Scar Siblings

I have a feeling that I often don't react the way my students expect me to.

One kid I have in the after school program is an impish 6th grade boy who chose the name Peter for himself. He's very quiet in my regular day class, but I've realized that this is because of early morning sluggishness and not due to any personality trait of his. He's a rather noisy and strange one, he is.

In any case, he came up to me during class this afternoon and said in an urgent tone, "Ms. Gloria! Look!" Then, he showed me a fresh scratch he had on his arm.

I suppose I should have acted tender and asked him if he's ok. Maybe I should have sent him to a sink to wash it. Instead, I showed him a very similar scratch on my own arm in the same place as his. I had scrapped it against something this morning.

"We're like brother and sister," I smiled.

He, without a word, blinked, smiled back, and then went the long way back to his seat.

Am I a bad teacher?

"Your name is Speaking."

Three quick kid stories for you.

I have a 5th grade girl who I think is gorgeous. She's very sweet and well behaved.

During our English Song Club, she makes sure to keep her eyes on me when I'm talking and nods with a quiet smile on her face, again and again.

Then I ask, "Do you understand?"

She gives me a very sweet smile ... then shakes her head, "No."

Another 5th grade kid I have is very cute. He's still very short, has a round face and rosy cheeks, and still has those straight bangs that are cut right above his eyebrows.

He's really interested in English and raises his hand often. He's well behaved and has a very positive attitude in class.

For my 5th and 6th graders, I have a password that they have to recite to me before they leave the classroom. The password is always a key phrase from the lesson. The kids line up, and when they get to me, they tell me the password and they give me a high five.

The password for the 5th graders on Friday was, "Oh! She's tall and pretty." Every so often, students will say the passwords in a very loud or exaggerated voice to have fun with it. This little boy outdid all of them. When it was his turn, he flashed a big grin and said the phrase while mimicing the movements I had done in class to demonstate the meanings of the words "tall" and "pretty." However, when he said "pretty," he struck the pose where his thumb and index finger made a V under his chin. Still posing, he raised his eyebrows and gave me a really cute smile.

It was so adorable that I couldn't help but laugh outloud and tossle his hair before giving him a high five.

And for the final story for this entry, there's a 6th grade kid that I think I've nicknamed "Mr. Class Captain," because I have no better nickname for him. I'll tell you more about him later, but he's a good kid; he reminds me a bit of my youngest brother. Well, maybe more than a bit.

Titles are put after the name in the Korean language. For example, since I tell them to call me Ms. Gloria, they'd call me "Gloria Teacher," if they translated directly from Korean.

On the description for the afterschool program, which Mr. Class Captain is attending, I'm listed as the "Speaking Teacher."

He saw me giving the 5th graders high fives as they left, so after I went back in the classroom, he peered in, just to say hello.

Then, with a little grin, he informed me that my name is "Speaking."

He smiled and left quietly without explaining.

"My name is MyulChi!"

Quick post about MyulChi.

He's a really adorable kid that has gruff features, as in... I think 15 years in the future, he'll look like a stocky (quite possibly stout) lumberjack or a pirate.

Anyway, I don't know his real name, but for quite a long time he was the only kid I actually had a name I used to call or identify him. He's the first kid I had an official nickname for, also.

Much earlier in the year, I was teaching the sixth grade the months of the year in English and he's not all that great at English either, so after January and February, he paused and wondered how to pronounce "March." Noticing that it sounds like "myulchi," which means anchovies in Korean, he thought it was funny to call out "MyulChi!" instead of saying March.

Even after he got the correct pronunciation of "March," he would call out "MyulChi!" which confused a few other kids in the class, since he has a rather loud voice. I told him that if he said it again, his name would be "MyulChi." And what does he do? He says, "January! February! March! ... myulchi," so I named him, "MyulChi."

He only stopped mispronouncing "March" after I threatened to make him do the MyulChi dance in front of the classroom. "MyulChi dance?" he asked. I nodded and wobbled my arms together like a fish. His eyes grew wide and he shook his head, "No! No MyulChi dance!"

Afterwards, he sometimes embraces his name, "MyulChi," and other times he seems to be a little irritated by it, mumbling to himself, "Why am I still MyulChi?"

Other teachers know him as "MyulChi," as well now.

The last time I saw him, he looked in the classroom when he saw that the door was open, knowing I had some candy (which I have only given out for a recent review day as prizes for teams). My co-teacher, Hee-sun, and I were organizing and cleaning up our materials after two days of big review lessons (and, of the nine sixth grade classes, I had to teach four alone). I was about to tell him to leave, but we asked him to help carry some things back to their proper rooms, instead.

He complied cheerfully.

Afterwards, I met him and my co-teacher on the stairs and said, "Thank you, MyulChi." I patted him on the shoulder and handed him two pieces of candy. His friend immediately demanded that he share.

As my co-teacher and I walked away, the boy bellowed triumphantly, "My...! Name...! Is....! MYULCHI!!!"

My co-teacher giggled and quipped, "I think he's happy."

Gar. I'm a scary rambling teacher!

I hunted one of my kids down at lunch by finding him in his homeroom class because I was teaching by myself today, he got in a fight right after class (it was something brewing from right before my class), I told him to follow me and he ran away.

That kid has been absent a lot from school because of his father. His father apparently doesn't let him go to school sometimes and takes him on cross-country trips instead of school sometimes and at other times disappears from his son's life. All the other teachers have said that the boy doesn't care about school; he seems to have given up.

The first impression I had of him was when I saw him in class, probably for the first time since the very beginning of my career here. I asked him to repeat after me and he told me in Korean that he doesn't know or speak any English. Then when I kept gently nudging him to try, he whispered to me, "I'm sorry," then shut his mouth. I did get him to repeat after me, but it took a lot of coaxing.

In some ways, he's really a cute kid, but his attitude is very saddening.

Lately, he's been getting trouble with me - but he's deserving it. He was continuing a verbal argument with another kid during my class. I don't know how to reach him, especially since I don't see him often and I don't speak to him in Korean, but I don't think going soft on him will work. He'll just think I don't care what he does.

Here's another perplexing little event ... There are two boys in that class who are pretty good for me... as in, I can see where they can be a bit naughty, but they never go so far as to make me upset... if they see even a tinge of me getting irritated or even if I'm just waiting for the class to quiet down, they settle down right away. They sneak each other looks in class sometimes and, a couple classes ago, I noticed that they kept looking at each other, so I asked one of them, "Is he that handsome?" The boy blinked, turned a little red, and said, "Wa!?? No no!" And he stopped looking over at the other kid so much. When I came by to have a chat with the other kid, they both snuck out of their classroom to stand a little ways down the hallway to watch me scold that kid. I have no idea why.

I do enjoy messing with that class though. They're not the best behaved class, but they respond pretty well to cues... which I have to use a *lot* with them.

There's a kid in the very front who kept looking back behind him. I was getting a little fed up, so instead of reminding him *again* to look forward, I asked, "Why do you keep looking back at her? Do you like her?"

He sputtered, "What? No!"

"I know she's a pretty girl, but... this is too much!"

"No!"

Then after a while of refraining, he finally gave in and turned around again.

"Again?" I asked.

"No! I was looking at *him.*"

"This time at him?" I looked at the boy behind him.

The boy suddenly got wide-eyed, realizing what I apparently took his words to mean, "Ah! No, no, no!" And after that, he didn't turn around any more.

Don't worry though. I only do this with kids I know I have a pretty good rapport with - if they're the types to be scarred by that kind of thing, I wouldn't do it. At least, I hope I wouldn't.

As for the whole boy gazing at boy thing, it's pretty normal in Korea for boys and girls to be very affectionate same-sex wise. Women often hook elbows with other women. I've witnessed middle aged men patting each other's butts in public. Boys will hold hands in class often; more so than the girls with each other. It takes some getting used to if you're from the states, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all.

So far, I've had a few girls shyly give me hugs or run up to me in the hallway and hug me before running away back to class. The boys don't touch me though, in general, which is fine with me. I've had one boy in the very beginning of the year keep putting his hand over my hand while he would say the password or, at times when giving me a high five, a boy will hold my hand for a moment. I find that very awkward.

More Mr. My Cutie Stories

So the other day, Mr. My Cutie was raising his hand incessantly, trying to tell me an answer to my daily "How are you?" greeting more than 3 times.

This kid was not responsive way back when I started teaching. He was quiet, but dozing off or looking out the window. One thing I did notice about him was that the girls left him alone and many of the other boys in the class followed him or did as he said. For example, once, not long after he started participating more in class, he forgot the "password," which is a phrase from the lesson that I want to emphasize, to check out of the classroom when it was time for lunch, so I told him to wait by the door as the rest of the students checked out. He pretty much became my bouncer. If a boy hesitated and forgot the password or made a mistake, he grabbed their arm and said, "You got it wrong. Get behind me." The boys, whether they actually knew the password or not, did as he said. He was more strict than I was.

One of the first times I noticed that he was actually paying attention in class was when I was waiting for the class to quiet down and before I could say anything to point out the few boys that were still talking, he pretty much growled at them, "Why aren't you shutting up?" in Korean. The boys stuttered a bit and then shut up. Then he turned back to look at me, although just a few minutes later, he was looking back down at his desk. At this point in the year, he still hadn't really raised his hand at all. I realized later that this was because he really doesn't know any English.

Lately, I can see him thinking about my questions and raising his hand if he thinks he knows the answer, whether the answer is correct or not. This week, as I was closing the game activity (which went very well), and was walking around to collect the cards I had made from the students, he called to me, "Ms. Gloria?"

"Yes?" I thought he had a question about the game.

He looked at me very seriously, furrowing his eyebrows a bit and announced, "... I'm fine."

Eh?

I mentioned to my co-teacher later that I noticed that he's participating in English class a whole lot more nowadays. She said, "I think he might just be trying to get your attention."

"Well," I responded, "At least he's learning English."

She chuckled.

Later that night, I went back to school to try to finish preparations for my 5th grade class, and Mr. My Cutie was outside in the schoolyard playing sports, as he seems to do every day as soon as school is out till it's dark, as far as I've seen. I didn't see him, but I'm guessing he saw that the office light was on and came to investigate (although he shouldn't have been in the school building). I saw his eyes peering over the frame of the doorway window. I didn't know it was him at the time, so I went to the door and opened it.

"Hello Miss Gloria." Who else could it have been but Mr. My Cutie?

"Oh, hi... How are you?"

He had started walking away as soon as he said "Miss Gloria," but he rushed back and said, "Uh... I'm fine.... and you?"

That's a phrase many Koreans who may not know anything else in English have learned and repeat verbatim, as well as with the same intonations. ("And... YYouuUUUUU?")

I said, "I'm good." Then I waved and said goodbye, since I had a lot more work to do.

I heard him outside later, telling his friends that he doesn't know any other things to say in English. As they tried to teach him, he complained, "That's too hard. I can't remember that."

Later, I heard the security guard yelling at some kids to stay out of the school building. (A couple nights before, while I was in the office at night getting the 6th grade game ready, I heard the guard chasing around some kids, yelling something like, "Go somewhere else!" to which the kid being chased answered, "I have nowhere else to go." Later the guard yelled, "Go home and EAT DINNER!" I still have no idea which kids those were. Ok... maybe more than no idea at all, but just an inkling if anything.)

He also asked me not to come to school at night any more.

And just so you know, there are other kids with other nicknames... For example, there is one kid I call, "MyulChi" which mean anchovy in Korean. How he got the name is a story for another time, but the other teachers all know him as MyulChi also. He sheepishly, with a small drop of amused pride, told my co-teacher, "I think the name MyulChi made me famous."

Good to know how positively I'm affecting these kids, huh?