No Room to Grow

While talking with one of my brightest students about her high school and college and job plans, her hopes and dreams, I told her to just find the thing that makes her happy, and try to do that as a job. She looked a me for a moment, a look of confusion on her face before saying:

"I don't have that."

In our whole conversation about job goals, I never once heard any hint of what she would enjoy doing. I know what her dad wants her to do, what her teachers want her to do, and she certainly knows which jobs are most difficult to get and which pay the most. But apparently there's nothing she loves to do.

This makes me really sad.

I know it's rather old hat to complain about the harshness of the Korean school system, but I'm going to jump right in regardless. These are the things I witness on a daily basis. This is the stuff I talk with my students about. I don't know how to fix it, but I can at least give a view from the inside.

Since I teach all three grades of middle school, I'm able to see the way my students change as they move up through the school, and what I see is...not encouraging. My first years are fun, often too noisy, but braver. Or at least less afraid. More likely to shout out any answer they can think of, even if it's one word. By second year, they're less like kids, definitely turning into teenagers, with all of the accompanying difficulties. They seem more shy, less likely to answer unless they know they're right. By third year they seem almost...broken. If it's not on the test, they don't want to hear it. They're already thinking ahead to high school, to college, and all the tests that are ahead of them.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a super liberal, hippie-infested small town, with parents who were inclined to support whatever I decided to do with my life, so long as I wasn't actively hurting myself. I've never been good at studying things I'm not interested in (I lack discipline, you see), so fortunately I was in an environment that allowed me to take the choose-your-own-adventure option. In university I was able to mess around and take all sorts of different classes before landing on the thing I was most interested in.

Because of my own experiences, I find the Korean system really hard to relate to. I was never pushed to take great stock in my grades or test scores, instead focusing on participation, critical thinking, and what I learned. Some of my favorite and most valuable classes were ones where I ended with the worst grades, but I don't mind. So when my students come to me complaining about "bad" test scores and show me 95%, 90%, even 98% (!!!) I'm flabbergasted. 95% is bad? What universe are we living in?

Was anyone surprised?

I saw the above graph floating around on English teacher sites a while back, and while Korea's place did not at all shock me, seeing it put so plainly was disheartening. It's well-documented that South Korea has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD, and considering both the pressure put on students to perform and the lack of mental health support in and out of schools, I'm not at all surprised. It's depressing to be stuck in a system that I don't support, but as only one person, and an outsider to boot, there's not a lot that I can do personally to change the system. So what's a girl to do?

My strategy is tied to my core reason for teaching: if I can make an impact in just one person's life, then I've accomplished something worthwhile. I'm never going to be the person storming the castle, making big changes--I know that much about myself. So, I stick to the little things. As foreign teachers, we have a different perspective, as well as a measure more of freedom, than our Korean counterparts. I say use that.

The biggest thing I see lacking in my students' lives is the chance to be creative. Everything is about memorization, lists, one right answer. Perfect grammar is more important than the ability to communicate. Actually, one of my students who is now in high school put it perfectly:

"In science we only learn, without any explanation. Just memorizing. I like English, and learning. In Korea, people don't like to accept something different." 

All of this to say, creativity is one of the most important things to bring into the English classroom. My lesson style varies from week to week, but the one consistent thing is creativity, even the smallest bit. It's not always easy; sometimes it's even painful. Oftentimes my kids are so accustomed to finding the One True Answer that when there isn't one, when any answer that suits them is correct, they get lost. They get confused. Blank stares and cries of "teacher what?" abound. But then, once it clicks...magic is not too strong a word.

When I see a student's face light up with the realization that they can write anything, that they can choose their own response, that makes it worth the planning, the powerpoints, the ages spent explaining what to do. Either despite, or because of, the dearth of chances to express their creative ideas, my kids manage to come up with some of the most imaginative and interesting things.

I'm all about small changes, small impacts, ground level work. The Korean school system has a long way to go before it stops hurting the students struggling their way through it, and if I'm honest with myself, there's not a lot I can do to hurry it along. But like I said: if I can help one student to realize there's more to life than lists of facts, that you are not your test score, I'll be satisfied.

Summer English Camp Report Day 1: The Power to Make Anything Chicken

One of the hallmarks of teaching English in Korea is the often dreaded summer and winter "English Camp". What is an English Camp, you ask? In it's most basic form, a camp is a combination of daycare and conversation club. It's like English class minus any serious studying. If you plan it right, it's actually really fun.

Now, the name camp is a bit misleading. Before I started teaching I always thought of camp, especially summer camp, as a place where you go for a week or longer and stay overnight and whatnot. In the Korean school system, though, it's just a name for extra classes in various subjects. Cooking camp, guitar camp, English camp, science camp, you name it. Some camps go on for most of the vacation, while some are only a few days long.

I did a winter camp back in January that was 6 days long, but my camp for this summer was mercifully only 3 days. It's hard to keep a bunch of middle school kids interested in one topic for much longer than that. It's also hard to come up with enough material, so my strategy is to choose a theme and just run with it. For my previous camp I framed the camp around telling stories (written, visual, musical), but for this camp I decided to capitalize on the hype around all the recent hero movies and structure my camp around super heroes. Also I'm a giant nerd so. Camp is about having fun more than actually studying hard, so the best thing is to choose something you enjoy, that the students will also enjoy, and just play with them for a few days.

Eternally Marvel biased. No regrets.

The nice thing about having a theme is that it allows you to do all kinds of really different activities without them seeming too fragmented. By uniting each part under the umbrella of superheroes, it all becomes a lot more cohesive.

As I said, I had three days of camp, and 4 class periods each day, so that means 4 activities for each day. For the first class on the first day, I figured I should start out slow. Some of the students knew each other, but some were from different classes, and all of them were sleepy and shy, so right off the bat I got them standing up and moving around. I learned this game from another teacher, and it's a lot of fun, even if the students hate you for it. Basically, you go around in a circle, and each person says their name, their favorite color, and does some kind of silly movement and sound. Then, everyone repeats your name, color, and the silly movement. I like this because it's simple language that even my lowest levels can manage, and everyone gets to be a bit silly together. I also had them play the Baskin Robbins 31 game, and a couple other easy little games to get their brains awake and thinking about English.

Second period was when we got down to business with my sweet Prezi on superheroes. This was probably the hardest bit, since I had a lot of vocab to introduce about superpowers and whatnot, but my kids were total troopers. After introducing a few famous heroes and common powers, I had them work together to fill out a crossword puzzle. I like this kind of activity, because while some of it may be too easy for the higher level students, they get more practice by helping the lower level students, and it saves me a lot of work. Why do all the work when you can get students to teach each other? A lazy teacher is a smart teacher.

Names are hard to spell.

The next part was probably the bit I was most looking forward to: Make Your Own Hero! I'd given them the vocab they needed, I suggested the grammar they could use "I can/I have/I'm a hero because" and set them free. They're all so creative, but I so rarely see them allowed to use that creativity in their regular English classes, so giving them that chance is always a priority for me. Even my more quiet students got really involved in this activity. Some were more focused on the writing, some on the drawing. Some really seemed to reflect their personalities, and some were just silly.

Hard at work!

 I don't usually use dictionaries in normal class, but in the context of camp I feel like they're really useful. We're working outside of the book, and there are a lot of situations when the students need to find words that I have no way of knowing. Plus, it gives them the power to seek out information on their own, which I think is really important.

Some heroes are simple.

Some are funny.

Some are absolutely amazing.

After they made their heroes, I had them interview each other. Usually when I do interview activities I give them a set of questions, but for this I had them write their own questions. Some students went pretty basic "What's your name? What is your power?" and some were pretty funny "Do you think you're beautiful?" or "Do you want to eat pizza?" When I'm working with so many different skill levels, I like to keep the activities open-ended. Lower level students can write simple questions and answers while higher level students can do more complicated things. Literally had a couple students that are almost fluent all the way down to a couple students who are still working on the basics. It's a nightmare but it's also fun.

After all their hard work, I figured that the final class period of the day should be a game, so I jimmied a Guess Who game I got from someone else into a superhero guess who game because I'm a lazy jerk. All in all, the first day was a roaring success. It's always a bit hard to get them talking at first, but I was very pleased with the outcomes.

Stay tuned for day 2: The Ongoing Adventures of Chicken Girl.

How to Talk to People in Korea

AKA Slow Motion Teacher Talk.

It's a disease.

The first symptom, as you might guess from my subtitle, is slower speaking speed. Unsurprisingly, if you speak quickly to someone in a language they aren't super comfortable with, they won't understand you. It's the same for me with Korean. If someone mumbles or talks too fast, I can't catch anything, but if they slow down for me, suddenly a world of comprehension opens up for me.

When I first started teaching, I was nervous. When I'm nervous, I speak more quickly. I think a lot of people do this. In an ESL classroom, though, fast talking is not gonna fly (though it is great for saying things you don't want your students to hear). That was the first critique I got from my co-teacher: slow down. So I did. Suddenly, a classroom full of unresponsive glassy-eyed students began to understand me. Maybe not everything I said, but finally I was getting through to them on some level.

So began my descent into what I refer to as "teacher English". I find that the changes can be organized into three groups, starting with...

 

Slow Down

Like I said, the first change, for me at least, was speed. When I talk to non-Korean friends, I talk fast. I mean, I don't sound like a conversational auctioneer, but I also didn't inherit my dad's slow southern drawl. If I'm excited I can pass on a record amount of information with a single breath. But since I came to Korea? Well, it's like going from the autobahn to a school zone.

When I'm teaching, I always have to keep a little voice in the back of my head saying "slow down, relax". If you think you're speaking slow enough, try to go a bit slower. If your students start laughing at you, you've probably slowed down too much. Try to find that sweet spot where they can follow what you're saying but you don't sound like a tape player running low on battery power.

Another part of the big slowdown is a sort of...spacing of your sentences. For example, let's say I'm telling a story about my car stalling on a bridge. Normally, I would tell the story like this:

"Last year, I was driving on a bridge, and suddenly my car stopped, right in the middle of the bridge. It was really scary, and I don't know anything about cars, so in my panic I called my dad to help me instead of thinking to call a tow-truck or the police or something."

In class, it would go something like this. "Last year...I was driving on a bridge. In the middle...my car stopped. My car was broken. I don't know...about cars. It was really scary. But...I didn't call 911. I called my dad." (cue laughter)

As you can see, the longer more complex sentences get broken up into shorter statements, and sometimes I'll even take a pause in the middle of sentences to allow people to catch up. I try not to let this happen too much with my higher level students or my friends who are super good at English (gold stars for you all, seriously) because I don't want to teach them weird, unnatural sounding English, but for anyone at a lower level, it really seems to help.

 

Simplify

This shows up in a few ways. Most obviously, it's helpful to cut out all your slang. "You got it?" becomes "Do you understand?" "Wanna grab a cup of coffee?" becomes "Do you want to drink some coffee?" "I'm not feeling up for it" becomes "I'm too tired." Notice the trend? It's gotten to the point where I'm so used to making this change that I had a hard time coming up with examples. If I stay here too long I'm going to lose all my slang and start talking like a textbook. True nightmare scenario right there.

Imagine this said with no inflection, 100 times a day.

It's also good to avoid idioms and cultural references, unless you're ready to explain them. Now, if you're working with students who are a high enough level, this kind of thing might be a piece of cake for them, but with lower levels you don't want to bite off more than you can chew. For example, with my co-teachers I can say "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" because I know they know the saying, or at least I can explain it easily, but if I said that to my students, I'd probably get blank looks. Things like "piece of cake" are even worse. There's no real logic to that one. Is cake inherently easier to eat than other food? Does deliciousness equal easiness? Inquiring minds want to know!

The other aspect of simplifying your language is harder to explain. It means building your sentences out of grammar that's easier to understand, that your students are more likely to know. For instance, I won't usually say that something is "harder" or "easier" or "simpler"; I'll say it's more hard, or more easy, or more simple, just because I know that will be easier for my students to figure out. Instead of saying "This weekend I'm going to study" I might say "This weekend I will study." The more you know about their level, the more you can tailor your langauge to incorporate what they already know, which helps to build confidence, and also helps when teaching new vocab, since you can sandwich it in with stuff that's already kicking around somewhere in their brains. Supposedly.

Sign Language

No matter who I'm talking to, I use my hands. I think it's pretty universal, though some people are more prone to gesticulation than others. However, the longer I spend in middle school classrooms and with my less than fluent Korean friends, the more my life begins to feel like the longest running game of charades in history.

 

 Sometimes I worry that this is becoming too much of a crutch. It also makes me feel a bit like a clown, but frankly, if it helps my students or friends or doctor to understand what I'm trying to say, I'll take it. It also works as a great way to elicit target language without giving too many hints. Want them to say baseball? Mime swinging a bat. Though I think I must suck at this one, because they always guess tennis. I've pretended to be a seal, I've faked a coughing fit, make my fist into the shape of my home state, all to get points across that otherwise would have been impossible.

The most common gestures are those in the classroom. Listen: touch my ear. Write: mime writing. Work together: mime pushing two students together. The list goes on and on. What I've found helps the most in regards to classroom hand gestures in consistency. Whatever you choose to mean listen, or write, or shut the eff up, make sure it's the same every time, because then even the lower level students will be able to follow along, and hopefully it will help them catch up on the basic classroom language.





The worst part about all this is that I can't stop. Now, no matter who I'm talking to, I sound like an English teacher. Fortunately it hasn't seeped into my writing yet, but I fear that day can't be too far off. The other thing I've noticed is that bits of more...shall we say...Korean phrasing have been sneaking into my lexicon. For example, I regularly find myself encouraging people to "Take a rest" if they seem sick or tired. There's nothing inherently wrong with the phrase, grammatically, but I don't recall ever putting those words in that particular order before I moved to Korea. Another common phrase is "Do you know (insert any noun here)?" Instead of asking "Have you heard of the Beatles?" I'd be more likely to ask "Do you know the Beatles?" It's a small change, but it comes directly from the way most people here communicate with me. I know there's more, but somehow they're all slipping out of my brain in this hot weather.

Do you teach ESL? Has it changed the way you talk? Any tips? The comment section is always open.

From the Mouths of Students

Teaching is hard.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's true. A good portion of my students on any given day don't give a crap about learning English. When I first started teaching, I really let that get to me. I sincerely care about these kids, I want them to learn, so every student who talked or napped through my class was like a personal wound. Right in the feelings.

It also makes you wonder..."Why am I here?" I don't have a teaching degree. I'm just another idealistic English major dreaming of making a difference in the world. Do I have any right to make my students to pay attention in class? Am I helping them at all? Is it morally okay to be complicit in forcing English into their brains? Am I worthless? The constant articles about "The end of foreign English teachers!" and emails from the local Education office about budget cuts are no help in this area either. You read about a Korean group railing against the necessity of foreign teachers and you start to think, yeah...maybe...you're right...I'll just go...am I really any use here anyways?

As a career worrier, these are the sorts of questions that start to assail me after a week of difficult classes. It wasn't even entirely my fault. Teaching with a cold benefits no one.

So, after a week going into a deeper and deeper slump, a recent conversation with a student just revived me like a shot of adrenaline to the heart.

I've always felt that it's important to get to know your students outside of class, because the way they act in class can be entirely different from their true personality. It's easy to pass over very smart or talkative students, just because they aren't as motivated in class. This is all too true in the case of Taehon, the main character of my story.

On Lacking Mutual Respect

Taehon is a third year middle school student, the equivalent of a freshman in high school for any American readers out there. That puts him at...what...15 or 16 years old? In a class of 36 students, he doesn't stand out at all. Average height and looks, unlikely to speak up in class, but secretly a passionate and driven student, with big dreams for the future.

After our first class together, he came up to me to apologize for his noisy classmates, explaining that they "lack mutual respect." I was floored. I know American middle schoolers who don't know the words "mutual respect." I still can't decide if I was more shocked by the vocabulary or the sentiment.

Since that day, he'll occasionally linger after class to ask horribly complicated grammar questions in that quiet, thoughtful voice of his, but we never had a real chance to talk until today.

I don't have any classes this week due to midterm exams, so I was bumming around the English room cleaning and organizing during lunch today, hoping that someone would come visit. My wishes were granted! Taehon wandered in, offered to help clean, then asked his usual difficult grammar question. By the way, explaining the difference between "to" and "for" in simple English is hard. I think I confused him more than I helped.

Be the Change

However, after we muddled our way through grammar, the real questions started to come out.

"Will you stay in Korea for long?"
"Yes! I love Korea. I love teaching."
"Good! Korean schools...need you."

I get this question a lot. "Will you stay?" When I say yes, I want to stay here long-term, no one believes me. It's just so common for foreign teachers to spend one or two years before returning to their home countries to start a "real life".

"If you want to know Korean history or culture things, I will teach you."
"Wow! Thank you so much! I will ask you."
"And, please teach me about American culture."

This led to a bit of a comparison between Korean and American school life, and the fact that American students have lots of free time, since after school academies aren't really a thing, shocked him. I also mentioned how happy I felt to know him, to have such a curious and smart student.

He then brought up his month studying abroad in New Zealand, and the fact that the students there "Had the attitude to learn. They want to listen."

My theory about many Korean students and their lack of focus in class in that they are just plain tired. 8 hours of school followed by afterschool hagwon work until as late as 11 PM or midnight? How can you expect them to have the energy to actually learn when they're spending so much time working?

This brought out the best thing I've heard from a student in a long time.

"I think...Korean education is not good. I want to change. So, I want to be in politics. If you can vote in Korea someday, please vote for me."

This kid is going to go far. If I can ever vote in Korea, I know I would vote for him. There's hope for the world yet.