A good rule of thumb for shopping in Korea is, “Did I own this in 1993?” If the answer is “yes,” which it often is, the clothes are best left in the store and on Shannon Doherty in “Mallrats.” This is apparently a rule I did not regard once this entire year, as I discovered to my chagrin during my packing, when I pulled out item after item that was either a) consigned to a box for the after-school program or b) donated to HM. HM has never seen “Mallrats,” which is probably for the best.
Such packing is part of how I would like to account for my lengthy blog absence. I also spent a good deal of the time fielding letters from my students (to be reproduced here later) and receiving a touching and bizarre array of gifts. These included:
a Rubik’s cube
five different cell phone charms (a lollipop, a rabbit in a hanbok, half a fake stone heart, and two that said “Love,” once of which came from PopSongBoy#1)
a bag of junk food from Family Mart
a snow globe with a teddy bear wearing a crown that says “King of King”
cross-stitched models of kids wearing traditional Korean clothing
a $65 purse from Fila (!!!)
a planner that says “I <3 NY,” followed by the subtitle “It’s clean, and it’s easy to find everything”
some beautiful photos of Jeju that I think my student actually took
perfume from a boys’ class that is borderline unwearable
multiple packs of gum
I also, of course, spent a lot of time saying goodbye, which is something at which I’m pretty good by now, having had lots of experience. HS cried when I left. HB disappeared, so I didn’t actually say goodbye to him, but I’m scheduled to call home on Friday night, so I should be able to figure it out then. HM kept looking up words that translated to things like “among the missing” and “lost in a sea of doubts.” Perhaps I should have studied my Korean a bit harder.
Now, of course, I am home. The Program, instead of routing me through Seoul to Atlanta and Johnson City, sent me from Seoul to Narita to Detroit to Johnson City, which makes a lot more sense, obviously. I was concerned about culture shock, but fortunately for me I spent FIVE HOURS in the Detroit airport, which - although it almost gave me a seizure - accelerated my culture shock and helped me get over it pretty quickly. Like shock therapy. I forgot how fat we are in America.
Also, I would like to offer a hearty non-recommendation to Northwest Airlines, which made me yearn for the halcyon days when I spoke broken Korean to the understanding clerks at KoreanAir. I tried to ask them to help me get my backpack, which I couldn’t reach, from the overhead compartment and they told me to get the guy next to me to help. For a moment, I wondered if I had made the wrong decision in coming home.
PS. I would like to plug my favorite two stores in all of Seoul, if I may, one of which I visited on Sunday in an attempt to assuage my loneliness (no, really). A-Land does not seem to have a website, even though I know perfectly well that it must, but it’s like a discounted and expanded Anthropologie, with more recycled products and stationery. I’m no design expert, but I do enjoy a good one, and the products they carry never cease to amaze me. It’s near American Apparel in Myeongdong.
My second favorite store in Seoul is mmmg (millimeter milligram), which makes the most brilliant paper products in Korea, bar none. Bizarre usage of English has its place, of course, but mmmg’s stuff is genuinely cool, fun and innovative. I have spent a lot of money there. Their products are available in the store below the Kyobo Bookstore in Daegu, and there are several stores in Seoul as well; there’s one n Myeongdong that I can never find, and an easier one to locate next to the Anguk subway stop, on the edge of Insadong. There’s a list of locales if you can go to their website, which used to work for me and does not anymore.
It’s no great insight to note that the music of Elliott Smith is better suited for rainy bus rides and other rain-based activities than anything else. Getting to listen to him again was the only boon of today’s miserable and uncertain weather, which, like the past few days, has been ideal mopey folk weather and not ideal for anything else.
I’ve been listening to “From A Basement On A Hill” more in the past two days than I have since my sophomore year of college. Perversely, this is a sign of good mental health; when I’m actually sad, I want to listen to something that has no emotion to it whatsoever. The cold comfort of the inbetween, indeed. Which is a phrase that could just as easily apply to my imminent departure and my persistent lack of job offers.
Saturday the weather was the same, and I went with HM and her posse of Man Friends to 추자도, which is halfway between here and Jeollanam-do. It was lovely in a Wales-ish sort of way, as our affection for it was necessarily masked by the freezing mist that continually surrounded us. A list of things that Omma forgot to tell me to bring: $20 for the ferry, closed-toed shoes, a jacket, my passport, anti-nausea medicine for the second-worst ferry ride of my life. I discovered this when we got to the ferry terminal and three different Man Friends came up to me and said, “Why are you wearing slippers?” and, when I told them that I had worn them with HM’s blessing, turned to her and said, “Why did you let her wear slippers?”
Yesterday was better, with yogurt eaten in a park with Oregon and Arkansas. And today would have been fine, except that the Konglish Jeopardy lesson leaves me with the feeling I thought I’d shaken, that of being a beleaguered Will Ferrell trying constantly to keep up with Sean Connery’s moronic antics. Unfortunately, the test used to split the first graders into levels was too easy, and as a result, there are maybe five to ten advanced kids in each low-level class, and some really, really slow kids in the high classes. Nonetheless, my low-levels are pretty reliably slow, and on more than one occasion I found myself intoning into the microphone, “Do you understand? Does anyone understand? …Anyone?”
My day improved, however, with the viewing of “Forever the Moment,” a totally inspiring movie about the Korean Olympic women’s handball team. Are you still listening? Good. This movie combines the best of the inspirational sports-movie genre with uniquely Korean issues.
A few examples:
TEAM OFFICIAL, FIRING FEMALE COACH Why didn’t you tell us…that you were DIVORCED?
YOUNGER MAN TO OLDER MAN: Shut up!
OLDER MAN: How can you be so insolent!
Interestingly enough, whenever I ask ACT about a problem kid’s family, she looks around and goes, “Well, you know, his parents are divorced,” like that explains everything.* Bear in mind that ACT is no Puritan. As previously mentioned, I’m pretty sure she’s a registered Socialist. I always have to look really serious and nod and resist the urge to point out that in America, that’s usually only the beginning.
*A little bit of context: Because divorce is so stigmatized here, I suppose it’s possible that usually when people get divorced here, it means that things are REALLY bad. I’m not sure how that applies on Jeju, however, where the divorce rate is well above the national average.
5. Scenes from a Restaurant lesson (also v. successful, but don’t bother giving your students food unless they are not ungrateful little hoodlums like mine)
And since I’m mentioning the Restaurant lesson and the lessons in general, allow me to make a couple of points:
a) I used the menus from Ramsey’s, which is a fine establishment that you should make it a point to visit should you ever find yourself in Lexington, KY. I’ve only ever been to the one on High Street, but I can wholeheartedly recommend their Hot Brown and anything involving white gravy, as well as the pie, which is not on there but is worth making a trip for on its own. I prefer the mixed berry, but one of the Good Brown Daughters (with whom I usually go) says that there’s nothing but the brownie pie for her. Also, these menus are good for ESL classes, as they have a lot of food that students will imagine as stereotypically “American” while including some regional stuff. Also, fairly simple.
b) If you use these lessons and I don’t know you, please do leave me a comment telling me how you liked them. I’ve been bad about responding in the past, partly because I’m still foggy on a few of WordPress’s technicalities (for example, will you be notified if I respond?) but I really do like hearing from people who use these. I will start responding to comments. I promise.
In which we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming of constant complaining about all the stress in my life and examine a few things that I really, really love. It’s a special Super Size version of IGR Recommends.
When we were in Japan, I discovered a heretofore unknown fact about Soccer: given any iteration of the game “Would You Rather,” wherein one option is anything in the world and the other option involves Billy Crystal, she will always choose the one featuring Billy Crystal. This is a rule I like to think of as “Soccer’s Law.” At first I thought she was crazy. I’m not going to say that I suddenly had some sort of epiphany about my feelings towards Billy Crystal - they still remain in the indifferent-to-occasionally-annoying range - but I do, now, understand where she’s coming from.
I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* with some of the Jeju crew and Co-Teacher D, and I was trying to explain to CTD how adorable I find Shia LaBeouf and why. As it happens, I had also been discussing my love of the show “Cupid” with Oregon and Arkansas earlier, which is another relatively obscure thing about which I am passionate. I’ve also been listening to more Korean psychedelia lately. These three seemingly unrelated occurrences helped me to realize that I, too, have a lot of things I don’t necessarily think are the best in the world, but, given the option, will always choose for whatever reason. These strange little obsessions are itemized for the first time here.
Note: the following list doesn’t include obvious concepts like “favorite artist,” and it’s not comprehensive. Also, most of these do not reflect very well on me.
Note 2: if you have known me for longer than six months, you have probably heard me talk about at least one of these.
Note 3: My sister shares a lot of these. I’m not sure why.
1. “Sesame Street”
I love “Sesame Street.” I have always loved “Sesame Street,” and I probably always will. It still makes me laugh, and not in the “oh that’s so cute way,” more in the “Grover why did you bring out a grapefruit on a hot dog bun” kind of way. I love that it doesn’t talk down to kids, that it features characters who aren’t always sugary sweet to each other, that it takes on Hemingway and Hitchcock. If I create something with as wide an impact - if I even created something nearly as entertaining - I will be very, very proud.
Arrivederci, frog.
2. Shia LaBeouf
When I was in high school, I used to watch “Even Stevens” with my sister specifically for the purpose of seeing Shia LaBeouf. If “Even Stevens” was interrupted by “Lizzie McGuire,” I would complain loudly until that Hilary Duff monstrosity had ended and “Even Stevens” was back on again.
I totally want to hang out with him. I think he is absolutely adorable. I thought so when I thought he was like six years younger than me and he seemed to be the kind of kid I would have loved if he were my age, and I think so now that I realize that he is, in fact, my age. I like the fact that he broke into the movie business in an unconventional way and that he chooses a wide variety of movies. Also, he seems to have trouble with women, which if you know me at ALL you will realize that this, to me, makes him even more endearing. I would date him as well as hang out with him. Just saying.
3. Korean psychedelia/folk
I bought an album by Shin Jung Hyeon yesterday and it’s really good. I also want to listen to more Kim Jung Mi. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this stuff before. Don’t get me wrong, I still like Big Bang okay, but this is a total scene that apparently disappeared and was replaced by NOTHING.
4. My Co-Teacher, ACT
ACT is the most awesome woman on the planet. She hugs me and listens to me rant about things she can’t do anything about. Right now she is in Seoul protesting the Lee Myung Bak administration. I asked her what they were going to do in the demonstration and she said, “Shouting.”
No one ever knows who Jeremy Piven is. Which is too bad, because I love Jeremy Piven. I have loved him ever since I watched “Ellen” with my mother when I was in elementary school. I loved him in “Cupid” (see below), and I love him in “Entourage.” (Note: this is a key distinction between the items on this list and actual normal things I find attractive. Adrian Grenier is much, much more attractive than Jeremy Piven. I realize this. I find Adrian Grenier incredibly beautiful. But I would not necessarily go see a terrible movie featuring Adrian Grenier. I would do this for Jeremy Piven.) I think that I associate him in part with this sort of nostalgia for the mid-90s, when I was first starting to imagine myself as something more than what I was then, and the media I consumed featured adults living these lives that were possibilities for me. Also, I watched these things with my parents, and that was fun.
7. “Cupid”
“Cupid” was canceled prematurely. “Cupid” is one of the cutest shows ever, and I mean that in the most positive possible way. Jeremy Piven played this guy who was convinced he was Cupid, and Paula Marshall played this psychiatrist who was convinced he wasn’t and that love was all about science, and they wrestled with it as he tried to hook up every single person in the city, and I was twelve and really wanted to fall in love. Theme song by the Pretenders, which added to the awesome, as I also wanted to be tough like Chrissie Hynde.
8. My father’s boss and his wife
They ply us with delicious baked goods and have really adorable Nova Scotian accents. They are older and, we are sure, make wonderful grandparents. Cute dogs round out the package.
Highly recommended. Totally different from the movie, as previously discussed.
11. Blessid Union of Souls
Again from the mid-90s. Lyrically terrible and incredibly catchy.
12. Men’s style magazines
Esquire and Details feature authors I actually like reading outside of magazines (ex. Chuck Klosterman, Nick Hornby). They also write as though they are speaking to an audience older than tenth grade. While I’m not a fan of the way the dating articles occasionally veer into misogyny, they are far more entertaining than their female counterparts. The only comparable women’s mag would probably be Jane, but Jane was a) a little full of itself, b) targeted towards women who wanted to make it known that they read Jane, and c) halted sometime last year, which means I can no longer subscribe.
13. Reusing and making stuff
My father is a pack rat. So am I. He and my mother are also both bargain hunters, a trait I have inherited. Also, I have always liked making things, as my mother can attest, when she used to take me to the craft store as a treat. As a result, my rooms wherever I live are always cluttered with projects in process.
14. Social marketing
I did my thesis on this. I love good marketing. I’d rather be convinced than preached at.
15. Thomas Haden Church
There was a summer when I was moving and everything I owned was in a box, which meant that the only thing I had available as entertainment was USAm, the USA network’s feeble attempt to recycle old programming for the unemployed. I got really into “Ned and Stacey.”
Look at those crazy antics!
I actually think that “Ned and Stacey” was a good show for what it was - the writing may not have been top-notch, but Debra Messing is kind of endearing. More importantly, Thomas Haden Church is both full of himself and completely unashamed of being crazy, which seems to be the role he fits in the best. (Also, I’m a fan of mid-90s sitcoms that weren’t very good. Don’t even ask me about Caroline in the City.)
My sister understands this, as she watched a lot of Nick at Nite during this time and went through a similar phase with “Wings.” We also both enjoyed “Sideways.” Thomas Haden Church seems to be crazy in the same way we are, which is to say that I suspect that if we played “Would You Rather” with him long enough, we would find his Billy Crystal, so to speak. And isn’t someone we can play such games with what we all want, in the end?
*SPOILER: I briefly entertained the notion that the UFO was there, and looked incredibly cliche, as a sort of tribute to these sci-fi movies of the time period when IJ is set, but Oregon disagrees with me here, and I think she might be right. It’s difficult for me to say, anyway, because I’ve never seen the rest of the movies (don’t start on me). Also, CTE is lots of fun.
As a person who has never let actual constraints affect her imaginative powers, I’m often disappointed when I finally see pictures of the people I’ve imagined. Usually this applies to artists, as I don’t have a lot of other occasions to sit around and contemplate what people I don’t know look like. I love Mirah, for example, and Carla Bruni, but for whatever reason the image I had of them in my head simply doesn’t jive with what actually exists. Which isn’t to criticize them, of course; one can only change the way one looks to a certain extent, and the fact that Ms. Bruni isn’t exactly as ethereal and sad-looking as I might have thought doesn’t really mean that what she creates is any less valid. But still, I’m not going to deny a little bit of a letdown.
Perversely, however, Ira Glass is exactly as attractive as I pictured - maybe even a little bit more so - and that’s rather disappointing, too.
Figure 1: It’s a montage. (Or as close as I can get with WordPress.)
Part of me hates the fact that I love This American Life, the show so infamously described by one Summer Roberts as
…that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are. Gawd.
There are times when I think the show would be perfect if it could just dump Jack Hitt and Sarah Vowell, two of the biggest perpetrators of the patronizing, ludicrously biased, unable-to-see-past-its-own-navel tone to which TAL sometimes falls victim. (Also, I hate hate HATE Sarah Vowell’s voice.) And then, of course, there are other times when it messes up all on its own.
Nonetheless, I love stories, and I love the idea of telling stories, and I respect the fact that - to a certain degree - the show tries to capture a wide range of stories in America. And I like the show, in general, period. It makes me laugh, and it’s interesting.
Still, though, it’s so cliche to be in love with Ira Glass. Couldn’t I have found someone less sort of isolated? Someone less likely to fall victim to all the accusations leveled at this demographic?
What I really want, I think, is to not want this. Because he does look exactly as I imagined, and I still like him.
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I have a lot of quality student material to share and a lot to say about Japan, the reason for my extended hiatus, but not right now, which means probably never. Keep your fingers crossed if you like.
I don’t have any class notes to post today because I was too aggravated to write any down, which is unfortunate. I wanted to poke my students in the eye today. I am not going to lie. My school has just now separated the first graders into high/low levels, which means that the kids are in classes that are approximately half composed of new people, which means that they’re loud and obnoxious and refuse to listen to me even when I hold Co-Teacher B’s microphone to the portable speaker and make really unacceptable feedback noises. CTB was like, “Well, I dock their grades.” This does not work for me for obvious reasons. Then after school one of them was supposed to be cleaning and was actually twirling his mop handle like some sort of baton and whacked me in the shin. That was fun.
While I generally prefer a mic-free class, though, CTC’s microphone does make me feel rather enjoyably like a talk-show host, striding out into the audience and having students answer. What they probably don’t realize is that in my head, all the other students function as the studio audience.*
On that note, I’d like to recommend a particularly good story from a recent episode of This American Life that I recently discussed with one of my Program friends in Jeonju.I believe the episode itself is a rerun. The first story involves the rise and fall (and rise, and fall) of one Jerry Springer. You have to stream it from the website if you don’t want to pay. Highly recommended listening.
LIFE PROGRESS:
one more CL draft completed
potentially awesome Green Eggs/Ham lesson planned
emailed travel agent re: KoreanAir
uh.
Here is a poem by Audre Lorde. I’m not sure that I totally understand all of it yet, but I like it.
Coal
Audre Lorde
I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth’s inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me
Love is a word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.
*This reminds me of this Christopher Walken SNL skit that no one else seems to remember called “Jenny Jones,” or, alternately, “You Called Me A Geek, Now I’m Super Chic!” Our friend Christopher plays an extremely vocal audience guest, and I seem to remember thinking that it was just incredibly funny. But it was cut from syndication of the episode and there are very few mentions of it online, so evidently I was the only one.
Ordering t-shirts in Korea is a nightmare. You can get them in student (miniscule) or adult (too big for most people who would fit into a small, but still not big enough for those who would need an extra-large). Bless her heart, ACT came with me to the underground mall in Jungangro, which is more like some sort of hamster maze than an actual mall, and translated all my unreasonable demands, like having navy shirts (nope) and scaling the picture for different size shirts (also nope). Um, I really hope they come out.
The good news is that the shirt sale has raised around $100 for the book club, which we will use for expenses like paying for books for students who can’t afford them, having some sort of end-of-year party, etc. - i.e. stuff that either we or the students (probably us) would end up paying for out of pocket. So a giant thank you to all the Program kids who are supporting both us and Quagmire in his run for mayor of Scranton, PA, in 2013. I think I speak for both parties when I say: You won’t regret this decision.
We had our regular book club meeting on Saturday, of course, and I’m quickly realizing that the only regret I have about this club is that we can’t fit anyone else. I can think of a number of kids off the top of my head who would be amazing and who really need it, but I didn’t realize it in time to invite them instead of the kids we already have. I’m a little bummed. But we did have a great discussion as always, touching on racism (black people are more widely accepted in Korea now thanks to Beyonce and Ne-Yo, according to the kids), corporal punishment, and karma. We also had the palindrome contest; our students had been asked the week before to think of as many palindromes as they could, and SDY came back with twelve. I could not have been prouder.
This weekend also featured viewing of two movies: “The Two Faces of My Girlfriend,” a Korean film, and “Definitely Maybe,” which I saw with two girls from 2D. Unlike everyone else in Korea, I absolutely HATED “My Sassy Girl,” largely because I felt that the Sassy Girl in question had basically no redeeming qualities. Also, that movie is one million hours long. “The Two Faces of My Girlfriend,” which featured a girl with two personalities - a nice one and a mean one - was way ahead of “My Sassy Girl” in my personal rankings for the first, oh, hour and fifteen or so, until -
*SPOILER ALERT*
it is revealed that the reason she has two personalities (actually, it turns out to be three) is because her ex-boyfriend died rescuing her on an Antarctic expedition. It’s the classic romantic comedy formula - boy meets girl with two to three personalities, boy falls in love with one of those personalities while fighting off one of the other ones, boy discovers that those personalities were invented to help girl cope with tragedy of losing ex-boyfriend in polar accident. Anyway. I liked it a lot less after that.
“Definitely Maybe,” on the other hand, was one of the better romantic comedies I’ve seen in a long time. It fell under what I consider this sort of classic romantic comedy genre, in that there was a certain sense of escapism - unlike, for example, “Knocked Up,” where the characters are grotesquely and grossly real, the characters in the movie weren’t perfect, but they certainly didn’t face the same sorts of consequences or deal with the same sorts of body odor. There was a sort of gloss over New York City, that made you want to inhabit it, and I guess you could say that the characters had the same gloss. And of that genre, it wasn’t quite as good as, say, “Love Actually.” But it was good. It was funny, and endearing, and what I think I liked the most about the whole thing was how it showed a variety of different relationships and why they worked and didn’t work and changed. So in that sense, I felt like it was pretty realistic. Also, Ryan Reynolds is very attractive. (And he also cameoed in “Harold and Kumar,” like all true stars.)
I’ve also been catching up on American TV, namely “Top Chef,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” and “The Office.” Not going to lie: last week’s episode was not top-notch. But it wasn’t too bad, and I have high hopes for the rest of the season.
Lest my readers think I do nothing but stare at various types of boob tubes, other things I did this weekend: hit up Artspace C in SinJeju for an opening by this artist Mario Uribe (which, excitingly, featured both saucisson and hallabong), bought Korea Unmasked at BookTown, went out to dinner with The Teacher Formerly Known as Visiting Co-Teacher, who is now Hallim’s official co-teacher. She lives in a two story house. This is the Korean equivalent of, I don’t know, having your own private movie theater. Host Mom also took Hallim and I out to Hamdeok Beach, where we played on the rocks and ate some killer haemul kalguksu, which is a seafood soup with homemade noodles. Poor Hallim.
Tonight on the way to the screenprint shop ACT’s daughter (fourth grade) gave me some rocks she had collected in a river and then painted. She wanted to give me all six, but I told her they were lucky stones and so she had to keep some of them. Therefore:
“[The sandwich] is totally expensive…[But then] you will think, If this is highway robbery, let me always travel at night, and let me always get burgled.” Have truer words ever been spoken?
do they not want to shower me with compliments? investigate
1K - Break it Up
absolutely awful (why? testing/rain?)
better attitude from the kid in the Carlton sweater today
struggled with vowels
did NOT get to Sudoku wksht
I’m doing a lot of side projects right now, including applying for jobs (does that count as a side project?), so I’m a little stressed. Therefore, today’s entry is going to consist entirely of recommendations.
1. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. My only real dream in life is to be a contestant on this show. Living in Korea, this is my primary source of news (I am not joking). And while no week is ever a bad week to start listening, I highly recommend this week’s podcast, which features none other than - you guessed it - Neil Patrick Harris, along with Mo Rocca as a panelist and a story about our very own Quagmire’s much-beloved hometown, Scranton, Pennsylvania. (The story involves cat litter.) My primary reasons for loving NPH were his roles in Doogie Howser and Harold and Kumar (please see below), but it turns out that he’s also really funny, and he starred in Cabaret on Broadway. Miley Cyrus, I hope you’re paying attention. (Note: the best shows feature any of the following panelists: Mo Rocca, Roy Blount Jr., PJ O’Rourke. Actually, anyone who’s not Paula Poundstone.)
2. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. I am only on song #6, but I am already wondering how I have never listened to this album before. Fun fact: Stevie Wonder’s real name is Steveland.
3. Changing Cleveland, Ohio’s name to Steveland, Ohio.
4. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Widely perceived to be a dumb stoner movie, H&KGTWC is actually rife with absurdist humor and sharp racial commentary, while at the same time presenting two ethnic characters as real people from real (okay slightly exaggerated) backgrounds. It also has a lot of dumb stoner moments. AND a sublime bit part by NPH. Sequel coming soon.
5. The Office. I cannot believe I am not back in America to watch this.
I love my second graders more. I’m not even going to front here. Maybe it’s because I know some of their names now, but I look forward - I even get excited about - seeing them. The first graders are fine and cute and all, but with the exception of 1K, whom I see every week, I don’t know them all that well, and I find myself caring less.
My affinity for these classes is only strengthened after days like today, in which I taught 4 classes of first graders, only one of which could be said to be listening. And I am prouder still of them when I think of last Wednesday, when a small cadre of drama-loving girls staged a minor revolt against Co-Teacher F.
I like Co-Teacher F, personally, but apparently he hits too much for some students’ tastes. As a result, he made two of my better-behaved students cry quietly all through class Wednesday, which dampened the mood, as you might imagine. On the opposite side of the room, girls kept trying to call my attention to the situation by writing me notes that said things like “Teacher hit.” We were still studying the subjunctive, so I got sample sentences like “I wish teacher is fired.” When I told them that that wouldn’t fly, they changed it to “I wish she or he is fired” and pointing, rather unsubtly, to the hitter in question. As a result, I had to drag two of the crying girls and one of the protesters to the gyomushil and foist them off on ACT, who discussed the issue with them and promised to intervene so that Co-Teacher F does not hit them anymore.
My pride is mitigated a little bit by my shame in not having intervened, but, of course, here’s the thing: I don’t think any students should be hit, but I see corporal punishment being inflicted literally every day. While I may privately judge this, I still feel that this is a different culture and educational system, one of which I’m not part, and one I don’t always understand, so I’m not really qualified to or justified in stepping in. But I guess girl students aren’t hit that often - there are all these nuances to the punishment system that I don’t get - so when one is hit, it’s a big deal. But I’ve become so used to turning away that it didn’t occur to me that something might be wrong with what was going on. So I suppose I’m proud of my girls, even though I know part of their motivation was attention, simply because they gave me something of a wake-up call. In addition to stepping in for their friend.
And for the record, Co-Teacher F came to me later, apologized, assured me that if I ever had a problem I should talk to him directly, and informed me that he used to hit a lot more, but had become much better about it. Well, good for him.
Soccer and I were discussing Neutral Milk Hotel the other day, and Jeff Mangum’s obsession with Anne Frank came up. I told her that he wasn’t the only one obsessed with Anne. Here’s a Ryan Adams bootleg and perhaps one of NMH’s best-known songs, “Holland, 1945.” They both take very different approaches to the subject.
