Every day in the classroom has its interesting moments. The joy of Teaching exists in the summation of tiny moments throughout the day - little victories, or little tragedies. It's exhausting work because you must commit to each moment, then follow through with the next moment, and keeping paying this detailed attention to your work until its time to call it a day. Like acting, it drains you, mentally, physically, and emotionally.
Christina has not been an interesting student to teach. She started with the academy several months ago and she hasn't made a peep since. Christina likes to sit in the back of the class and play with her phone (she's 14 years old). She'll put her phone away when I tell her to, but almost everything else she has ignored. She's never answered any questions, and always seems lost whenever we do a game or writing activity. She never says hi to me, and gives me a dead zombie look whenever I ask her how she is, or what her favorite hobbies or school subjects are.
This past month my middle school classes have been suspended and turned into prep classes for the big middle school tests at the end of April. Usually I'm handed a couple kids, given a passage from a textbook, and instructed to help the kids 'memorize' the passage. At first I thought this had to be a miscommunication. Do the teachers really want me to help the students memorize the passage word for word, as if it were a monologue for an audition. Yes, was my answer after interrogating the teachers. Apparently, the passages on the big middle school come from the middle school textbook, so to get a good grade all you have to do is memorize the passage and the direct English translation.
So this has been my job for the past month. No matter how critical I am of the system, this is the way things are done here in Korea, and if memorizing a load of meaningless info is what helps the kids do well, I need to help (and motivate them) do that.
Last night Christina walked into my room, and my initial thought was, uggh this will be a boring 50 minutes. We sat down together and I went through the usual motions: Hi, how are you, how is school....no response. Didn't even look at me. Mighty intimidating! So I decided to move onto the textbook. I've come with a rotating list of games to play around with the text, to make the time pass quicker and keep teacher and students from falling asleep. But after three games Christina still showed no life inside her - her robotic movement and voice only doing what was necessary.
I changed the topic.
"Christina, what are your favorite school subjects?"
No answer.
"Christina, do you like math?"
No answer.
"How about music?"
No answer.
"Do you like school?"
A slow shaking of the head - NO.
What do you like?
No answer.
I began to draw a pathetic sketch of Homer Simpson.
"You know the Simpsons? Do you like it?
No response. Damn, and I thought I had this one because I noticed her Simpson's themed pencil case.
I thought of this as a challenge -- how can I get Christina to speak? Then I had an idea. I fetched my Korean language textbook and began to flip through the pages.
For a moment, I thought she had no interest, but she suddenly took hold of the book and began leafing through the pages on her own. Then she started pointing out random Korean words in the book for me to pronounce. And then she started laughing.
I had never heard her laugh before! And before you know it, she was speaking to me, asking me what I know and don't know about the Korean language. We were laughing together.
Christina pointed to my textbook. "This is easy?"
"NO!" I replied. "It's very very difficult!"
She pointed to her English book. "This is hard", she said.
"I understand."
We did this for about 15 minutes before I knew it was time to return to the English text. She approached the material with a slightly higher energy, and didn't seem afraid of me anymore.
I want my students to know that I actually am interested in knowing what they have to say, how they are doing, what they like and don't like, what funny stories they have, etc. I discourage robotic responses to questions and I've actually posted a sign on the wall with a giant scribble over the phrase "I'm fine thanks, and you?" I hate that phrase. It's boring, meaningless, and no one in America actually uses the phrase "And you?". As an alternative I've posted a list of interesting answers, such as awesome, excited, tired, not good, terrible, ok, etc. with a drawing of a face matching the expression. I open ever class asking the kids how they are and I give out high five's matching their response:
I'm awesome=high jump high five
I'm tired=a lazy high five
I'm angry=a punchy high five
I'm so-so=a so-so high five
and so on.
I walked away that night really feeling like I had done my job. I've struggled over the past eight months to understand what exactly my role is at this school, and I've learned that I'm really here to combat students' fear. In some cases (especially with the super quiet teenagers) if they're speaking English, I've won, because that's an accomplishment in itself. Although I have many confident, outgoing students, those ones are a breeze to work with, and I see spend more energy and time trying to find ways to help the ones having trouble, or the ones with a bad attitude. It's not easy, and I've failed many times. But I will keep going, keep trying, and keep learning.
