Kids Are Kids

Before I came here, I had people putting visions in my head of what to expect from the classroom experience. Everybody fed into that stereotype of the disciplined Asian students who do nothing but study all day and are very quiet, obedient, and respectful. This was going to be a breeze. Who needs classroom management when the kids practically manage themselves?

Turns out that wasn't entirely true.

At Samsan, I teach Grades 3-6. With the exception of Wednesdays, when I teach two Grade 3 classes and two Grade 6 classes, I teach one grade per day. On Tuesday, for example, I teach four Grade 3 classes. Not surprisingly, I enjoy teaching the younger kids much more than the older ones. The Grade 3's are eager and willing to learn, and adorable as hell. They love to sing, dance, role play--they do it all. They still have that innocence and curiousity that 7 year olds have, before they develop inhibitions. And because Grade 3 is the first year Korean students study English, everything is new and exciting to them! I even have a couple of Grade 3 girls who come up to me after every class to test them on some extra vocabulary that they do on their own time. Their only reward is a stamp in the back of their books, but they go nuts for those stamps.

The Grade 4's and 5's are generally more or less the same, minus a little bit of that enthusiasm and excitement. Honestly, the most class management I have to do on any given day is say, "Look, look, look at me" and they'll respond with "Look, look, look at you." I can honestly say that I love and look forward to teaching every single one of my classes. My job really is not that hard.

That is, until Thursday rolls around. Thursday is my least favourite day of the week. Thursday is my day with the Grade 6's. Here's where all of those niceties about disciplined Korean children go right out the window. Now because Samsan only goes up to Grade 6, these little darlings happen to be the top dogs in the schoolyard, and they know it.

On any given day, I'll walk into the classroom a couple minutes before the bell rings, the students are already there and my co-teacher will be writing the agenda on the board, talking to a student, or doing something on the computer, and all around me, I see chaos. There are children literally wrestling each other to the ground, students chasing each other around the classroom, students punching and kicking each other, and nobody flinches at any of this. Then class starts, and conversations carry on right over the teacher's voice. Kids will yell out absurd responses, they'll shout "WHAT?" because they don't understand anything and don't have any interest in learning English, they'll throw crap at each other, call each other names. All of this, and the class has just begun.

I always try to remind myself, though, that most of these kids are in fact being worked to the bone. After school, they go to their private tutors or after school programs and they study feverishly. On Friday, the day after this week's holiday, I asked some of my Grade 5's what they did with their day off, and the majority of them said they studied all day. Now when they said all day, I really do think they meant from sunrise to sunset. This is because midterms are coming up soon, and students have exams for ALL of their subjects on the exact same day! It's a lot of pressure.

My Grade 5 co-teacher tried to encourage the kids to visit the World Music Festival this weekend just so that they have time to do something other than study. In fact her husband actually spends time visiting schools in Ulsan to talk to parents about the idea of easing up on their children and giving them time to be kids. It's a change in mindset that definitely won't happen overnight, but it's good to see that such conversations are starting to happen.

The fact is, with so much on their plates, the kids don't have time to let loose and run wild. They get pent up, and it's unfair to ask them to sit still for 40 minutes at a time when they know that they have a whole day of sitting ahead of them. (I can barely sit quiet during my Korean class on Thursday night!) Then you have kids who have no interest in learning English because they probably have tutors for Science and Math, they go to Taekwondo, and they practise an instrument. Who has time to learn another language when you're already loading up your 10 year old brain with so much information? If I was a kid and I had to go through all of that on a daily basis, I'd probably spazz out and act out in class too.

Having said that...A few weeks ago, one of the kids told me to shut up after I reprimanded him for talking during a group's presentation. I kept him and his friend after class and reamed them out until they looked so guilty you'd think they just pushed an elderly lady down a flight of stairs or something. Then at lunch, another teacher tried to explain to me that it actually isn't that bad for Korean children to say shut up because they don't really know what it means, so they're just words to them. Nay, nay, I said; he knew exactly what he was saying.  Then a couple weeks later, I was in our office pretending to look busy on the computer, when the Grade 6 English teacher came through the door clearly trying to fight back tears. Those savages had broken her--this sweet and soft spoken lady who wouldn't hurt a fly.

What fascinates me, though, is how different the Grade 5's are from the Grade 6's. It's like over the course of their winter break, they evolve into little monsters, almost overnight.

I've been tempted many times to use my friend's method of discipline, which is to have the children who misbehave get into the push-up position, and keep their bodies as close to the ground as possible. (This may sound harsh to you North American teachers, but keep in mind, there are still schools here who beat their kids into submission.) My school, however, frowns upon that sort of disciplinary action. The Principal has chosen to place more emphasis on character education; they even have a class dedicated specifically to developing the students' sense of morality.

I was skeptical as to whether or not such curriculum was really getting through to the students until two things happened this past week. The first involved a Special Education student in one of the Grade 6 classes. This boy sits in the front row and has never said a single word during class. Last week when I walked into the room, he was being taken down hard in a headlock by another student. This happened multiple times before the bell even rang. I try to follow my co-teacher's lead because I don't really want to step on her toes, so I didn't do anything about it. After all, all boys here love to wrestle. Then I noticed that throughout the class, kids would poke the boy incessantly and mock him. He would often respond by swinging wildly at them with his hand, but he'd have a smile on his face while he did it. The whole situation seemed very odd to me.

Then this week, they continued to poke at the boy, and he continued to smile. And that's when I noticed that many of the students would rub his head affectionately as they walked by. It turns out, that's how they played with him; it's how they connected with him. They were busting his balls to make him feel like a part of the group. It seemed a little weird, but he seemed to enjoy it, and that's all that matters, I suppose.

The other thing that happened this week was that I finally went through an entire class without having to use the textbook. And you know what happened? They listened. For the whole class, they actually listened. I initially was quite fond of the textbooks because they follow the exact format for each lesson that we were instructed to use during orientation. This format involves using an engaging hook to grab the students' attention in the beginning, and ends off with a game of some sort to review the day's material. As a teacher, I don't have to think, because the book plans everything for me. And at least the younger kids seem to enjoy it.

The problem with the textbook is two-fold. First, it doesn't teach intonation, emphasis, and how to properly emote. The videos on the DVD's that accompany the textbook are at times frightening. The one that struck me the most was one where a father walks into the living room to find his wife on the couch and his daughter feeding their dog. He turns to his wife and asks, "What is she doing?" Harmless enough, right? Well, if you put just the right emotion (or lack thereof) in your voice, you can make anybody sound like a serial killer. I felt like there was an extended scene to that particular dialogue, and it involved the father strangling his daughter to death while shouting, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WHAT THE F@*$ ARE YOU DOING?!" Totally creeped me out. In the long run, this means that the kids are going to learn how to speak like serial killers. And who wants to be friends with a serial killer?

The other problem with the textbooks is that it's boring. My mornings are full of "Listen and Repeat" and "Look and Listen." It doesn't really affect the younger students because there's still enough novelty in the English language for them. The Grade 6's on the other hand, could not care any less about repeating the same lines over and over again.

But then this past Wednesday, my co-teacher decided to change things up because she knew that Thursday was a holiday, so she didn't want Wednesday's Grade 6's to be a day ahead of the Thursday classes. My portion of the class consisted of introducing them to new shopping vocabulary that the textbook hadn't introduced them to. Through the textbook, they get exposure to a limited amount of vocabulary and expressions, so the teacher asked me to introduce other common expressions. For example, in the textbook, whenever somebody is told the price of on item, their response is always either "Those are cheap and nice. I'll take them" or "Those are expensive." Every time. Every. Single. Time. I have to think that the students are aware of how stilted and silly those dialogues sound; so when I introduced them to normal expressions that people actually use in real situations, they seemed to be much more engaged.

The second half of my lesson had them buying enough groceries in groups of five to last them the week on a given budget. Granted, there were obviously a couple of students who didn't really care and just sat at their desks while their groups did all of the work, but I had never seen the Grade 6's so enthusiastic about anything in our class, or at the very least, willing to participate.

I guess the moral to this long and winding spiel is that kids are going to be kids, and as long as you give them room to breathe and be themselves, they'll appreciate it. They're not the super disciplined little machines that everybody imagines; they're just kids.