Dolphins and Hostage Negotiations: Tales of an English Teacher

Back when I was in school, as I took notes very studiously in class, I would just as studiously take notes on any funny interactions between the students and/or teacher.

And that has not changed one bit since I started teaching in Korea!

This blog post has two parts: Part 1: Korean Superstitions and Why Kids Should Be Hostage Negotiators

Part 2: What Dolphins and Teachers Have in Common

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Part 1: Korean Superstitions and Why Kids Should Be Hostage Negotiators

Noteworthy moments with the kids:

Death is the second most feared thing in the world. (The first most feared thing is public speaking. Does that make life as an English teacher harder? Oh, you betcha.)

In South Korea, many superstitions revolve around death:

- Don't write living people's names in red. Red ink has traditionally been reserved for the deceased, so doing this means you wish the living person would diiieee.

- Don't leave your chopsticks sticking out of your bowl. (It looks too similar to a Korean funeral custom.)

- The number four (4) is considered unlucky because its pronunciation sounds like "death." (Some elevators don't even have the number; instead, they have an "F" in its place.)

As much as kids partake in these superstitions, they also love to joke around about death!

Here's a story from an elementary school-aged class one Wednesday:

Me: Hey, class. Where's J?

Class: Andrew killed him!!

Me: Gasp! What?! Andrew?!

Andrew: No, James killed him!

Me: GASP! You're both going to JAIL!

Another story from a middle school class three weeks ago:

Me: Where's so-and-so?

Class: Teacher, he's not here today. Me: Awww! RIP, so-and-so.

The kids laugh.

One kid: GASP! Coronavirus?!?

And then one kid made a little gravestone for the absent kid and put it at his desk. 🤣

Please note: The kid does not have coronavirus. As far as I know (and hope!), none of my kids do. The kids just joke. Yes, some are scared. But that's all a story for another time.

But also, on the topic of coronavirus (AKA COVID-19 DUN DUN DUUNNN), it's made school pretty interesting, as students would come into class with masks on more often. For a week after the initial fear outbreak (shortly after the actual outbreak), teachers were required to wear masks in class, too. I won't knock prevention, but I will note that it's tough to teach with a mask on, as it stifles your voice, and so you must speak louder than usual.

...Which means it also muffles kids' voices. Many of my students already speak at a low volume so others won't hear them if they make a mistake, so the masks sometimes make it nigh impossible to hear them. It works out really great for them, eh?

But you know that sound of a muffled Walmart announcement that comes from a mysterious speaker somewhere in the vastness of time and space? Yeah, that's what it sometimes sounds like when you talk with a mask over your face.

I observed a fellow native English teacher's class last week. His advanced students were giving presentations. Whenever his kids went up wearing a mask, he'd use his teacher-warning voice and they'd take it off so he could hear them better.

One little girl goes up.

Teacher: Mask.

Little Girl: No.

Teacher: OK.'

So, who's wondering why kids would make great hostage negotiators?

Let me introduce another element of teaching in my hagwon: stamps! TEACHER TEACHER STAMPS PLEASE GIVE ME MORE STAMPS OH TEACHER PLEASE I NEED STAMPS TO SURRVIIIIVVVEEE 🤣

OK, OK, I'm totally joking around about the survival part, but the rest of that caps lock is verbatim from a few classes!

You know Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the show where everything is made up and the points don't matter? Well, at my hagwon, the points absolutely do matter to our elementary school kids. Kids get stamps (not physical stamps; they're actually just points we mark in their workbooks) for doing well in class, and sometimes they get stamps/points taken away for poor behavior. Twice a year, kids get to visit a school store and use their stamps to buy things like pencil cases and notebooks.

I start my kids off with a few stamps at the beginning of the class to perk up their ears a bit and boost morale, especially if they've got a test that day or something.

Another actual conversation from one class from probably my first week, when I was young and naive and didn't know any better:

Me: Alright, guys, I'll start you off with four stamps today!

Class: NO TEACHER!! Four is bad luck! Me: Ohh, sorry, guys.

Class: Buuut...seven is good luck.

Also class:

At one point, I had written their stamps like this: 卌IIII

Student: OH NO TEACHER! That's five and FOUR! FOUR IS BAD LUCK! Give us 10 stamps.

I told Student that he's going to be a great businessman one day and he got very upset. He said, "But teacher, I don't want to be a businessman."

"It's because you're great at negotiating!" I clarified.

But you know what other professional is great at negotiating? That's right.

Hostage negotiators are all about mentally wearing down the captor (the captives here being the stamps) and running out the clock. And you know, sometimes the kids have good reasons for why I should give them more stamps, and I release a few captives. And sometimes it's just about choosing my battles and not going down in a firefight. 

BONUS! Korean Kid Mannerisms

- Imagine this: You see a kid in the hallway and say "hello," and then they shake their head at you. WELL FINE CHILD. I RESCIND MY HELLO TO YOU, you may think. But you don't have the whole story! Here, kids will shake their head in a way of saying "hello" back. Their head-shake mimics the waving of a hand. It's just a shy way of responding.

- "Eh?" When the kids don't understand something, this is what they say. I think it's adorable.

Me: Hey, class, guess what! It's your favorite day today!

Class: Games?? Me: No, it's essay day! Yaaayyy! Class: EH??

Being a teacher would be really great prep for becoming a stand-up comic, by the way. Try getting your audience to laugh when they don't even want to be in a room with you. I always feel a hint of validation when I make a joke and the kids go "EH?!" and laugh. It doesn't happen often. I'll just stick with my day job.

- "Okay okay okay okay okay"

Example: Middle school class

Background info: Kids are only supposed to speak English during English-learning time with me at their English school, not Korean. Did I mention English?

Kids: ***Speaking Korean***

Me: Hey, guys. Please speak English in class.

Kids: Ohhh. Okay.

Five seconds later:

Kids: ***Speaking Korean*** Me again: Hey, guys. What language do we speak in class?

Kids: Ohhh. Okay okay.

Five seconds later.

Kids: ***You know the drill***

Me: Guys.

Kids: Okay okay okay

Spoiler alert: It was not okay okay okay. "Look, I'm stubborn," I told them. "I will annoy you into speaking English!"

- "AVERT YOUR EYES!" Okay okay okay, no one has actually yelled this, but if students don't know an answer (or want to try to turn invisible when I ask a question), they will avert their eyes. Sometimes they'll peek up to look at me, and other times they just don't lift their heads at all. I wonder if my teacher friends can chime in and tell me if this is just a Korea thing, or if all kids do this?

- New hand gestures! There are a few fun ones!

Like....

Did you know that the heart symbol we make with our fingers in the US is not common in Korea? Instead, Koreans make a heart symbol like this:

If you're confused like I first was, look again at this hand symbol and instead of comparing it to the pink heart shape, compare it to the shape of the human heart organ. The two fingers at the top resemble the veins at the top of the heart (Google "vena cava").

Another popular symbol I find myself doing all the time (curse my knack for talking with my hands!): When you want to convey the idea of "no" or "there is no _____," Koreans (and naturally, English teachers, of course) cross their arms over their chest in an "X," like this:

This is going to be a hard habit for me to break. I can already tell.

- BONUS bonus: Things the kids love:

The girls:

- Not all, but a lot of middle school girls LOVE...you guessed it...K-Pop! I've got some BTS ARMY in my classes, for sure.

- Cute things. Just anything cute. But who can blame them?

^ Actual footage of me surviving the winter

The boys:

- Sports! (A lot of girls love sports, too.) Soccer and baseball are absolutely the most common. You'd be amazed at how much my soccer-loving kids know about other countries in the world, just because of their passion for this sport.

- Video games. Their favorites right now: Overwatch and Battlegrounds. When I did speaking evaluations with one class a couple weeks ago, I'd let them chill (when it wasn't their turn) with an activity book filled with word searches, mazes, puzzles, sudoku, and a blank sheet for drawing. They'd completely ignored the games. Instead, they drew Battlegrounds guns. And then they'd erase their drawings. And then they'd redraw their guns. And every time they redrew them, the guns looked more and more amazing. More and more details. The boys really do have a fascination with weapons, but these 11-year-olds (12 years old in Korean age) were so talented and artistic!

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Part 2: What Dolphins and Teachers Have in Common

What teaching is like here

Allow me to set the scene...

I teach roughly 190ish students total, aged 9ish to 15ish, elementary school-aged to middle school-aged.

I teach at a hagwon, a cram school of sorts. There are different sorts of cram schools: for English (represent!), math, soccer, science, etc. Korean parents want their kids to be successful (of course), and in Korea, success is equivalent to getting good grades, which will give access to better high schools, which give access to better universities, and etc. You get the picture.

Currently, we are finishing up winter intensives. Students are on their winter break. The new school year starts up in March (eventually, after COVID-19 has stabilized). During this normal winter break, though, kids are still enrolled in our English hagwon to brush up on their language skills. When classes start up again, I will work evenings, teaching kids after they've finished their public school day. (Yeah, these kids work very hard. Or, even for the ones who don't work too hard, they're pushed very hard.)

But teachers work hard, too!

Here's my week in a nutshell (before the new school year starts and things change):

Monday:

Write lesson plans for one to two lessons (speaking and writing) for future classes

Prepare and study my plan-of-attack for the day's classes

Teach six classes

Tuesday:

Finish up my lesson plans and submit them

Review and improve upon my plan-of-attack for Tuesday classes

Teach five classes

Begin grading book reports

Wednesday:

Review my coworker's lesson plans and give feedback

Select new lesson plans for the rest of the week (writing focus)

Review and plan those new lesson plans, make a million photo copies

Teach four classes

Grade more book reports

Thursday:

Plan of attack again

Finish grading book reports

Teach four classes

Start prepping to make two new lessons

Friday:

Recycle all my papers from the week

Select new lessons for Monday, print them, make a million photocopies

Teach two classes

Fridays are pretty nice right now, but I am usually pooped by then.

Teaching is hard work, but it was never anything but. It's an amazing challenge. I put in more hours than necessary right now because I'm still getting into the flow. My biggest challenge is creating lesson plans. I'm getting better at brainstorming engaging activities and at scaffolding. (Scaffolding is what we call it when you build a lesson so kids gain skills and confidence as the lesson progresses. They may begin at bare bones, not knowing how to do something. Step by step, they become comfortable and understanding of the expectation, and by the end of the lesson, they can do the skill totally on their own.)

When it comes to lesson creation, I struggle with the graphic design part. We work with Microsoft Word, every graphic designer's favorite design application. Even when I have the greatest lesson plan idea ever, sometimes it's tricky to just turn it into something pretty. But I'm getting better at that, too!

What I really love about teaching are these two things:

1) It is so much fun to prepare and hone a new presentation every day, to be up in front of these kids, guiding them. You never know what each day will hold. Even when you understand the personality of a class, the dynamic is different every week. Sometimes the kids are in a mood. Sometimes I'm in a mood. So, I really have to stay on my toes and bring the energy, direct the mood, regardless of how I'm feeling because it's all for them.

2) It is so amazing to work with kids. They are so smart (too smart sometimes) and as much as (I hope) they're learning from me, I'm learning from them, too. There's a serious sense of reward when you see the light turn on in their eyes and when they take the reigns on their own education. It's so rewarding to give them an assignment that they think is exciting. My kids all love playing games, too, and that's one of my favorite parts of our classes. Usually, I'll end with a game of Hangman or Who Am I?, which ultimately tricks them into practicing English while having fun. But even so, I can see a big difference in their skill and confidence levels.

When I first came into work, I got so excited about book reports. I love to proofread and edit materials, putting that English minor to good use. My coworkers laughed and assured me that grading these book reports is very different than what I'm expecting. They even asked me the other day, "So, Michelle, do you still get excited about book reports?" The reason they ask is because it's one thing to proofread a native speaker's writing, and an entirely different thing to decode ciphers.

Articles and prepositions are two of the most difficult English elements for my students. If they're missing, I'll write them in; no problem. But sometimes words will be missing, or misspelled, or added, until I don't understand the context anymore and I begin to question everything I know about my own language!

Puzzles, man.

But I get some good writing, too. In their book reports, as you probably suspect, kids write a summary of the English children's book they read. The most recent wholesome report I read was about a book called Whales. The little girl had written about all the fun marine animal facts she'd learned. Here was her last sentence: "I think dolphins jump because they are so happy to be dolphins."

Did you know teachers jump, too? It's a different type of jump. We jump into the line of fire ("Okay okay okay"). We jump into uncertain situations (see: every failed joke I've ever made in class). We jump for joy when our kids "get" the lesson ("TEACHER STAMPS PLEASE FOR THE RIGHT ANSWER").

Dolphins have to come up for air sometimes, too. They work hard and play hard. So, I think teachers also jump because they are so happy to be dolphins.