By the way, all the pictures get much much bigger if you click on them.
My final week of 2009 teaching began on Wednesday the 16th and ended on Tuesday the 22nd. I hadn’t taught a class in about 2 weeks, so I’d had plenty of time to plan my final lesson. Finals were done and everyone was just waiting for the closing ceremonies the following week. Most classes were showing movies or having independent study.
When the kids came into my room, the lights were off, but xmas lights were strung around the ceiling and upbeat xmas music was flooding out of the room’s surround-sound system. My first classes got the task of drawing a xmas tree on my whiteboard, complete with presents drawn below and taped-on ornaments.
For the first part of the lesson, I taught them how to make paper snowflakes. A couple students complained that they were in high-school, and this was stupid. The vast majority of them made their first snowflake, re-folded it to figure out exactly how the cuts worked, then started on a second—the masterpiece.
I wore a santa hat for the whole thing. I announced that I had presents for them (a stocking full of candy), but that they had to be good children and participate in the xmas spirit to get it. Then we karaoke’d “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” They had all heard the song before, so it went relatively well.
When we got to the second verse, I asked why the song talked about pudding and why the singers demanded that the listener “bring it out here.” Some classes had students that knew about caroling, but most didn’t. I explained xmas caroling, namely that it involves singing to strangers.
What we were doing wasn’t really caroling. The audience was missing. Easily remedied. “Get ready,” I said, “we’re going Christmas caroling.” Then I alt-tabbed to skype and dialed up a random friend.
The class could all see my laptop display projected up onto a screen. They could see the phone dial symbol on the skype program, and every single one of them knows what “call mobile” means. I gestured for them to be quiet while the phone rang.
Steve was the first one to pick up. He doesn’t celebrate xmas, but hey, what’s a Christian holiday without a little evangelism?
- Steve: Hello?
- Jeff: Hey, it’s Jeff… Normann.
- Steve: Oh, hey man, what’s up?
- Jeff (frantically gesturing for giggling students to be quiet): Uh, not much. Hey, I was wondering if you could help me with a little project I’ve been working on… Hey, can you hear that (karaoke music starts)?
- Steve: uh, yeah…
- Thirty Korean high school students: “We wish you a merry Christmas! We wish you a merry Christmas! We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!”
We sang the first verse & refrain. Steve was impressed (we’d practiced a couple times, and choir is a mandatory class for all students in the grade I teach. They were awesome). Then Steve got interviewed. How old are you? What’s your job? Do you have a girlfriend (he’s married—doh!)? Finally, we swore Steve to secrecy, then we called his wife…
I did this with about 10 classes. In all, I think about 25 people were hit up by the Korean tele-caroling. Notable reactions to the performance:
- Is this live?
- Wow.
- ……….*sounds of laughing*………*sounds of laughing*…..
- Sorry, I couldn’t really hear any of that… Who is this again? (damn cell reception)
- So… you actually get paid to do this? (by far my favorite response, and the students laughed really really really hard—thanks Jorge)
Other notable things that happened during the calls
- We got hung-up on when someone tried to put us on speakerphone.
- Upon first picking up the phone:
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Jeff Normann.”
“Hooooooooooooooooooooooooly shit.”
“Uh, oops.”
Thank you, everyone who got tele-carol’d. I’d especially like to thank everyone who submitted themselves to an interrogation afterward and everyone who sang back. You people rock. For those of you who didn’t get a phone call, either you don’t celebrate xmas, or I lost your phone # when I moved to Korea, or I had you slated for calls on Monday/Tuesday (see below).
After the signing, each kid got candy from the stuffed stocking. I also passed around a stocking to put coins in for charity, promising that I would match any amount the kids put in. Since this country recently pulled itself out of poverty, donation to those outside of one’s family/friends is not an established part of the culture. That’s a piece of Westernism I don’t mind spreading. I haven’t taken the stocking to the bank yet, but it’s pretty heavy. I’m proud of my kids.
My Christmas party was going splendidly. It just begged for something to mess it up… That something was mandatory training. During my last two days of class, I had to go to Korea University for a seminar on co-teaching (how to make use of/survive Korean teaching partners–I’m lucky in that all of mine range from okay to excellent). Grrr…
Of course, I had something special planned for Monday. The workplace in Korea is notorious for being disorganized as far as scheduling goes (in my rather irate words: in Korea, the Best Laid Plans are hunted for sport). Sometimes you can arrange to slip through the cracks, though. I called the people in charge of the training and told them my monday lesson had been in planning for over two months, so I was going to go through with it & I’d be a couple hours late to their shindig.
The two months figure wasn’t BS. In my first class on Monday there’s a student who had told me about her dream career during her mid-term interview. An old friend of mine is currently doing well at this girl’s dream-career, so I decided that for xmas, I’d get the two in contact with each other, so the student could ask for some advice.
So, the friend was at the top of the caroling list on Monday. Said friend didn’t answer the phone. Grrrrr. We left a message, and then the student and I sent off an email two days later. This is the down-side of surprising people.
Right after class on Monday, I locked my computer in my office and then headed off for training. It was far better than expected, and I actually learned quite a bit (this was the bosses’ Christmas present to me, I guess).
On Tuesday night, I was tired. I had come to the conclusion during training that in my first semester, I had done exceedingly well at keeping kids’ attention and convincing them that there is more to speaking English than taking tests.
But I hadn’t taught them much, and I hadn’t gotten them speaking enough. I had spent a great deal of time blindly experimenting, trying things that might/might not work. It’s a necessary part of doing anything new, I know, but it sucks that the burden of said part falls on kids who I have generally come to see as victims of their education system (one of my best students caught me nodding off in my office. She told me I should get more sleep at night. I asked her how much sleep she got each night. Four hours. Almost never more than four hours).
Inefficiencies in the combination of private/public/University education put a very heavy burden on students. My next semester will go much better; I know what I’m doing now.
I was tired on Tuesday night after training. I went back to school to retrieve my laptop. The Christmas lights were still on in my classroom. 250+ snowflakes littered the walls and ceiling; many of them were taped together and draped in garlands around the room. The whiteboard was covered with snowflakes and pictures and messages. Someone had made a chain of paper angels linking hands and taped it on my desk.
In February, all the kids would return to school, but they’d be in the next grade, and none of them would be my students again.
I turned off the fluorescents and sat in the glow of the Christmas lights for a few minutes, quietly playing music and running through some breathing exercises. That was my Christmas, I decided. I had some plans for the 25th, but nothing that could match meditating that room, soaking up the well-wishes of the couple hundred students who had taught me how to be a teacher. Thanks, kids.
I locked the door, headed home and supposed that all the major Christmas memories of 2009 were already in the bank. There were some good ones, though, so I was okay with it.
Luckily, I was wrong. I will never forget 6pm, December 25, 2009. For more on that, see the next post: Kangwha-do, Seokmo-do, Christmas and Awe.
