::A Geek in Korea::

My parents had two forms of punishment I could remember, and they changed when they got older. The first thing my parents used to make me do when I was little was “stand in the corner.” I wasn’t sent to my room, most of the time that was better than sticking around and hearing them complain. Instead, I was put in a corner, forced to face the corner with my nose to the wall, and they would continue on with a meal. I had stand AT ATTENTION at all times, and if I leaned or shrugged I had to start the time over. It was a physical punishment, and it was fine, never abusive or anything, but you can only make a kid stand for so long. It also required them to be there to check on me. It was embarrassing because the entire family was watching you stand around looking dumb.

When I got older, and they were working longer hours, they moved to using a written punishment that really sucked when I was grounded. Back when I was still able to be grounded, they would write out a tremendously long sentence, then make me copy it hundreds or thousands of times to earn back my freedom. This is my most lasting memory of punishment. Hearing the phrase “Do you want sentences?” was terrifying. It also killed my hands, killed any desire to use cursive (Writing words in a block down the page was faster), and wasted tons of my free time.

There is a student in our school who is notoriously awful. The number of times he has passed his vocabulary tests on his first try could be counted on one hand, and he has been attending this school for three years. He’s foul mouthed sexist bully, and has the attention span of a fly. In class, if you don’t keep poking his book and telling him what and where to write, he’ll zone off and be behind in classes that are far below his age range. He’s just that bad student every school has that sticks around because their parents don’t want to deal with him. He’s there all day long doing homework and harassing the secretaries trying to get them to let him go home earlier. If he didn’t spend so much time at school, he’d have plenty of time to do his homework at home, but he’s never actually thought that far ahead.

Anyway, I don’t teach him anymore, but I hear stories from my foreign coworker. I don’t know what finally set my coworker off, but he’s had about as much as one person can stand of this horrible student. My coworker took him out of class and made up a unique punishment with the help of the secretary. It seemed almost inspired by my father.

My coworker made the boy write, in Korean, an essay two pages long about why he should pay attention in class and study hard. The secretary then took the essay, wrote his name on it, and posted it on the wall in the middle of the reception area of the school at eye level for ALL the other students to read. All the other students know this boy is a terrible student. They’ve probably been in class with him at one point or another and leveled up past him if they are good at English in any way.

Having your failing posted up on a wall is a very Korean idea of punishment. The board at school is exclusively reserved for achievements most of the time. If students get into exclusive private middle schools, or get accepted to study abroad, they get their name up on the board. This is the first time an embarrasing “punishment” sort of essay is taking up that space.

I doubt the boy cares, because he unabashedly hates to study, but if he cares one shred about what others think about him, he has to be embarrased that his punishment is on display. I’m not sure if this will have results or not. It’s not a “Scarlet Letter” or a Tattoo to tell people their crimes, but it’s as harsh a form of public embarrasment you’ll find at our school.

So the rumors were true. There will be an expansion of our school. A dramatic expansion that will include the addition of a second floor to our school, the hiring of triple the teaching staff we have now, and a massive remodeling. All of this will happen in an undetermined time frame in the next two to three months, depending on when the school above us closes, the organization of the parties involved, hiring time, training time, and turn around time.

To put this sort of expansion to scale, I know a school considered to be “large” in our city that currently has a close to 1000 students. 700 to 1000 students is a VERY large school in this area of the country. These very large schools are literally only a block or two away from where we are. How there can be schools of this size so close together is a testament to Korea’s population density.

It seems that some of the whispers my coworkers had mentioned in the past few weeks were not as worrying as I had feared. The school I work at is getting taken over by a franchise in Seoul (boo!). They are buying the floor above us and converting it into more classrooms. They hope to draw a thousand students at this branch. (Are they serious?!) *

I used to work on the the third floor four years ago. Then I moved to a different branch of that school in another building. I left when they were caught doing illegal things, then got hired at a different school on the second floor of the building I used to work at. Now that second floor school is going to end up buying the third floor. I call my old private office!

This is the very first Korean meeting I’ve ever attended where there was a bottle of champagne present for the teachers. Being offered alcohol…on an hour break between teaching! The directors have to be happy about this. The school is supposed to be one of the highly competitive schools that are in the richest, most English-crazy parts of Seoul.

This particular franchise is branching out into multiple big city markets across the country, which seems to be the trend of uber-competitive Seoul academies at the moment. Top-down, Internet based standardized teaching across the country trading on a brand made in Seoul is how to draw the most English insane parents. You also require a branch campus somewhere abroad, probably Canada to send overachieving kids with too much money to during summer vacation.

All the other really big chains are present in our city, so this new franchise system is sort of late to the party in expanding across Korea. Smaller “independent” schools like the school I work at now are getting pushed out of the business in the really competitive areas of the city. You can’t compete without ad blitzes, an army of buses, and tons of modern classrooms.

Just having a recognized name from Seoul will get you a few hundred students easily, no matter how crappy your system might be. If there is an English teaching bubble in Daejeon, the craziness in Seoul is unrivaled anywhere else. Simply having a school that lasts and gets big enough to expand outside the city means they must be doing something mothers like.

My dealings with schools organized across multiple campuses have been terrible in the past. It’s one of the reasons I left my previous job. There are logistical and financial concerns (read: BRIBES) that can best be absorbed by country-wide organizations, but when changes to a course, level material, or personal student issues need to be addressed, big chain schools are usually very slow to react. Any change made locally needs to occur at all the other branches to keep things standarized. They want to make learning English like a burger at McDonalds: The same no matter where you go. It might not be the best, but it’s consistent.

I like a one layer bureaucratic system like my current school. As soon as a director can say, “Let me ask someone at the main branch this question…” they’ll pass the problem on and it will never get dealt with. Koreans aren’t good with confrontational problems, but when something can be pushed on to someone higher up, they’ll take that option and bury your problems. The bullshit to solution quotient is astronomic at these sorts of schools most of the time.

The director said their style teaching and curriculum was most like what we do at our school now, so she went with this franchise’s offer. I’m cautiously optimistic that there might be a sliver of a chance that this school isn’t as bad as others like it. I’ve walked away from other job offers from franchised schools in the past. I’ll get to see a school go from a small kid on the block to a major player around town, and I’ll likely remain the most senior teacher involved in a transition to a new program. It could very helpful if I’m ever put into any kind of situation like this in the future.

I’ll have to make the choice to see if I want to continue onwards at my school through all of that, but it’ll certainly be a big change. I’ll have new coworkers, a new system to learn, and possibly a brand new office. If my director is doing the hiring, I’m sure I’ll also be put into a sweet schedule too. Right now, I’m happy to see a school I’m involved with go onto something bigger.

I oddly feel I’m partially responsible for the success of the school moving on to the “big leagues” where we compete with other schools with hundreds or thousands of other students, instead of being a niche independent school. I don’t know if it is good for me, or the students, but that’s where it’s going, so I might as well enjoy the ride while it lasts.

I don’t claim to have predictive powers, but I’ve been around the block enough in Korea that I can see the writing on the wall at times when others around me can’t. Chock that up to being in the country for a ridiculous amount of time for a person working in my field I suppose.

I seemed prescient when a friend started to have problems at his school. I was telling him that his school was going to have cash flow problems a month before their deposits arrived late for the first time. When I went to their school, saw their staff, their rolls, and heard about their plans, I knew what was going to happen because I had been in that exact same situation before.

I had heard the same excuses, seen the same warning signs, and had chose to ignore them first time it happened to me. It’s a lot easier to give advice when you aren’t the one being financially impacted, and when you have a much better visa not dependent on your employer for status. He has a few tough choices ahead for himself, and I’ll just try to help him weather the storm.

However, my school is headed for choppy waters again as well. My school does not offer raises on renewal of contracts. I have been in an envious position of calling their bluff TWICE in a row due to my visa status, first getting a raise, then negotiating for a PAID VACATION period as a part-time employee.

My Korean coworkers don’t have that bargaining power. When I first started the school, they were churning through employees once a month or less. High turnover was starting to damage the school, but they found two really fantastic coworkers that stayed on for an entire year. The goal of young Korean teachers is to suffer for a year or more at a school that is less desirable to prove their worth. It’s like a paid internship more or less. Then, once they tolerate everything, they don’t get their much deserved raise. Instead they can get a better job somewhere else and start over.

I don’t know if this is something agreed upon beforehand, but my two awesome Korean coworker’s terms of employment are coming due now. They stayed an entire year and won’t be staying on because my director refused their raises. My director took us out to dinner for the woman that left this week. We got treated to a multi-course EXPENSIVE meal of raw fish.

It was a nice send off, but we’ve got a new teacher in the office now and I’m not getting good vibes at the moment. She seems like she won’t be around a year if I had to take out a bet.

Pretty soon there won’t be anyone to take a bet with in the office. Another awesome Korean teacher leaves in a month’s time, and my Foreign coworker leaves Christmas Eve for another school in Korea, maybe even a rival school somewhere in Daejeon.

I expect no loyalty in the business, and people are free to work whereever they want, but I signed my contract in the middle of summer before all this information was available about the working conditions of the second half of my contract. Not only are my coworkers bailing once they finish their year, but there is news we’ll be franchised, and the school will change it’s format, layout, and materials completely. There were people coming to visit the school, which smells like re-investment, or possibly a take-over.

I’ve SEEN that before, and the proper response is “RUN!”

All of a sudden, my instincts are telling me that I’ve got to watch out for my job again, and that I’ve got to be hyper-aware of any changes I hear in earshot. It won’t be as bad as when I quit my second job, or third job, to find better employment, as my boss this time is fully LEGAL and compliant with everything. Plus, even if things go completely south, I won’t be kicked out of the country. I also own my own home now, so I don’t have to worry about a place to stay, only how to pay for it if things go sour.

The good thing is that now I’ve got a social network to find better places to work at, more leverage than ever, and the drive to do anything I can. I’m welcoming the change instead of running from it.

I deemed my “Korean Security Guard” costume too ironic to use for students. I didn’t want to have to explain my costume to everyone in the school I ran into, so I decided to keep the glowing directional light stick and wear an Alien mask. The light up stick was my “probe“, lightsaber, or whatever an alien might carry. The students loved it.

The first class was with the little students that really love Halloween for the candy and monsters. I did Halloween Bingo, which was a huge success. There is this weird phenomenon everyone has experienced around kids while wearing a costume. You could be walking around normally, but as soon as you put a mask on your face, students will grab your clothes and try to rip everything “costume” related off you. I was grabbing my attendance folder with my mask perched on my head when a dozen students saw me and decided that they ALL had to grab the back of my shirt and be dragged around. If I removed the mask, they left me alone and went back to not touching me. What the hell is that about?

Anyway, after the little kids and their fun, I went on to teach two more Halloween themed lessons with elementary school classes. We did a fun Halloween story exercise where they had to end the story. The story stopped with the writer and their friends sitting in a scary house eating some candy bars. My favorite ending of the story was, “We ate some candy bars. We got fat. The end.”

The health consciousness of students continues rain on everyone’s Halloween fun in the middle school classes. Any student that told me, “Trick or Treat” got a handful scooped from my candy bag. Two middle school girls actually said to me, “Oh, teacher, I don’t want this candy bar. It has too much melamine. Please just give me some other candy instead.”

GAH!

It reminded me of my father always “testing” my candy bars for “poison” after we returned home from with our Halloween stash. He claimed he was being chivalrous. Never did I think a student would turn down FREE CANDY because of food safety fears. Yes, children take care of their health here much more diligently than in the United States, but sometimes it feels like I’m surrounded by pod people.

Just have fun on Halloween for once!

I had a good time, and since I teach different students tomorrow, I get to do the whole thing over again.

My school has revised it’s detention policy to make it more annoying for both students and teachers. The problem with giving half a class detention was that if half the class WANTED detention to work together, you are only playing into the worst student’s hands. In a few classes, students were intentionally getting detention everyday so that they could get their Korean homework finished together.

While some students still avoided detention like a punishment, bad kids tried to get all their friends to join them. Detention had been warped into a strange social club where you have to fail to succeed. My director decided that you had to pick the worst student, and only ONE student per class to send to detention. The idea is that if a bad student is stuck there alone, they’ll have to actually work instead of playing with friends.

Sending only one student is much harder than sending students to detention indiscriminately. If five students don’t do their homework, it’s easy to send all five. Students can’t be sent on absolute terms, and I have to pick the biggest idiot, I’ve got classes where it’s nearly impossible to choose who to send. There is a class where I dislike so many of the students that choosing one student that is the most awful is impossible. They all are so awful, it would take a tremendously terrible thing for them to stand out in any one class to get sent to detention. Sure, if they start stabbing each other I’ll have an easier time, but do I have to wait for it to get that bad?

Some classes get strict enforcement, because one bad kid will stick out, but if there are five bad kids in one class, and I can only pick one, it’ll seem arbitrary when I pick someone. I actually let five students that would have detention in ANY of my other classes go today because I didn’t feel like arguing why one or the other was worst.

Eventually, I’ll stop being fair and go back to being cruel and vindictive. Is it too late to add a solitary confinement wing to the school?

Holding a classroom of 10-15 students attention is a lot easier if you use humor from time to time. I am not the funniest person on Earth, and I don’t claim to be a comedian. I’m just a guy that wants to teach some students, but, to a group of Korean kids, ages 6 to say, 12, I can make an entire class laugh pretty consistently.

Today I had a stock set of jokes that I that I worked on in my first class. For this joke, I was being extremely obtuse and letting the students get one over on me on purpose to practice their vocabulary and pronunciation. The text book featured a drawing of a king. The king had a royal looking robe, a golden scepter, and a gem encrusted crown.

I drew a picture of the king and put blank spaces for each of the items. I asked the students to name each item the King was supposed to be wearing. Seeing as I know my students pretty well, I knew there was no chance any student would correctly pronounce the word “crown” correctly. The “cr/cl” blend is one of the hardest for students to learn.

The students were trying their best, but the first response I got every time was “Clown! Clown!”. I then drew my best looking Bozo the Clown on the head of the King. The students would huff indignantly and then say “Crrrrraaaawwwon….Craaaawon”.

“OH! Now I know.”

Then I’d erase the circus freak and draw a gigantic crayon on the king’s head. This got another peal of laughter, and then a chorus of lame boos. They’d ask me to drop the charade and just tell them how to say “crown” well. It worked well, and to be honest, my lesson plan was a bit short, so I needed to use this same material again in the next class.

I tried this exact same routine in my second class and got the same results. This time worked like a charm, except by the end there was one student laughing so hard everyone else thought she had damaged her brain. She went on laughing far, far too long, and it actually might have even been a sarcastic “over-laughter” you might do if you wanted to point out how unfunny a bad joke actually was. It’s like the sarcastic clap, but more annoying.

I didn’t expect sarcastic meta-humor from a girl in an audience of third graders. Either she wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, or she was just trying to waste time, I couldn’t decide.

The most expensive things most students handle on a day to day basis outside of a computer is their cellphone. Responsible students get phones so that they can call their parents for rides to academies, or to tell them when they need a ride when they are sick. Irresponsible students also get phones to keep track of their homework when they forget it, or to make sure they are where they are supposed to be. Students as young as six or seven have phones.

The one big thing that can freak a student out is losing their phone. Parents put a lot of trust in their children dropping money on a phone, and if students lose this symbol of trust, they are in deep trouble.

One of my students forgot her phone. She was in panic mode through the entire class. The students were very helpful in trying to jog her memory.

“Did you have the phone in the bathroom? Maybe you flushed it down the toilet by accident!”

“NO!”

One of the students said that if she didn’t find the phone, saying she dropped it in the toilet might still work out for her. She said one of her friends claimed to have dropped a bad phone into a toilet so that her parents would buy a nicer model.

Another boy said that while this might be a good idea, if you can blow dry a phone, some models might work after being dropped if you don’t turn them on until they are completely dry. I thought the idea of talking into a phone you knew had dropped into a toilet seemed disgusting, dry or not.

“Did you have the phone on the bus?”

“No. Yes? I don’t remember.”

The students continued to push the girl. Every five minutes or so, she would stop her work and just say, “OOOOOOhhhh, I can’t STUDY! WHERE IS MY PHONE!”. She had serious separation anxiety. She was also worried about what might happen when she got home.

“Did you have the phone when you were in your mom’s car?”

“Yes, I remember it at that time. I had to send a message.”

I said that she should probably call her mother and ask her to search the car, since it was the last place she remembered having her phone. During the break between classes, she called her mother from the office phone. She told her mom that she didn’t remember where she put her phone. Her mother said she had found it in the car earlier, and that she didn’t need to worry. The girl was overjoyed to hear she hadn’t lost her phone afterall.

Too bad it happened after my class, because she wasted a lot of my time talking about it.

The word “생일” is made up of two Korean syllables. “생” (Saeng) is Life, or existence. And “일” (il) means day. So, “생일” (Saeng-il) Life existence day, or birthday. The word “학교” (hakgyo) is school. Following me so far?

Anyway, there is one occasion where students have a swelling amount of school pride. That is on their   “학교 생일”, or “School Birthday”. This phrase is completely nonsensical. A student told me in English, “Thursday is my school’s birthday! I don’t have to go to school on my school’s birthday!”

She’s a very bright girl, and she only speaks English in class, so I knew what she was translating. I had heard it before, but had never thought to stop and correct a student. It’s difficult for students to remember the correct way to say such an expression in English.

“School birthday? So a mommy school and a daddy school went to the school hospital and had a baby school that was born on your school’s birthday? This baby school was born this Thursday?”

I’m not being sarcastic and bad when I explain something like that, despite how it comes off written. By using the expression literally, she saw it was absurd to say it that way in English.

The class laughed and she said, “Hey, wait, school birthday DOESN’T make sense in English, does it?” I don’t think she ever thought about the image before.

I said that, “School opening day anniversary” or “School opening remembrance day” were better. In her credit, she finished telling the story without saying “School birthday” again. I think I’ve corrected her habit of using the expression.

Our school has hired a “Internet, Journal, and Detention” teacher. That is her job title. She’s in charge of holding students after when they didn’t finish the Internet program they are supposed to do on the weekend. She posts their scores for all to see, and grabs them before they head home to make sure they complete their work.

The students that write journals also have to check in with her at the end of the week to make sure that they’ve copied their corrected materials. I have to actually grade the papers, but she handles everything after that. I used to hand it to a secretary. Now I had it to a dedicated teacher. Nothing changes on my end.

The thing that does change for me is the ability to hand out detentions to students for not completing homework. Previously, we were supposed to warn students that didn’t speak English exclusively. That lasted about a month, but with no one to track students comings and goings, and parents being pissed off about their students arriving home late without notice, it was a lot more trouble that it was worth.

Now we have an automated check in system that logs the students arrival into school with an RFID enabled tag. The students can be easily scanned through the system, so we don’t have to worry about notifying each individual parent about a student’s departure. The computer system does that for us. This has led to the “Detention board” being placed on the desk in front of the machine for the new teacher.

Now when students fail to complete homework, we simply fill out the form,  who is staying after, what they must complete before they leave, and what class they are in. This new teacher does the rest like a vigilant parole officer. If the students try to leave early, she nails them and keeps them in detention. Right now the students are adjusting to this change.

In my first class, I had five students kept after class. The students were surprised that I was keeping them after for an hour. So was I. I was only alerted to this change in policy via email, and I had to confirm it with my director. She said that as long as I sent an SMS out notifying the parents of the students during my five minute break time, I could keep students after. I’ve got NO time to fuddle with the computer every break if I want to gather books, go to the bathroom, and perhaps munch on a snack, so this SMS computer message is a big annoyance.

I’ll probably abuse my detention powers for a few days to keep as many people annoyed as possible, ESPECIALLY in my last set of classes each day, which tend to be my worst. The fact that I can do all of this passive aggressively and keep kids after despite not being there to babysit them myself is awesome. I want to claim the credit for holding students after to gain more power, but I don’t want to hear about it the entire class. I’m torn.

This is the first full week of the “No Homework, Detention” policy. I’m still going to classes that have yet to be made aware of the change since last week. Now when I walk into class, students that have had me previously this week have their homework out, ready to be check. Students that haven’t yet seen me in class get defensive, argumentative, and then need to bring in outside confirmation that I’m not just lying about the change.

Today, I had to explain to one of my classes that has rampant homework problems why all but two students would be staying in detention. Students gave me a long list of excuses why they should have to stay after.

“I forgot my homework.”

“Detention.”

“I didn’t know what the homework was.”

“Check the website, read your notes, check with other students. Detention.”

“I have classes after this. I must leave exactly at this time.”

“Detention. Talk to the Director about changing the class time.

The student that started this last argument is usually just an annoying, noisy student. He never does his work, but never wants to be punished. I told him if he got the homework finished, he could avoid punishment. He then filled his entire paper with nonsense and tried to say he had completed it. I erased all of his answers, told him he had detention, and wouldn’t hear another appeal.

He started to cry.

This is something my class is used to, because another student in class, Test Anxiety Boy, usually cries once a week for some period of time in class. The student crying today was Test Anxiety Boy’s friend. He started crying, sobbing, and slobbering all over himself. The students next to him complained they couldn’t study with me because he was so noisy. I knew he was trying the sympathy card, so I sent him out to talk to the director.

The director came in and absolutely crushed any appeal. She said to the students, “The teacher in class has the absolute last word. Do not try to get out of what they say. If they say you have detention, you are staying here. I’m not going to disagree with what they tell you, so don’t even bother.”

Awesome. She had my back 100%.

So, the crying, wailing, and moaning about the detention continued by this single boy for another ten minutes. He was entirely over the top, but had worked himself up to such a degree he couldn’t stop. The waterworks were really flowing. Test Anxiety boy was laughing at him. “Ha ha, why are you crying so much? It’s only a detention. You’ll be fine. It’s not worth crying about.”

I was astounded that a boy that will cry over missing a single question was admonishing his friend about crying. I told him he should probably stop speaking that way. The secretary entered the room and seconded my concern. She said, “Of all the people to talk, you can’t be saying this! Everyone knows you cry all the time! Why would you be so mean to him?”

She had entered the class with the students vocabulary tests. Failing the vocabulary tests results in a detention as well. The secretary then read off all the students that failed their vocabulary tests. In a karmic twist of epic proportions, Test Anxiety Boy failed his test by one question.

When the secretary read his name, everyone in the entire class took a deep breath and turned to watch the student break down. He had already covered his face and had balled up his fist. Everyone in the class was like, “No way! He’s going to start crying now too!? What’s going on!” The girl sitting next to him was trying to comfort him, but it was too late, he had already started bawling.

Test Anxiety Boy showed his friend how to REALLY cry. He started hyperventilating, and then had to run out of class to dry heave in the bathroom. Twice. He came back with blood red eyes from the heaves. He couldn’t sit in his chair because he kept bending over as he sobbed. Between the two students, no one else could learn a damn thing, so I packed up the class early and let them prepare for their detention. In total, 90% of the class was going to stay behind. Only one student escaped detention. It was a new record.

It was easily the worst class I’ve had at the school in a year. No one got anyone done, and I was being held hostage by a crying child. Even sending the students out of class wouldn’t work, because they just didn’t stop. It was a total disaster.

The next class was only moderately better, with only 50% of the class going home on time, and another big fight about homework needing to be clarified to the lazier students. It’s getting pretty ridiculous.