Feeding My Passion

Wow, I’m only four months into my contract, but I start to tear up just thinking about having to say goodbye to my kids, especially the kindergartners.

I’m back in California’s arms for a few weeks, in Los Angeles, and in her arms again, literally. I’ve been in her arms figuratively since we first kissed (on February 18th, 2010 outside the Yosemite Bug cafe), but being physically apart for 9 months has been difficult for both of us.

So I grabbed the opportunity between contracts to see Kamila. Like the song goes, it’s so nice, it’s paradise, to come home, especially when you have someone to come home to.

Late last June, I signed a 1-year contract to teach English at a small private academy (known as a “hagwon”) in Dong-tan, Gyeong-gi province, South Korea. I’ve had a wonderful time teaching and living here since I arrived on June 28th. I’ve always wanted to travel in Asia, and living here has been great, full of interesting and wonderful people, places, things, and not least of all, food. The most pragmatic reason for working here was to make some money and pay off some debts, like my school loan. Considering how badly the US economy is doing, I thought it would be a good idea to go somewhere, even halfway around the world, where jobs were a little, make that a lot, easier to find. I’ve been working here for almost 7 months now, out of a planned 2 years, and everything has been going pretty well.

Enter the monkey wrench. For the past 4 months or so, the woman who owns the hagwon has told my foreign co-teacher and me that the school was having financial difficulties. The number of students hasn’t really increased, which was critical for the school’s continued survival. As I was heading out the door after work on Tuesday the 18th, Kelly, the Korean manager, said she wanted to speak with me. She told me that since the school was having difficulty, they could no longer afford two foreign teachers, and they they decided to let me go.

To say the least, I was in shock. It’s one thing when I was living in the US and got laid off or fired, and it’s another animal all together since I was over 6,000 miles away from the US. Since they prematurely canceled my contract, I lost any chance for the severance pay, which was equal to a month’s pay, and I lost my plane ticket home. Just to get home and lick my wounds, I was going to take quite a licking. Not good.

I headed back to my apartment in Byeong-jeom, dazed, confused, frightened, and starting to get angry about how unfair the situation was. I emailed my recruiter, Issa, a great guy who did a great job getting me here and helping me understand how the process works. While I knew there were a lot of jobs for foreign teachers in Korean, I was deeply unsettled and had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Didn’t know if I was even supposed to show up for work the next day. After texting Kelly and finding out I had a month, I felt a little better, but not much. Didn’t sleep much that night.

It’s a complicated situation, but I seem to be moving in the right direction again. And I’m coming home and spending a few weeks with Kamila in Los Angeles before I come back here and do another 1-year contract, this time at a place that appears to be a lot more stable and well funded. It is certainly has a lot more students, always a good sign.

Now I just have to pack and clean up the apartment before February 1st so I can get on a plane as soon as possible, hopefully that day or the next at the latest.

It’s been interesting.

It goes without saying that some days are better than others. Today was one of those “others”.

I do really love all of the kids some of the time and most of the kids most of the time, but not all of the kids all of the time. I do have 3 or 4 kids that are consistently a challenge, and not just for me, but for the other foreign teacher, Anne, as well, and even the non-foreign English teacher and administrator, Kelly.

I didn’t come to S. Korea with much experience teaching children, and zero classroom management skills. I think Anne and I talked with Kelly and Genie briefly about what we should do if children weren’t behaving (send them out to talk with Kelly or Genie). That was about it. Anne and I both wanted to work harder at managing the classroom than just booting the kids, we needed some way to deal with things, and a way to clearly escalate any discipline we felt we needed to mete out.

It’s difficult to count the first month or so against the kids, or maybe even against us. They’re learning us, we’re learning the curriculum and the kids (and ourselves), and the gears didn’t always mesh smoothly. Anne and I have both been frustrated on numerous occasions with our inability to keep things under control and still feel like we’re doing an effective job teaching something we know well, our native language. We both care about English, we care about the kids, we want them to learn in spite of themselves, the situation they’re in (they spend very long days in school before they come to our hogwon), and in spite of us sometimes. I have to say that Anne and I both care deeply about what we’re doing and are very responsible.

We’ve been here for just over 3 months now and we keep having the same issues with the same kids. I don’t know about Anne, but I’m dealing with the challenges differently than I did the first couple months. I think the kids want to test your boundaries, see how you’re react to them when they ignore you, won’t follow directions, or generally misbehave. I’ve changed how I deal with their unhelpful behavior when I’ve found that my reaction to them is unhelpful or damages my relationship with them. At first, I tried to talk over them, then I’d slap the desk or the white board to get their attention. I’m ashamed to say I used to yell. I’m sorry.

I also would fall silent, and then wait until they noticed that I was silent, and then they would quiet down, so it did work, but not for long. I’m not sure that an orthodox pacifist could manage a hogwon classroom. I don’t yell anymore, or bang on the desk or white board. I will talk over some of the minor chattering. The method that seems to work the best for Anne and me is to give them a warning or two, depending on how disruptive we think they’re being, and then write their name on the board with 1 “X” by it. Most of them know the system by now, but I explain it to them anyway. The first X is an official warning. If I give them a second X, I put a chair at the front of the room where I stand and they have to sit in it until I let them go back to their seat. If they’re still misbehaving and being disruptive at the front of the class, then I send them out to talk with Kelly or Genie. They’d much rather that I put them on the rack than have to have Genie and Kelly yell at them. As a foreign teacher, I can yell at them in English, and I’m certainly not allowed to touch them to discipline them. The same rules don’t apply the Genie and Kelly. Whew, I’ve heard them tear into kids a few times, and I’d hate to be on the receiving end of it, even if I couldn’t understand a word of it. Kelly practically dragged a kid out of my class just today. Of course G&K can also call their parents and let them know they were being a pain. That’s probably the killer.

The public school English teachers I know teach junior high and high school students, who are generally better behaved. Hogwons teach a much greater range of kids. I have kindergarten up to high school, and I’ve taught a few adults as well, all at the same school. When the ages (and behaviors) of every class is different, 6 classes a day, it can be interesting, especially when you have a magical set of classes (we alternate the classes we teach) that  has some of the most unruly kids.

And it was indeed a magical day for me!

Hey, if the job were easy, it wouldn’t pay much and you wouldn’t learn about yourself. I’m learning, and I’m growing, it’s all good.

I love to teach what I love, be it cooking or computers. I’m not as patient teaching computer stuff as I am with cooking, which is probably a reflection of my less-than-unequivocal love of them. But cooking is another story. Now that I think about it. I’m probably as impatient with cooking, and what tweaks me with computers is probably falls in the same category as what bugs me about people and food: Fear of the new. I’m never going to force anyone to eat brains (not only because I don’t), and I’ll never ask someone to code in C+ (again, I don’t).

Hard to learn and harder to love when you’re afraid.