“Touchy Hands”
My kids, like most kids, can be very touchy people. Sometimes as I am working with an individual student at their desk, they will grab my hand and hold it while we work. Sometimes kids will just run up to me and wrap their arms around me, and sometimes they grab my arms and wrap them around their own body. Often, as I walk down the middle aisle in my classroom, the kids will reach out with their hands and try to grab me and pull me towards them. I feel like I’m running through a graveyard where bodies are crawling out of graves and grabbing anything that moves past them. But it’s also kind of adorable. Luckily I teach in a country that encourages physical affection with kids, so I don’t need to worry about being accused of child molestation for simply hugging a student. And frankly, I like being able to hug my students and hold their hands… until I see them shove their hands down their pants (both front and back!) or shove their fingers in their mouths and up their nose (and sometimes back in their mouths!). The bottle of hand sanitizer next to my podium gets plenty of use!!
“I love you Mom and Dad”
On Thanksgiving, I had my kids make cards for their parents to show their gratitude for all that their parents do for them. The front of the card said “Happy Thanksgiving”, and underneath that was a typical hand-turkey drawing. Inside the card they wrote “Thank you for being such wonderful parents! I love you so much!” As I walked around the class, checking out each student’s card, I noticed one of my students writing “Thank you for all the wonderful things you do. I don’t like you very much.” I said “Meen, you can’t write that! You can’t give a card like that to your parents!” And he said “But my mom and dad always yell at me.” I tried telling him that sometimes parents yell and get mad, but that they do love us, and we love them. But he was insistent on the fact that he did not love his parents. I made him change his card anyway.
At the end of the period, I reminded them how important it is to say thanks to our parents because they do so much for us and love us very much. To my surprise, more students were making comments that their parents don’t love them, that they yell at them and hit them, and so they don’t like their parents. I tried arguing with them that they do indeed love their parents and that their parents do so much for them, but they weren’t accepting it. So what else could I say? I had to walk away hoping that these kids were just pretending.
The next morning, I asked my students if they gave the cards to their parents. They said they did, but half of the students said their parents threw the cards in the trash! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I mean, yes, it’s just a piece of construction paper with sloppy writing and a hand-turkey drawing. But come on, it’s also an adorable card that your precious son or daughter made to say thanks. Isn’t that the kind of thing parents are supposed to treasure for years? More and more I am feeling like I cannot grasp the dynamics of parent-child relationships in this country.
“Emergencies”
Not long ago, one little girl in my class raised her hand. I walked up to her, squatted down next to her, and asked her what she needs. She has the poorest speech in my class, and I cannot always make out what it is she is saying. So as she was talking to me, the only words I could make out were “emergency” and “the baby mouse is poking its head out the hole”. I racked my brain trying to interpret this message. Mice are practically nonexistent in this country, so clearly she does not see a baby mouse. But she did say emergency. What’s the emergency? And then it hit me. “OH! Do you have to go to the bathroom??” “Yes” she replied. Apparently she was having an emergency, and now I know what kind of baby mice exist in Korea.
“Man’s Best Friend”
I have a laptop in my classroom that is connected to a big screen TV. There are several online lessons that I do with my students, so they can view the lessons on the TV. The desktop wallpaper on my laptop is an adorable photo of my dog Boswell, and the kids are very familiar with the Bos. Every time they see his photo, they yell with joy “BOSWELL!” I have told them stories about him, and explained to them how sweet he is, especially with little kids. You see, in Korea, pets are not a typical part of a family. And since most people live in apartments, dogs are not a common pet. So I try to explain to them how wonderful dogs are.
One week, we read a story about a boy who finds a dog in his front yard. He instantly falls in love with the dog and wants to keep it, but knows his father won’t allow it. So I asked my students, “If you found a dog, would your parents let you keep it?” One of the boys raised his hand and said “My mom says she hates dogs except for eating!” My only reaction to that statement is, Well… that’s Korea!
“Yes? No? Yes. No?”
The vast majority of students at Poly School have trouble understanding whether to say “yes” or “no” to questions. As an example, I might say “You didn’t do your homework?” and they’ll say “Yes”. Now, in America, we would answer “No, I didn’t do my homework.” But my students say “Yes” because they are confirming the statement that they did not do the homework. I have learned to figure out what they mean, but sometimes I like to play with it. I will say:
“You didn’t do your homework?”
“Yes.”
“You DID do your homework?”
“No.”
“Oh, you didn’t do your homework.”
“Yes!”
“Wait, so you did do your homework??”
“NO!”
“Ok, so you didn’t do your homework?”
“YES!!”
And on and on it goes. I try to see how long it takes them to figure out their mistake, but they never do, so by the time I’m laughing and they’re yelling out of frustration, I decide to stop torturing them.
