“Teacha! Yesterday, my hand PEEING!”
I bursted out laughing because she just kept repeating (louder and louder each time) that her hand was peeing. At the moment, it didn’t occur to me that she was speaking konglish, which is a combination of Korean and English. It was only later that day when Rachel, Belin, Liz and I went to our first Korean language class (outside orientation) that someone said PEEING.. and I was like waaiiiit – what is that?! Hah. So, peeing in Korean means bleeding. I am pretty sure she probably thinks I am an insensitive teacher for not having more concern over her hand peeing – my bad.. my bad.
Ah now that I think about that – I’ve had quite a few other mishaps. The 2nd day of school, I was warned about this 2nd grade class. I had a great first day so I was feeling pretty confident about myself as a teacher. And yet again..how life proves to be so humbling! As the girls are walking in, I see a student walk in but was not wearing a skirt or the regular shirt uniform. Instead, said student was wearing what looked like boy shorts and a wrinkled white t-shirt. Said student’s hair was also short and I swear, there was a puberty mustache growing. I was convinced this bad class was trying to pull a prank on the new teacher by having one of their brothers or boyfriends come to class and sit in a student’s chair. But I was noticing all this as a cute little girl who doesn’t speak very much English had come up to me and wanted to talk to me. With the language barrier and having already covered the typical things you would talk to a student about during the first meeting, I pulled out my konglish, pointed to the said student and said, “why namja essayo??” this means “why is there a boy here” Sure enough, this quite cute girl turns around and SCREAMS to the whole class in Korean something…which I didn’t need to know Korean to understand that she had just told the whole class that I thought said student was a boy. Epic fail. Said student’s name is Bo Kyoung and apologized to her about 10 minutes in that class period. She was wearing her gym uniform. Good thing is that Bo Kyoung laughed it off.
Bo Kyoung is now a walking reminder to me of … well … of many things. Again, one thing remains constant, life is humbling.
Oh hah, I lied when I said I had a great first day of school. I had a great first day minus the heart attack I had the five minutes as a teacher. Instead a ding-dong bell, my school has this TINKERBELL/unicorn music. It’s really funny. So it rang and my first class (2-4) came in and sat down. So I thought “whew, at least they all came in and sat down –maybe everyone was right about them being sweet.” Because if you know me well, you know the first thing I do is imagine the worst case scenario, which for middle school girls was jumping on desks and spraying me with silly string. Seeing them all seated, I was so relieved. I proceeded to say “GOOD MORNING!,” expecting everyone to say back “GOOD MORNING!” AH, only a few students said good morning back and the rest kept talking to each other in the back. A few of them even got up and started “play fighting” with each other. I tried saying “Good morning” again, but it was even more futile than the first time. I thought all my fears about my students were coming true…
That instant I remember picturing myself in one of those cliché movies .. Dangerous Minds, Sister Act or Freedom Writers, in which the teacher walks in and the class is an absolute disarray … then because the teacher believes in them and inspires them, they become a disciplined class or win some prize or something. I even remember consoling myself, “It’s okay Shreya, they are not the sweet students that everyone said they were going to be, but you can totally pull a Sister Act or Freedom Writers on them and help them realize their potential.. yeah, you can do this.” (yes I have to talk to myself from time to time to calm myself down).
As I was about to scream real loud to get their attention again, the tinkerbell/unicorn music started playing again. They all sit down and are quiet. Hah. And then, the big Ah-ha moment – class doesn’t start until tinkerbell/unicorn music starts again. And that is the story if how I learned about our school bell system and when classes start. I still laugh with my students about the first day when I started to try to teach them during break time .. [insert the "you live.you learn" song by Alanis Morissette]
That’s all for now, folks.
Love letters to teachers in Korea all come in this shape:
