Touch, Hit, Shake

I challenged the adults quite a bit today with all of my questions about current events. I'm just not satisfied with what I read about Korean politics in the English language newspaper because I feel like they're leaving things out or not explaining things well enough for a foreigner (who doesn't know all of the background info) to understand. I saw on the front page of the newspaper that the Uri party chairman was resigning because his father had collaborated with the Japanese during the colonial period (pre-1945). The students had quite a hard time explaining everything to me, but reading the newspaper later and hearing Matt's explanation of things helped.

At first I thought that the chairman was being forced to resign simply because of what his father had done. I asked the students if they thought that was fair, and they said that yes, it was. Grace talked about her parents living under the Japanese police, and while she didn't go into detail, it was obvious that it was not a good part of their lives. Later I learned that it's not just who the chairman's father was that's an issue, but that he hid his father's past for so many years, and that for the last little bit he's been leading a witchhunt to expand the definition of a "Japanese collaborator" and prosecute those people, despite it being 60 years after it happened. It's quite an emotional issue; I understood a little more of it from Grace's reaction, but Professor Cho's statement back at the retreat has stayed with me. He said he attended primary school under the Japanese, and that "the Japanese treated us like slaves." There was such emotion in his voice as he said it.

I have a more objective view, having had a couple of Japanese friends. What's in the past is in the past--shouldn't they give the younger generation a break? Yet I also understand that when such horrible things happen, it's good to remember what happened to prevent such things from happening again. It's one of those issues where neither side is completely right.

I also asked them what they thought about the Koguryo issue and China. They thought it was bad about China distorting history, but hadn't heard the conspiracy theory that if North Korea fails in the next 10~20 years, then China wants it firmly established in their history books that the North historically belongs to them. That way the Chinese can keep North Korea as a buffer state between them and the capitalist South. (Or try to take control of the entire peninsula?) Of course anytime there's a regime change it's potentially dangerous, but if/when the North falls, things could get really interesting in this part of the world!

The day was good, with lots of laughter, yet I stayed in control of my classes. They thought Andre Agassi's name was hilarious, because his last name sounds like the Korean word for "miss." I had to keep reminding Billy and Andy to use their "inside voices," as my parents used to call it. They were speaking English--good. They were speaking it as loudly as possible--bad.

Kane and Brad were funny. The kids are always hitting each other for some reason or other, it's just what they do. Well, Brad went beyond hitting so Kane asked, "Why you touch me?" I told Kane that the word wasn't "touch," it was "shake" and I demonstrated the difference. Then to show that he understood what I was saying, Brad demonstrated the difference between "touch," "hit," and "shake," on Kane, several times, as he chanted, "Touch, hit, shake, touch, hit, shake!" Then Kane had to show that he, too, understood what the words meant as he used Brad as his demonstration subject. "Touch, hit, shake! Touch, hit, shake!" Then it turned into a rather girly slapping match until I reminded them why we were in the classroom--TO STUDY!

Joelle needs to chill and treat us like adults capable of teaching without her constant supervision. Nothing more has been said about the missing daily reports in the computer. I would not be at all surprised if she approaches me some day and demands to know why I haven't fixed them. I have my answer all ready. "Joelle, you never told us to do anything, I simply found a piece of paper with a bunch of random class numbers (many of them not mine) and dates (most of them before we started using the computer system) on my desk. What did you expect me to do with that piece of paper?"

I've been asking for a couple of weeks; we finally found out today that our session test is next Friday. I had already discussed with Tanya about the listening tests that we need to make, but Joelle, being the all-knowing and all-powerful manager that she is, felt the need to assign who should make what test: "Matt, you do HHH4, Beth, you do HHH6, Tanya, you do HHH1." Uh, we already have a HHH6 test made from last time, but we don't have a HHH2 test. How about let us handle what tests need to be made, since we know what we have/need?!

This time we have to proctor the tests in the classes that we'd usually have on that day, while in the past the Korean teachers took care of things and we hung out in the teachers' room and wrote evaluations. OK, sure. However, I'm sure it's because the Korean teachers complained about having extra work. What do they do with all of the time that they're not teaching??? We teach nearly twice as many classes as they do!!! It's just one day every three months! I asked Joelle to tell the Korean teachers to at least go into the classroom and explain the test to the students. The kids get really nervous when they hear the word "test" when they don't understand the directions 100% because the foreign teacher is explaining. I am SURE some of the teachers will "forget" about going into the classroom, or conveniently make themselves scarce when they're needed, or act like it's a big deal to spend two minutes making the kids comfortable with taking the test.

The other big Joelle thing today was that the level progression has changed slightly at the intermediate level. Matt and I had discussed that the CYBI 1 book would fit better between the second and third Impact book. But that was a private conversation, and without asking any of the foreign teachers, Joelle changed the progression so that the first CYBI book comes after the first Impact book. It's not horrible, but it's not the best, either.

With the new level progression, the Pink level kids will stop writing English diaries and instead will start using a diary book (published by our school, so thus filled with mistakes but an additional 10,000 won per session per student). Within two minutes of thumbing through it I found a mistake!! "I live with my parents, old sister, and young brother." Sue (the b****--sorry, some people warrant strong words), Natalie, and Nathan made the book. Sue thinks she speaks good English (nowhere near it), Natalie is pretty good, Nathan is a native speaker but has too much to do. They couldn't even get the biography page right! Natalie is listed as having been a "teacher's assistantship" at some school in Canada. With Western textbooks, the books are written, edited, checked again; very few errors get through. These books.....oh my!

The logistics of how we'll be able to check the new books will be a nightmare--they're supposed to do two units a week (they're only writing once a week now) so are we supposed to check it twice a week, too? The older students will also start doing a book published by the school, in addition to all of the books that they're doing now. Is Mr. Kim trying to drive all of the students away by overworking them?? No idea yet if we'll be expected to teach/correct those, too. There simply isn't enough time in class to teach anything else!!

As Joelle told us about the new books, I couldn't help but be thankful that I'll be gone in 6 weeks. There's certainly BS in other jobs, too, but hopefully not as much as there is in Korean academies!! I've mostly enjoyed my time here, but I don't know if I'd ever want to come back to a place where my opinion means so little and I'm treated like I am (besides things changing so frequently and with so little notice). I'd like to get some real responsibility at some point, some input into decision making, etc. I had more of both of those in the jobs I had in high school and university!

At Pet Supermarket I was trusted with a whole lot of money, handling lots of management functions (don't tell anyone, the corporate office wouldn't like it!), training new employees, hanging around to help find mistakes when things wouldn't balance, staying late the night before a district manager's visit to make sure everything was as close to perfect as possible, etc. When an employee meeting was held, the manager often asked me ahead of time if I had anything that I thought should be discussed at the meeting. It was truly a team where while a few people had the official power over the others, that power wasn't flaunted but the management treated everyone like the integral part of the company that they were (with the exception of a certain district manager). People want to feel important and if you treat them like the dung on the bottom of your shoe or an inept kindergartener, then they're not going to be happy, regardless of what continent they're on!