::A Geek in Korea::

Today, due to my rotation in the morning to fill in for classes left by the vacant foreigner position at the school, was the last day of intensive courses for two of my classes. I will not miss them. These were hellish classes I whipped along like a tyrant to complete the book.

My lowest level class of the day, was is actually designated "Upper-Low" on the attendance sheet. They aren’t the bottom of the barrel, but more like the frothy stuff floating on top. We got to business and worked through the last unit of the book. Half the students in the class are catatonic, while most of the others can’t respond to an English sentence without me translating their Korean answer for them first. Getting through the class was work in and of itself, as the students are so set on a routine formed by a book and study with other teachers that any deviation from the schedule causes crinkled noses and whines of complaint. For once, however, I was able to take advantage of their strict adherence to formality and got a little revenge.

We did our book work, and even got finished early. Now I needed something to do to fill up the time. I had found a related worksheet and printed it out for them to complete. After that was completed, there was about ten minutes left in the class. This is the time usually reserved for them to write down their homework in their "communications" notebook. It’s what the parents check to see what we did in class and what the students have to do at home. Since the students are given so  much work and only see foreigners twice a week, it’s impossible for them to remember all we assign. We take the time to write down the homework in each section of the book so that they can remember.

Usually I would stop the lesson and write down the homework, but this was the last day. I didn’t need to assign homework because I wouldn’t see these students again the check if they did it or not. Some of the students may not even attend the school on a day to day basis and may only be here for the intensive class. I wouldn’t see them ever again.

I’m not sure if it was the fact that they were unaware of this, or that they didn’t want to study for ten minutes, but they demanded homework from me. I’m not one to turn down a child that wants to work hard, so I wrote down the homework I would have assigned had I planned on seeing them again to check it. They wrote it down and complained like they always do. If they didn’t realize they didn’t have to do it, I’m not going to tell them. In fact, I should have given them a lot more. Then the next time they might learn something and wouldn’t fall for this again.