::A Geek in Korea::

On Tuesday, one of my classes studied how chocolate was made. This is an incredibly cruel thing to do to children. The large pictures of chocolate bars looked so real that children were pawing at the pages and imagining melting them in their mouths. The students tried hard during the lesson, and we always review the previous lesson each time. I knew we’d be talking about chocolate again today. I told the students on Tuesday, "Next class is a chocolate party. Bring chocolate for your friends. We’ll eat it together."

The whole thing slipped my mind today when I went to lunch. I had meant to buy chocolates, at least one per student, the day I proposed the party. I got busy, things didn’t happen, and I forgot. Luckily, I ran into one of my students from that class coming to the school early. He was so excited to have chocolate to share, that he gave me a chocolate coin on the street. He said he had a huge bag for his classmates. If he hadn’t come early, I would have totally forgotten. I ran to the local corner store and bought some individually wrapped chocolate food my students.

I ran into my student again, bragging about how he was going to eat chocolate in class. His friend was very impressed. This generated a huge buzz around the school. We didn’t do anything cool for Halloween, (Korean or American) Thanksgiving, or Christmas, but suddenly one of the lowest level classes for their age was getting a "chocolate party"? The students took every opportunity to brag to their friends in other classes. I didn’t expect it to be a big deal, but eating chocolate in class was something the students were looking forward to doing.

For being a party, was exactly the same as any other day. We did the same classwork and did the same routine, except that whenever anyone got an answer correct, they got a piece of chocolate to eat. Also, if students ate in class, they wouldn’t get in trouble. The students were fairly buzzed from all the sugar, but were working too hard to really enjoy much of a "party". They did volunteer to answer questions for the chocolate though.

After class, my director was wondering why I was trying to dump off a ton of candy I had gotten from students  by giving it to the secretaries. All the secretaries already had been given chocolate by my students. All the teaching staff had gotten chocolate. The director wanted to know if it was a special day. "It’s not Valentine’s day. Where did all this chocolate come from?"

I explained about the lesson. She liked the idea. She said, "Oh, so you made today a special day for the students. That’s good."

My next hour, the students came into the class early. They saw me disposing of the wrappers and wondered what we had been up to. One of them asked,"Why did the last class have a chocolate party?"

I told them, "We studied chocolate, so I gave them some chocolate."

The student then opened his book, "We are studying money today."  They were indeed studying dollars and cents in the next unit. He opened his palm and gave me a smirk that said, "I’ve got you now."

I put the chocolate coin from my student in his hand. He was amused and satisfied at the same time. I actually had enough of the coins for the entire next class, so no one had to go without chocolate today.