my name is jonas

Here’s a little one for the Weezer fans…  

I had a new class today, so I gave out index cards for each kid to write down his Korean name, English name, any brothers or sisters, favorite food, etc.  About halfway through the stack I came across:     

my name is jonas.

Since I had my iPod handy, I introduced Jonas to the first track of the Blue Album.  Tomorrow, speakers for the whole class.  Next month, another blog entry…

Saving Stephen (Teacher)

Recently, a class of my upper elementary students greeted me with a collective groan.  Next’s month schedule was posted and, as often is the case in our month-to-month system, a new teacher was slated to take over.  Thinking quickly, I modified the day’s writing lesson and assigned them a task. A persuasive essay on why they should keep their teacher.

I’m still teaching the class.  Here’s my favorite reason why:   

There are many foreigner teachers. Also there are many class in Bluth School. Students have familiar teachers and unfamiliar teachers. In our class K8C, the familiar teacher is Steve teacher. We study with Steve teacher a long time. but in the immediate future a unfamilar teacher will be come in our class. Because Steve teacher is good, we should save him.

First, we should save Steve teacher because he teaches very well. When I have to bring out my english attainments Steve’s class help me a lot, but new teacher will teach us not very well as him.

Second, we should save Steve teacher because he is very kind, like our academy president. People is very horrible, but he is opposite side from these people.

Third, we should save Steve teacher because he teaches important points. If any teacher teaches useful points, we don’t know about why this class is existence.

So, in conclusion, because Steve teacher is good, we should save him.

Teachers Say The Darn’dest Things

As a teacher, you’re always looking for small, seemingly trivial ways to connect with your students outside of the actual lesson material. I feel this extracurricular bond is important in all classes, and especially so when your text is both incredibly boring and down right incomprehensible. (Yes, Ms. Lucile, I’m talking about Reading 2.2.)

So perhaps some would scold a student who walked in with headphones on, but not I.

I like your MP3 player.

It’s not an MP3 player.

Oh, I think, it must be designed for newer formats, mp4, wma, aac—stuff like that. The thing does look high tech. We’re not talking (the new) Ipod Shuffle-size here, but it is pretty small. There’s a cuteness factor too. White, a little boxy, with no visible USB ports outside—sort of like my dad’s old Volvo.

Seeing my continued interest, the girl lets me take a listen. Now, with the headphones on, I realize it’s not so much music coming from the device, but rather amplified sound. That’s when it hits me.

This is a hearing aid.

I quickly apologized, and even blushed a little too. The nice part is that none of that was necessary. The little girl was completely oblivious to my blunder, merely happy to have the teacher taking some interest in her.

My friend is a music teacher in Colorado Springs. He teaches some mentally and physically handicapped students, one of whom is in a wheel chair. Upon hearing about my MP3 misspeak, he quickly thought up an equivalent compliment of his own.

Hey, Timmy. Nice wheels.

Le Mot Juste

As I slumped in my chair on Monday night, having just finished my first day of teaching, I wondered why I had even begun this ordeal. I was 70 hours in-country, still operating on jet-lag and sleep deficit (two separate items in this case), and I had been awake since 4:30 that morning. How, I thought, could I sum up this… phenomenon…in one word?

On the previous afternoon, several employees of the Bluth School were out eating & talking. I mentioned something about looking forward to observing classes during the next week, a throwaway comment meant to stimulate conversation with people with whom I lacked common experience. Jay, a Canadian, quipped, “What is this observation of which you speak?”

“Haha,” I said.

Blank stares replied.

The phrase “Thrown to the lions” came to mind.

Thus began a panicked twenty-four hour race against the clock: listening to tapes, reading textbooks, hurrying through classroom procedures, checking the wording of my contract. In the early evening, around 2 am Colorado time, Lucille, the head teacher, explained a stack of forms she had designed to help incoming teachers with lesson-planning. In the state I was in, each sheet struck my mind like an incoming shell, and by the end I felt like I was struggling through sleep-induced mustard-gas in a paper-pitted No-Man’s Land. Dulce et decorum non est. 

I awoke tense and harried in the pre-dawn dark on Monday, and continued in this state into the afternoon, when my first class began at 3:30. The things I had written down the night before had to be re-interpreted in the light of morning and a bit more sleep, and the ramshackle plans I had rigged the previous night were in need of serious firming-up. Predictably, a final route-switch added the finishing touch to this grand debacle when someone in the secretarial staff changed most of the room numbers at the (literal) last minute. The chain of events which had been sloping downhill all day continued to gain speed.

I would like to say that while Benedick was my favorite role, Monday night was my most skilful; or that I performed with a rare grace borne of difficulty and necessity. These, alas, are the accomplishments of greater men.

I hacked and clod-hopped through class after class, misunderstanding words, finding I had left a critical sheet of information elsewhere, being that criminally boring teacher I had so often despised. I smiled, I was cheerful, I might have even been bubbly for a moment, but all to no avail. It passed, by turns, in a roller-coaster haze of adrenaline and shame. Finally, at 9:20 pm, it was finished. I staggered back to the teachers’ room.

Oddly, my most powerful feeling was of overwhelming grace: a youthful me was not in attendance. When I was thirteen, I veritably licked my chops at the scent of that creature at the front of the class plodding through the material with the intelligence and poise of a very stupid water buffalo. I had just experienced the upside of “Learn or be beaten/Respect your elders” Confucian culture: despite all my blunderings, the students were extremely polite and followed every foot-induced gag with oh-so-close attention. My karma may have hit my dogma, but my dogma gave at least as good as it got.

At 9:24, amidst the euphoria of a job done wretchedly but done all the same, I realized that one word was not sufficient to contain this experience. A compound word, however, might encapsulate it very nicely: train-wreck.