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| 7-3 Represent |
To say that I was eased into the transition from a relative
life of relaxation into that of a new school would be a total lie. As if joining a large group of well-established
friendships with a totally new way of doing things weren’t enough, I was thrust
right into the single worst week of the LCI calendar.
I first heard the rumor of upcoming Open Class on my first
day. In the tornado of both relevant and
irrelevant information that was hurled at me on that rainy morning, a few words
about Open Class came my way. I guess. I didn’t really think very much of it. At the time learning how to adapt (or more
accurately cope) with the overwhelming presence of kindie kids in my life
seemed much more pressing.
As time went by and one hectic day of getting everything
done blended (or crashed) into another day of not having enough time I got used
to hanging out with my kids. The
problems that were plaguing my life, problems that hassle everyone in every new
environment, had nothing to do with my kids.
To my surprise I found that I genuinely enjoyed my kids. Most of them.
Yerin is a doll, Nora is a sweet heart.
Jimmy might not have heard a single word I have ever said still makes me
laugh. Eric calls me Mr. Tom. All these kids make me laugh (well, except
for Kevo; he is kind of an ass hole as far as little kids go). Point is the kids are great but I found
myself struggling to stay ahead of paperwork and find the learning curve.
Then, suddenly everyone was panicking about Open Class and I
had a week to prepare. Briefly, I
entertained the idealist idea that I wouldn’t rehearse with my kids. I understood their parents were coming to
watch an hour of our 5 hour class. It
was in a meeting with all of the other foreign teachers, plus our Korean liaison
that I was informed that Open Class was not simply a look into what we do every
day.
Open Class is everything that is wrong with this
industry. It is an hour of nothing but
fraud and carefully scripted cuteness.
In this hour all children must speak equally. Their lines must be carefully memorized. The songs must be choreographed. The games must be colorful and props need to
be used at all times. These were some of
the things discussed. We should move
around a lot. Our liaison was telling
everyone to use a lot of “finger play” which, after some confused looks, was
discovered to mean a hand signal given to children to make them promptly shut
the fuck up without going through the routine of screaming at them.
This and a number of other things were said, including the
confession that the administration was aware that nothing about this class was
real. Departing foreign teachers
suggested aggressively that the fakeness of the class be done away with, that
the stress was too much and that it would be much more beneficial to have
parents simply observe a genuine class, but nothing could be done about this
year.
All of this came about because the first Open Class crashed
and burned and resulted in a pretty bad day for everyone and a room full of
parents who were angry that there weren’t enough props. Open Class solidifies the role of English
teachers in Korea more akin to a circus clown than an educator.
Also not that all of these rehearsals had to be secret:
parents wouldn’t be too pleased if little Yerin announced that she knew the
answer to the word problem because “we did this yesterday, and the day before.”
When it came time for my dry run with our liaison it was a
disaster. My kids wouldn’t stay still
and they wouldn’t shut up. While I might
have looked like I wanted to throw them out the window I couldn’t blame them
entirely. The whole ordeal oozed tension
and awkwardness. Making things, the liaison
does not handle stress well. Seeing that
I was bombing she seemed to forget it was a practice run and basically lost her
shit. She would get up and pace and look
through my papers. She yelled at kids
who played with her pencils. At one
point, flustered almost to the point of tears, she demanded to see the game I
would play. I handed her two identical
sets of cards that were to be part of a sentence building game and she promptly
shuffled them together, thereby fucking everything up. Her anxiety didn’t help and in the end
nothing productive came from that practice.
Instead her sole purpose was to make me and my kids nervous as
hell.
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Shortly after open class, we all decided it was best to disappear from
mainstream society. |
The practice left a bad taste in my mouth. In the days leading up to my Open Class I
couldn’t sleep. My anxiety levels were
through the roof. I stayed late to make
colorful (but pointless) props. I begged
my kids to be quiet and behave. Kevo, a
devious little guy, was screamed at daily for being a jerk to everyone. In our last practice he knees-upped Yerin in
the face while dancing to “Knees Up Mother Brown,” and he almost dislocated
Nora’s arm in the middle of “The More We Get Together.” Things weren’t looking good. In the end I settled on bribery. I would give them all candy (an extra gift
for Kevin if he wasn’t a jerk intentionally) if they did well and didn’t tell
their parents that there was nothing genuine about what they were going to
see.
Despite sweating profusely my Open Class went well. Even though my liaison looked as though she
was going to shit her pants the entire time (something that my new co-workers
assured me was her MO when in duress), nothing bad happened. The kids were cute which satisfied their
parents and I moved around like a buffoon which also satisfied their
parents. In the end the only complaints
were minor. The director said that the
only problem was that some of the kids took too long to answer my questions as
their answers weren’t totally scripted.
Another parent was worried her kid didn’t speak much. These can all be contributed to a sweaty
teacher trying to conduct a fake class and students surrounded by 20 adults
taking videos.
The only major problem came from Jimmy. Jimmy has some minor impairment. What it is is only rumor. He is a funny kid and makes me laugh often
but his progress is incredibly slow and he has to be watched constantly. Parents used to complain about him, I am
told, because they were worried that his presence in the class was detrimental
to their own kids. Kindie though they
are, my class is gifted. Everyone speaks
advanced English and they police themselves like the gestapo for any spoken
Korean. Jimmy has problems but even he
speaks only in English.
Jimmy and his mom came in late. It screwed things up. It threw the whole show off kilter for a bit
but we recovered. One of Jimmy’s issues
(along with every other kid) is that he will play with anything near him. Usually this is ok, sometimes hilarious. In gym he kept kicking everyone’s soccer
balls. He wasn’t doing it to be a jerk,
that’s just what he does. If a ball came
near him, his or anyone else’s, Jimmy kicked it as hard as he could in whatever
direction he happened to be looking in.
For this reason no kid was allowed to have his or her pencil
case in front of them. They had one
pencil (no erasers as these were useless: in this situation I marked every
answer correct and gave them a high-five even if they wrote “49” as the answer
to “2+3”) and an object. The object was
a prop. At a certain point I asked them
all to describe their objects using adjectives.
Jimmy had a tape measure.
Jimmy was the only one un-phased by a room full of adults and he showed
this by constantly playing with the tape measure. He was starting to become distracting but I
delayed saying anything because, well, that’s Jimmy. Also, the idea of disciplining a kid in front
of his mom was not something I felt like dealing with.
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| Cute kids. |
My liaison, however, did not handle it well. She stood up, walked behind Jimmy and grabbed
his shoulders and loudly whispered something that while she later claimed was a
very soothing “please stop,” was essentially a pretty aggressive “shut the fuck
up Jimmy or I’ll kill you.”
The aftermath was pretty serious. Jimmy’s mom flipped on the liaison and left
in tears. She skipped the parent teacher
conferences (thank god for me) and told the liaison that she was thinking about
pulling Jimmy out of school. She said
something in the manner of Jimmy goes to our school because we give him more
leeway than a normal school would. It’s
understandable as patience is sometimes lacking in some schools. Anyhow, the Jimmy Incident took a lot of
attention off of me. My performance was
ultimately forgotten and soon enough the nightmare was over.
