new teacher confession

As teachers, we have a lot of competition for the attention of each student in the classroom. Our main obstacle in achieving a secure hold on the attention of a student is the student himself and his cohort of six or seven classmates. In an English school classroom, we’ve learned to expect to hear quite a bit of Korean spoken. And for some reason, this surprised us, it took some getting used to. We’d heard that Korean students have high respect for the teacher, and so we made the assumption that they wouldn’t take advantage of the fact that we know no Korean.

It is hard to expell the native language from your four classroom walls, because it’s a safe out for the students. We don’t know more than ten words of Korean, so the kids confidently get around us by saying who knows what--most likely cursing us to the core--or seeking a translation from a friend, a piece of gossip, a little joke here and there. When it becomes an issue is when they respond in Korean to an inquiry from us, their teachers, in English. Some students, even in advanced middle school classes, beg for me to ask the question or reread the last sentence in Korean. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t,” I say, “this is English school!”

There’s another thing pulling at the attention of these students as we pull back in the direction of learning English. It’s a sweet, or savory, or at times strange mix of the two, in the form of candy, chips, crunchy things, etc, snacks in other words. Now, for many of these students, they’ve already been in school all day, some will be going to another specialized hagwan for math or music or Chinese characters after English class, so as long as they don’t go overboard, I permit some light snaking in my classroom.

Sometimes, however, it does create a big distraction, as it did a few days ago, in one of my first sessions with a class I have twice per week. After a steady grinding downward progression, students were interrupting quite often, only about a third were paying attention, and shrimp-flavoured chipesque-doodles and dayglo candies were being handed around like currency. I stopped the lesson and declared an end to the class’ candy trade. I walked around, singling out kids, having them put snacks in their bags. 

Thinking I’d restored order, I began the lesson again. But I could hardly understand the next student I called on, and it seemed like the reason was he was either chewing gum or he was sucking on a hard candy. I was furious, at the end of my rope. I grabbed a disgarded piece of paper from the stack I use as scrap, walked over to the student, a shy looking kid who I don’t know well, hardly the worst of the bunch, held the paper under him, and asked him to spit out the candy. He looked up at me, blinked rapidly. There was quiet in the room followed by murmurs. The students were baffled as to what I was doing; I wasn’t sure either at this point. I asked him again and again to spit out the candy. Again, confused looks around the class. I soon realized that the kid wasn’t eating candy at all, he had some serious braces, which made it difficult for the words to come out clearly.

I could’ve died. I shuffled back to my desk and resumed the lesson, hoping that the kids just assumed I’d had a little mental attack, and now their teacher was back on track.

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Speaking of getting back on track, we promise to start updating a bit more regularly. Hopefully you can empathize, it's our first month in a brand new world. We're taking it all in, feeling out what it means to us, what kind of home it will be, etc. 

And photos next time! We have scores.