Irony is not lost on Korea...

So today is Teacher's day! Essentially it is a day that is to celebrate those that help to cultivate and grow minds into something more than puddles of gray matter. Oddly enough I am included in this group of people and I do not really know what I think about it. Today was the worst day I have had in Korea since I've been here and that it falls on a day that is supposed to praise and honor those like myself makes me want to laugh. Well cry really but, like baseball, there is no crying in Korea.

It all started today when I overslept, and missed half of a hockey game I had really wanted to see. I know its a frivolous thing, but you cling to odd things when placed in a foreign environment. I raced to work and was playing with my kindy kids, who have really grown on me, I mean little Taylor spent all day pointing to various circles and gleefully telling me what they were, and Angel (I have two angels go figure) keeping the other kids focused on what I was saying it really seemed like things would be OK. I left that class feeling good and went to my last kindergarten class of the day. Now this class is really hit or miss, they have added a child who no one can keep control of and that upsets pretty much all the other children but hey he's got the won. I struggle to begin the class when I explain to them that the sentence they have been chanting "I learned to nap" makes basically no sense, and that it should be "I need to take a nap". Something that I wholeheartedly agree with, but hey I just do what they tell me...er sort of. I managed to get through the class with only minimal trouble, and not wanting to bash my head in, so I considered it a good day. Turns out I was headed for a big drop off. I get upstairs and turn on the hockey game (the Internet can do amazing things) just in time to see my beloved Bruins get knocked out in OT of game 7. Once again I know its only a sport, but anything that is familiar...so I am kinda down as it starts to rain, so I decide I might as well grade some of my students journals, this is a mixed bag. I am mostly disappointed because 99% of my students didn't try at all, and it makes me feel like I suck as a teacher, but one little girl Bunnie, wrote this pretty little piece about how she wants to go to India to help out the poor people, so I am touched. Shortly after reading that note my supervisor Michelle asks if she can meet with me for a minute. Knowing full well that she only wants to talk to me to discuss my failings as a teacher I am psyched.

Turns out it is worse than I had imagined. It appears that I am an awful teacher. I don't connect with the students on any level to make them more engaged and when I I do get my kids to interact with me, they go home and tell their parents that I am picking on them. I just can't freakin' win. I was told last month that I need to make things more fun and be more animated turns out that all of my attempts to be more friendly and nice to my kids has made them think I hate them and want to ostracize them. When I talk to Michelle about this, she explains to me that it is their second language and that their are lot of cultural misunderstandings that I am walking into. Which is fine and to be expected, except that when I ask what I can do to make it better and to be able to reach these kids, I get nothing except to say that she is embarrassed. She's embarrassed because she doesn't want to talk to these upset parents anymore about how I am not making their kids feel welcomed. Now this might be understandable to me with some of my more troublesome classes except she isn't talking about the ones that I know I have difficulty with she is talking about the class that I thought was my best one. I need to make the class more fun without in anyway interacting with the children in a manner that won't make anyone feel bad. I am out of ideas. I try to let them do their own thing, I have tried being strict, lenient, apathetic really all of it, and I have not garnered any change in the way my kids perceive the class. Also I have been told that I spend too much time grading their work, which is laughable because I only correct one paragraph a week from them, which is the only material that I receive from them. I am told that I need to do be more involved and that I should not grade or correct their work. Now I am confused by this because I don't receive anything else from them and have no way to be aware of if they are learning or not without checking their damned work! I guess this is another cultural understanding that I am running headfirst into, I assumed as a teacher I am supposed to um what is the word...teach! Maybe not. All I know is the meeting lasted for a half an hour, with me continually getting frustrated and saddened by my state of affairs. So I get out of the meeting and it is time to teach my next 6 classes, yay.

Well I would like to say that those classes went off well, and that after showing signs of a weakness my kids would be good, I mean it was Teacher's day after all. I would like to say that, but I would be lying. My kids noticed I was down and kept pushing to see if I would break. I didn't. Thanks in large part to a few of my students taking pity on me, thank you Nancy, Jasmine, Jessica, Molly, Bunnie, and Jane. I am pretty sure I would've been more despondent had it not been for their beautiful gestures on teachers day. So I will hold out hope for the future, but I hope I don't have many more of these. It's hard on the soul these days.

Will "down but not out" Dunkel

p.s. My apologies for not posting my Seoul adventure and other events that have happened in the past 2 weeks I have been struggling to make sense of things.

p.p.s. I got to name my second kid this week. A tallish boy who studied America. I named him Jasper. I think it fits...