Intensives and Minnie

Summer is getting on here in Korea. At home kids have been out of school for at least a few weeks; here kids began their summer vacation yesterday. How do Korean school children celebrate the kick-off of Summer? Go to school!

I feel bad about my job sometimes. I feel bad that students and co-workers put so much effort into trying to communicate in English when it should be me that puts the greater effort into learning their language. Still, I am trying. I can say “I’m hungry,” “are you hungry,” “I’m tired,” “are you tired,” a few swears, and I can now count to four… sometimes.

I feel bad that I am profiting from the misery of little children. Who the hell wants to go to the English academy on their first day of summer vacation? For crying out loud I didn’t want to be there today. And these kids made it pretty obvious that they didn’t want to be there. I walked out of the office and found one of my favorite students crying. I thought perhaps he had gone and done something stupid (I have had to tackle him to keep him from trying to body slam the Smartboards). I asked Han what had happened and she said: “Nothing. He doesn’t want to study.”

I don’t blame the kid. It seems like that is all these kids do: study. They go to school every other Saturday and then go to a number of academies for math, music, English, whatever. We are open until 9 pm and for some of them we are not their last stop. Where they find the energy to do everything that they do is beyond me. Intensives are starting and I can’t even drag my ass out of bed for 9am.

Intensives. Before I came here I gathered that Intensives were a period of intense studying so that students passed some god of a test. In order to do this they spent more time at academies. This, I think is only part of the reason. Until sometime in late August our school hours are 9:30 am until 7 pm. Kids stay longer and our student body has increased by a good number. There is so much pressure for kids to succeed and get into the right schools that it is largely their parents dragging them to the academy. What is worse, the older kids come in earlier so that my first class of the day is now my last class. So now, instead of waking up early and going to school they get to wake up early and go to academy where they are greeted by me trying not to fall asleep on my desk.

This all seems like such a pain or annoyance, but its important to know that South Korea has the HIGHEST suicide rate in the developed world. The pressure of genuinely living in Korea is immense. Kids (and parents) want entry into the best schools. When I say that I am from Boston (more recognizable than Massachusetts) they ask if I went to Harvard and that I must be smart. I then usually hold my hand as high as I can and say “Harvard: there. My university: here” and make the sound of bomb falling to the ground.

So, I try to make it fun. I am a novelty here and I have no teaching experience so I do what I can. I try my hardest to tell when a kid is on the verge of a total meltdown. It is hard because even when a kid looks like they can’t possibly take in any more verbs or nouns academy teachers know that the mother will ask their kid what they learned. If the kid says “Oh, we played a game for 15 minutes” we could be in trouble. I already have two parents who want to come in and observe a class.

The parents (moms) are those of two of my favorites: Billy, who looks like a non-animated Chicken Little, and Minnie, the cutest little 8 year old ever. They are both smart kids. Hell, even the kids who are having trouble can speak bits of English. I am 26 years old, have been here for 3 months and can only count to four half of the time.

Billy’s mom speaks no English and just wants to see what my classes are like and that I do not cheat and speak Korean with him. This is what I am told and I understand. Minnie’s mom announced she wanted to observe my class an hour after Minnie left and probably told her Mom that we played games all class because she was starting to spread a little thin.

I like Minnie. She is smart and her English is impressive. I remember “interviewing” for placement in the academy and she was so quiet and shy. Now she constantly sticks her tongue out at me and locks me out of the class room when I go for water.  Every time she does this she looks through the lower porthole window of the yellow door and sticks her tongue out at me.

So, she is more advanced than kids a lot older than her. It doesn’t mean that she isn't a little child who can handle day after day of TO BE pounded into her brain because she is having trouble with it.

And she is having trouble with it. We have been going over past and present forms of TO BE for a couple of weeks now. She is starting to understand it more consistently but she is getting burnt out. She doesn’t smile or joke when she walks in anymore. She just sulks to the back of the class (she is the only one in the class) and plops down. When I walk in she looks at me and says “game?!” and I say no.

I don’t say: “well Minnie, I want to play a game with you because I am sick of doing this and we need a break. Only thing is I think your mom doesn’t think I am teaching you fast enough and I don’t feel like her complaining to my boss and having to deal with the consequences. If you mom pulls you from the school she will probably also pull your brother. That is a lot of money Minnie!”

Last week was particularly rough. I tried breaking things up. I let her play on the computer for five minutes but it was not enough. Every day was various forms of “Minnie, where WERE you YESTERDAY?” or “where ARE you NOW?” I try to do it different ways and make it seem fun but she is no fool. I made a game out of it once and she looked at me and said: “What!? This is game!? Real game?”

I told her that no, we had to keep going. She looked like she was going to cry.

The next day I didn’t have Minnie for class. I saw the receptionist wrapping a little Minnie Mouse purse in gift wrap. I asked her what it was for and she told me in a panic that she had forgotten it had been Minnie’s birthday the day before.

What a jerk. I almost made Minnie cry on her birthday.

So, today, at the start of intensives Minnie and I did absolutely nothing in class. I gave her a quarter from Mississippi that she seemed pretty thrilled with. I showed her photos of Mississippi and it took me a while to convince her that it was hers and that it was actually from America but her smile and laughter was back. She pointed to her eye to indicate she wanted me to make a squishy noise with my left eye (my eye is screwed up like that, but kids love it). She then whistled because she thinks whistling is her own freakish talent.  We played “Rock Paper Scissors” and “Heads or Tails” (Minnie wouldn’t flip the coin because she was scared she would lose it) and she wrote down her real name and I wrote mine. She now calls me Thomas and I call her Minnie because I can‘t pronounce her real name. Tomorrow it is back to TO BE and I will probably get yelled at for wasting a class with her but oh well.

If only proper adults could be won over by a quarter and my defective eyeball.

Oh!  You should all totally check out my buddy Marcus' site.  There is the first/only/last ever interview of yours truly.  Aside from being a cool dude, he you can find a million links to his various projects.  He is organizing a GREEN music festival complete with music and vendors that you should probably check out if you are in the Worcester County area.  On top of that he makes some pretty sweet shirts and plays in a band.  I once photographed a concert put on by Marcus at Tammany Hall at which my car was stolen.  I probably shouldn't have left my doors unlocked (or forgotten my keys ON THE CONSOLE) but when the cops found it it had a bunch of beer in it so go me.

What did I eat today: a tiny hamburger that was stored at room temperature for three hours that was pale beige and immediately made me sick. Kimbap. I am starving.