literacy and behavior and hope to juxtapose my students and the Fulbright cohort.  We’ll see how far any of these pipe dreams go.

Fun:   Texting is a thing of distant memory here, and we all use a smartphone app called “Kakao Talk” to keep in the loop.  Another speaking test essay that caught my eye, Yuyeon took my “How to write a hook” up to the plate and smacked a homer – “Brown speech bubble with a yellow background. With a cute sound, “Katalk! Katalk!” The top bar of the smart phone is twinkling. This is the alarm of message. Everyone will know what I’m talking about. Yes, this is Kakao Talk, which is loved by 95% of Koreans.”  I’d like to attribute the ubiquity and popularity of the app to the trademarked emoticon characters who do a damn good job at conveying the most emotions felt when living in Korea. My spirit animal has to be the dog, Frodo.

That about does it for now – I’ll be off the grid for a few weeks but will try to throw together a brief photo tour of my travels once I land back in Korea.  As always, if you’d like to have one fewer email to read now and again, let me know if you’d like to be removed from this list!

Much love, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,

-Robert

Attempts at Quantifying Differnce

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. 

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.

True, my students share similar top strengths of honesty, kindness, and judgment as Americans, while finding zest, spirituality, and humility to be areas of improvement, but take a look at some of the most stark differences.

--> 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? 

• “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:

1. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
2. Forgiveness
3. Judgement
4. Kindness
5. 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!

My Semi-Charmed Changwon Life

안녕하세요! Cheers from Changwon.

Since my last update, I’ve:

-->Stumbled through just under 80 hours teaching English

-->Become local locomotion savvy between buses, bikeshares, and a new whip

-->Shot my weekend at a sleepover SAT composition retreat

-->Blown minds with my mad chop-stick skills

Let’s start with my contractual duties – teaching English. 

During the course of my senior year, you may have been (un)lucky enough to hear me share my post grad plans.  Better captured as a cluster of buzzwords, I’ve been telling friends, admission guests, and interviewers that I hope to eventually peruse an MBA and/or and MEM (masters in environmental management) with the dream career of corporate sustainability consulting.  Those brave and curious enough to wave away this lofty cloud of progressive jargon (or pressed me before I was obliged as a senior to have an impressive elevator speech prepared about my future) might know that I’ve always considered teaching high school a potential career option.  I’d daydreamt of teaching sociology, photography, and environmental science at a small high school, shoving the prospect in my mind for something trendier and more prestigious. 

I caught myself juxtaposing this fantasy with my starkly different reality – teaching a different subject in a different country to very different students.  I teach between 1- 6 classes, Monday-Friday at Changwon Science High School. There are 174 students who spend M-F studying and living at the school, often getting around 5-6 hours of sleep a night.  Ten 50 minute periods constitute the bulk of my class load, eight classes divided among 160 first and second year students, another two classes divided among the small senior class of 14.  Then there’s a daily conversation class (haha sorry lunch “hour”), two English professor classes, and one class for non-English professors.  The change in between is captured by lesson planning, private tutoring a student who’d lived for 4 years in Chicago, preparing students for international science competitions (I’ve got two in Italy this week!), and proofreading tests and magazine articles.  My apologies for all the numbers – osmosis of the omnipresent STEM mindset is taking place. 

Aptly named, the STEM focus at Changwon Science High School means English is at the bottom of everyone’s totem pole.   The slant for science and insignificant role of English has a drastic effect on my role as the native language teacher.

The Positives:

·  (near) free reign over my curriculum – I’m teaching a semester long course on improving levels of happiness specifically tailored for HS students in Korea!

·  I’m textbook free.

·  There’s little institutional pressure to achieve specific grammatical ELRs.

·  A longer winter break – Who would want an ENGLISH winter camp at a science high school?!

The Negatives:

·  Mixed levels.  English classes are determined by age, not ability – I have one table where a student who lived in Canada for two years sits across the student who routinely yells at me, “TEACHER I LOVE YOU….BUT TEACHER I CAN’T ENGLISH”

·  English class is seen as a break from their otherwise science-packed schedule. This affects everything from motivation to sleeping in class. 

·  Requests for supplies, testing days off, etc. are heard last from the English department. 

·   Tl;dr – English serves a novel role for most everyone besides the English teachers. 

Everything from classroom management to the overarching benefit (or lack thereof) I bring to the students is specifically tailored to the unusual scholastic situation of my 174 future science leaders.  It’s clear that I might never grasp the dedication and pressure Korean students (and certainly those on science tracks) have to study, I’m slowly identifying the clues.  Some are more obvious than others.  During the first week, co teacher and were discussing health trends in Korea and the US.  I offered my thoughts on “standing desk” trend in the US – something to increase blood flow and calories burned.  I was later led to the corridor of standing desks outside the study hall where students who fall asleep while studying are instructed to stand and continue working past 1am.  One English teacher in her late 40s has a head salted with grey hair.  So does the boy in the front row of my Thursday morning class.  I’m often torn between making sure each student speaks up alone at least once per class and making sure the students have a mental break – a moment to focus on sleep or their emotions rather than the homework they try to sneak beneath their journals. 

In order to better grasp the degree and nature of the educational pressures my students face, I know that I’ll have to develop a better understanding of what happens in classrooms other than my own.  How do other teachers behave, and how do they shape the lives of their students?  To explore this question, I’ve adopted a “Yes Man” persona.   “Want to play volleyball weekly with the other teachers?”  “How about spending the weekend making SAT questions for the upcoming practice test?” “I think it would be a good idea to get to know the other teachers over soju and beer after class.”  Yes! Sure!  내!

Understanding I’m underqualified to assess the pedagogical efficacy of the Korean Educational system – let alone become an agent in it – I jumped at the opportunity to serve as the native English reviewer for the Gyeongsangnam Province practice SAT conference.  The two-day event was held at Royal Hotel in Bugok 부곡 – a former vacation destination famous for natural hot springs. While initial investment in the town led to the construction of dozens of motels, developers overestimated the town’s potential popularity.  The Bugok hotel infrastructure reflected a boom frozen decades ago.  Given the town’s history, inferable financial struggles, and relative isolation, the location was perfect to house the influx of test-prepping teachers. 

The 13 hour English section preparation that took place Saturday was simply fascinating.  Teachers are only allowed to draw passages from a nationalized “Educational Broadcasting System” (EBS) textbook.  The theory behind publishing the material that 70% of the test would be composed of ahead of time is to alleviate the financial burden on families to send their children to afterschool tutoring in English.  Of course, I would argue that students would then focus on memorization rather than comprehension, and the actual goals for testing are brought into question.  After spending the morning reviewing selected passages and corresponding test questions that teachers had previously prepared, the group of ten or so English teachers gathered together to express their concerns and critiques.  I had too many to count.  While I only had stylistic critiques on some passages, other passages were painful and downright confusing to read.  Riddled with subject-verb disagreements and unnecessary gerunds, trudging through such erroneous passages was in itself a trial in skimming for contextualization. 

With the test bleeding from my edits, I joined the circle of teachers to discuss the minefield.  Although we were all taught English, the meeting was held in Korean.  After five minutes, I was asked to give my opinion for the first question.  I delivered my diagnosis – One subject verb agreement, an awkward phrase, and a run on sentence.   The group paused, then moved to the next question.  Misuse of a proposition, a missing article, and another run on.  Another pause.  “James, I’m sorry to tell you this, but we are only here to discuss if the answers make sense,” a veteran in the program smiled politely.  Almost daily, this was the kind of culture shock I encountered that is almost impossible to prepare for.  It’s not about homesickness or adjusting to odorous cuisine, but about more ancient values that seep into more modern systems that go unnoticed until they’re experienced.  One teacher jokingly called the EBS textbook “the bible” – “it’s a sin to edit it,” the group chuckled.  Out of 45 questions, we did end up making a handful of integral edits to the EBS text in addition to the test questions.  I learned that to change the text is viewed as insulting to someone higher up.  Even in this professional setting – where the quality of the work produced would directly impact thousands of students – the unofficial priority was to help save face.  By the end of the conference, I stood my ground on a few irreconcilable passages and do believe the team helped create a test that was passable (in both senses of the word).  I never would have anticipated, however, how large a role culture would play in the process. 

~~~~~

Outside of the classroom, I’m learning more about Korean culture by stumbling through it.  Yesterday I presented gifts wrapped in towels in celebration of Chuseok (추석) and later but the head off a fried “money fish” while out drinking with my host father.  I have the choice of goldenrod yellow water infused with barley or self-boiled from my lil’ electric kettle as my choices for potable water in the house.  I’ve become a NUBIJA bikeshare regular and am constantly in denial of the fact that that I’m juuuuust a little too tall for the highest seatpoast setting.  My life is at the same time beautifully straightforward and wholly complicated.  I’m finding success in my contractual teaching duties but am required to use a significant degree of brainpower locate and purchase some purell, tape, and white out (the lifeblood and currency of my school.) 

My freshman year of college, I made sure to take advantage of at least free consortium lectures a week.  I wrote my college essays about how I would digest several documentaries on various topics a week.  I’ve got a genuine appreciation for learning (for the sake of learning).  It used to be something I felt that I needed to seek out.  Here it’s unavoidable.  Every day’s a new set of lessons, new course material.  Although I’m a teacher 5 days a week, I feel more like a student every day.

Familial Buzzing

Dinnertime.

Venga a comer.

식사.

Whether in Costa Rica, Changwon, or the home I left in California, being called for meals has meant that I’m part of a family.  The depth and complexities of my integration into a new home is difficult to unpack, if not impossible.  However, the structural fact is that I am called for meals and fed just like the youngest family members when the food is ready.  Sharing meals together is often considered a basic element of homestay life.  Etiquette, duration, and the array of foods I don’t know the name of vary – but sitting with people who have welcomed me into their homes and lives remains the same. It’s an honor, a privilege to be a part of this clear signature of courage and warmth.  

At the same time, providing a place to sleep, water to bathe with, and food to eat don't necessitate love and true familial integration.  In the culture I have grown up with, signatures that a guest is wanted, not just welcome, include optional and often personal commitments.  Sharing raw feelings, dissolving overly polite guest treatment; treating a guest as nothing more or less special than anyone else in the family.  Until I reach this stage of informality, I feel like I’m overburdening my hosts.

“¡Deja de beber esa cerveza mientras conduciendo!” Lela piped in from the back seat as Tista swung around a steep turn.  Stop drinking that beer while driving! “Tranquila, tranquila” Tista grinned in the rearview mirror at his wife.  He finished the can of Imperial and passed it to the crowded back seat.  I held my unopened can wet with condensation between my legs and attempted the impossible feat of smiling at both of my host parents.

            

            Finding the line between the point where a family tolerates or accepts you as a family member captures so much of my conscious mind.  In Costa Rica, this little vignette was one of those unmanicured situations where I felt included by default.  The veil of familial professionalism and composure discarded, my host parents argued in front of me and for a moment may have forgotten that I hadn’t lived with their relationship dynamics my whole life.  Or maybe I had crossed over the line of overprotectiveness and tolerance and shifted to the realm of just another member of the family who was expected to roll their eyes and look out the window.

            “I LOVE YOU MY WIFE I LOVE YOU”, my host dad 전종구slurred in broken English as he pawed at 좍민정.  My host mother swatted back and kindly said “He will not remember this tomorrow.  He is drunk.”  A flashback to the car ride with Tista and Lela, I had two host parents who were half expecting validation from their guest, their adopted family member.  I had been playing Simon and Garfunkel on my phone and quietly queued up Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy.  

            “Were you scared of our fight last night?” my host mother좍민정 asked me over breakfast the next morning.  My host dad grinned into his mushroom rice soup.  “He is a happy drunk,” 좍민정  continued.  “…other fathers, when they drink, they sometimes come home and beat their wives and children.  My husband is happy.”  My host dad interjected “I drink at home because I love my family.”

            The transition period for living with a new family is delicate for all parties.  I’m overly polite, the parents are overly nurturing, the children are scared and curious.   It would be foolish to think that I’d ever come close to fully integrating into a family, especially when my hosts are speaking 98% in English and I’m interjecting with the little Korean language I can haphazardly include.  But after a short period of time, I feel the same veil of politeness, tiptoeing, manicuring has begun to dissolve.

What's my age again, what's my age again?

“HOW OLD AM I?” Everyone’s curious for the answer.  The students gasp and immediately begin to discuss a range; my English teacher colleague just happens to walk by the classroom and considers this to be the perfect moment to observe my class.  “17!” the joking boys at the front of the class giggle.  17 in “Korean age” (tack on an extra 2 years) is fifteen in “American age.”  “26!” “34?” “25.”  With an emphatic slap on the touch screen, the PowerPoint advances, and the students gasp and begin to whisper.  “I’m 23!” I boom at the class.  I explain my choice to tell the students my age is two fold  - it diffuses the first or second question many Koreans will ask when meeting someone new, and at the age of 23 I am not so far removed from high school life.  I want to frame myself as relatable.  I poke fun at and mime the 120º, 90º and 45º bow variations that are required when meeting older and therefore more respectable people.   It’s a good laugh for the students, whether they could understand my English explanation or because this young white teacher is trying to breach a deeply ingrained cultural belief and just doesn't get it.   Satisfied with his observation, my colleague exits the back door and would later ask me to take all of his Friday classes.  

Quiet before...the quiet

I think the beard throw them

Joker class - the boys on the right all picked American nicknames for class

            Trying to grapple with the cultural positionality that accompanies my age is one of many internal dialogues that have clouded my head space over the past week.  Since I last wrote, I’ve A) awkwardly meandered through an introductory lesson with over 150 of Korea’s brightest science students, B) slowly chewed through a handful of Korean-only dinners with my host-grandmother and her two rambunctious grand kids, and C) had squid soup for three consecutive meals.  In each scenario, or maybe just constantly, I’m acutely aware of what it means to be me: a young (but not too young) white American male teacher; someone who is undeniably foreign teaching, speaking, and only able to understand a foreign language. 

Before I use this space to make judgments about what I believe my role could be here in Korea, let me back up and share the highlights of my first week in Changwon. 

When I arrived at the office on Monday morning, the shock of my new job finally hit me.  Hundreds of new faces, bowing and offering the most formal greetings I could butcher in Korean, and finding a tired second year class waiting to be taught during first period.  I had arrived at the exact moment that formal evaluative parties were confident that I’d find success.  I felt undeserving and disoriented, yet excited. 

             Symphony music echoed through the hallways as the weary yet surprised students filed into the classroom.  I had queued up Beck’s Guero, which softly bumped in the background.  The second bell chimed, class began, and I tried masking my shaky voice with an artificially loud one.  Lesson objectives sounded modest enough – elicit student input and investment in getting to know me, convey the purpose that they were here learning English and why an American was slotted into the native teacher rotation, and to gauge English ability through quizzing students’ writing, listening, reading, and speaking abilities.  The range of English ability and self confidence ranges greatly – one student lived in Canada for 4 years and is practically fluent; at the same table, one student could do nothing more than copy down one of six questions from the board.  “Scaffolding” a lesson – making it accessible to language learners of all levels simultaneously – will be the name of my teaching game.

In between classes, I frantically sifted through hundreds of google drive documents; old lesson plans from former ETAs, and planned what lessons I wanted to teach.  Little resonated with what I wanted my students to gain from my presence here.  Lucky for me, there are some double-edged conclusions of teaching at a science high school.  Because science takes precedent – for admission, for curriculum weight, and administrative oversight – I’ve been given the green light to teach whatever material I see fit as long as I incorporate a speaking test that’ll make up 10% of their overall grade.  Roughly, I plan to spend the first semester focusing on happiness; defining, measuring, and improving happiness for a demographic statistically in dire need of such direct mental health management. The challenge will be to authentically engage the students and “sell” the idea of happiness…through the subject they devote the least attention and effort to.
            Teaching means learning.  Each class has a distinct personality and collective energy.  I try to read it quickly and match the high intensity classes with a booming voice – the rogue biology teachers patrolling my hall slowly slide the traditional classroom doors shut as they pass.  For the low energy classes, I over-accentuate my gestures and darn a jester’s demeanor.  It’s been taxing (especially for that Friday marathon), but validation for my efforts is validating.

Third graders (high school seniors) have a reputation as morose, depressed, and unmotivated students.  Traditionally, students only attend their first and second year of high school before graduating early and attending some of Korea’s top universities.  As I understand it, students are only allowed to apply to 3 schools during their first application cycle.  Rejection means returning to high school, reapplying, and facing the flurry of external disappointment and internal self-doubt.  Whereas the first and second year classes have 80 students each, the third year class is composed of 14 students. 7 boys and 7 girls – double the number of third years from previous years.  These students are forced to broaden their university application list (re: safety schools).

                Again, as the youngest teacher, I get the least desirable slots for teaching.  After one day off from boarding school where the students most likely self-studied at home, a short night’s sleep, and mandatory 6:30-7:30 taekwondo class, students entered my classroom five minutes early!  And then slept.

"Good luck!"

The sight of students passed out before I even begin teaching is unsettling at best.  Figuratively rolling up my sleeves, I shook the room with an artificially loud voice, painted the entire classroom’s floorspace with my pacing and prancing, and ended class  with students far from their previously catatonic states.  The English department chair had observed this class expecting to witness my “epic fail”.  As we returned to the department gyomoshil, she calmly told me she’d lift her observation duties for my classes.  Quiet pride, small victories. "By the way, you're 23 in American years. In Korea, that means you're 25."

Rejoice - pictured passed TFO, third from the left, now revived.

I'm supposed to be a state department "cultural ambassador".  

Here's a moment of blink 182 zen my student's appreciated me sharing.

   And that's about the time she walked away from me 

Nobody likes you when you're 23

...

My friends say I should act my age 

What's my age again? 

What's my age again?