A Stressful Week!!

Date: 6/21/2008

**Congratulations to my dear friends, Crystal and Max, for the adorable addition to their family--Mackenzie Chor!!! <3***

It's Saturday today, just got up from taking a nap. Man! I’m really a person who “dreams" a lot - literally. I have dreams every night, and I guess it's true about what they say; dreams are often closely related to our daily living and what’s going on in our minds. I've been dreaming a lot lately about my Korean kids, and interestingly, they talk to me in the several limited Korean words I know. Also, since I interact with my Korean co-teacher everyday, last night, I even heard her talking to me with her Korean-accent English in my dream. Honestly, I think because I hear so much "Korean-styled" English since I’ve been here, my English has been influenced by it big time. The so-called “Korean-styled” English is basically simple vocabularies used in incomplete sentences with incorrect grammar. I also realized that sometimes when I speak the “American” English, they do not necessarily understand, but they understand me better when I do the “Korean-style” English.

This week was a stressful week. Monday was the first time I wanted to QUIT since I started teaching in Korea. My throat still hurt, still coughing a lot, and still have running nose. Sometimes I get dizzy because of blowing my nose too often. I haven’t been feeling well since I lost my voice the 2nd week I was here. I thought it was a cold, but since it has continued for so long, I started to think it might be more adjustment related issues (i.e. adjusting to the new environment, diet and lifestyle).

Monday, the kids were so out of control (even my normally good classes were bad). They wouldn't listen, just kept talking among themselves, and being naughty, silly and playful. Classroom-management has been a big challenge for me because of the language barrier. The kids don't understand me and I don't understand them, so they take advantage of that sometimes and talk/chat in Korean in front of me. I tried different ways to discipline and manage the classes such as having them stand on the sides/or sometimes outside of the classroom and/or put their hands on their heads and/or raise them arms high. It worked for couple times for some classes, but it always turned out to be a big fun play for them. The point was to punish them and to feel ashamed to be called out from their classmates; however, when they thought it was funny, they actually thought it was cool to be stand out. I stopped using those methods because they no longer work.

So on Monday, I finally burst out with frustration in one of my classes and said "Guys! I can't do it like this! I can't spend most of the time doing classroom management! I have materials to cover!!!" Of course, they all starred at me with blank looks; I’m sure they had NO IDEA what I just said. Although it’s expected that I will have communication problems, but it’s getting more frustrating to me that I can’t understand them when they try to communicate with me.

Also, because of the age group I teach, there are often lots of drama going on in the classes. For instances, I already had at least 5 kids cried my classes in the past 2 weeks and some of them I had no idea what was going on. Sometimes I could sort of figure it out by looking at their interactions with other classmates; most of time was because of friends teasing, joking, or taking their stuff. However, because I had no idea what the other person said, I couldn’t really be 100% sure if what I assumed was correct. Sometimes, other kids in the class would attempt to explain the situation to me, but it’s hard because their English is very limited and my Korean is very limited. They would try to draw, but the drawings don’t really help in most of the situations.

I also had kids who would say something and suddenly ran out of the classroom and came back couple minutes later. Sometimes I realized they went to go get their books or something else from other classrooms, or needed to find something, but they couldn’t be communicated. After Monday, I had a talk with my Korean co-teacher since we alternate students. The kids normally behave better in her classes because there’s no communication issues and they see her as a “normal/regular” Korean teacher [sometimes I wonder how the kids see me and/or other native/foreign teachers in their heads], and we also discovered some kids act totally DIFFERENT in my classes and in her classes. For example, there were couple kids I could not shut them up in my class; however, they seem to be extremely shy and quiet in hers. We both were shocked to find out the differences; and once again proofed that kids are smart and real sneaky sometimes.

In conclusion, the method/system we agreed on was to take away one of their stamps as punishment for mis-behaving in classes. Each student has a stamp sheet, they get a stamp when they complete their homework on time or do well in class, and they can get rewarded for every 15th and 30th stamps. Therefore, kids love counting and collecting their stamps because they can get presents. By taking away the stamps would be taking away something they truly value; thus, it’s a good punishment. Although some kids don’t really care about the stamps; but it works on most of the students on most days. Also I realized they really hated when I write their names on the board, I guess they see that as a shame in their culture. I normally give them 3 warnings by writing their names on the board first before crossing out a stamp.

I also started being more strict and firm with them. For example, they would always ask me to let them go to the bathroom during classes, in the past, I would always let them go because I heard stories from other teachers that kids peed their pants during classes. However, I realized that sometimes they just wanted to go out and avoid doing work or being in class, so I started saying NO to every request. A lot of times, they would just forget about it and be fine till class ends; however, if a kid keeps bugging me to go, I would allow depending on situations because that might mean they REALLY need to go. It’s not easy being a teacher; especially sometimes you have to play “mind games” with the kids.