Category: Week 7

With the knowledge that it was our last week of teaching and a fully fleshed out lesson plan (thanks to the urging of Kim Seungsangnim), the eight of us plunged ourselves into the now familiar, but still hectic, schedule of Wooriduel Hakyo.

Monday

After a week of acclimation to Wooriduel, I had grown close to my two groups of “Young Men” (as Ji-Kang likes to refer to us).  My reading club of three 19 year old (Hee-myung, Ji-San, and Ji-Kang) and two 16 year old  (Im-gon and Jimin) “men” was beginning to open up to me despite my inability to speak Korean or Chinese and their relative inability to speak English.  To begin the week, we opened up with finding each of our hometowns through the magic of Google Earth (something unknown to my kids who had been forced to use Baidu in China).  Then we launched into famous cities in the U.S. that they had heard about such as Miami and New York.  

Following reading club was my subject class with Hyo Ku and Kum Yong (or as I like to refer to him “GOLDEN BRAVERY).  This class has a much better grasp of English so we are able to have extremely stimulating conversations about whatever we want.  Today, Hyo Ku wanted to continue our conversation about the prospects of alien life.  This was a great opportunity to teach probability and large numbers.  The Korean language does very well at naming large numbers so Hyo Ku was able to pick up the English equivalents very quickly.  The next period, we delved into the history of the Earth itself, learning about Pangea and tectonic plates.  Teaching English as a accessory to teaching interesting science proved extremely effective for my class of similarly-aged students. 

Our Alien Board

Monday was also bittersweet as it marked our final session with the Jiguchon middle schoolers.  They surprised us by playing us a farewell song and we reciprocated with thirty minutes of farewell speeches and a cake.  Our six weeks with the middle schoolers was the longest time we spent with any one group and I would not change that for the world.  For this class, we had to learn to be teachers, friends, role models, and mentors, but it was clear that we learned more from them than they learned from us.  Many of these kids travel more than an hour to get to school or work jobs afterwards but were still making the choice to give us their times, and thus their lives, and it was an honor for us to be able to share in their lives.  

Leandro’s and My Middle School Class

Tuesday

With the knowledge that we were going to play table tennis today for P.E., I decided to teach my reading club about ping pong terminology such as styles, techniques, and my favorite player Zhang Jike.  The boys really enjoyed this topic as the top four players in the world are all Chinese and they were able to see their own playing styles in the videos we watched.  This carried over very well into our playing period as the boys were able to recall what “backhand” and “topspin” meant and were able to incorporate this in to their playing styles.

Our Ping Pong Board

Although this day only had one subject class, it was quite the momentous one as the North Koreans finally returned from their college interview applications.  I took advantage of this to open up the topic of Korean reunification and ask the North Koreans their thoughts on the likelihood.  Of course, they all welcomed and longed for the idea of reunification but it quickly became apparent that they did not consider the same outcomes that we had been taught at the Reunification Education Institute.  Instead, they spoke of a pride in the North Korean nuclear arsenal as well as rumblings of a North Korean civil war.  This talk was extremely enlightening for me as I learned extremely rare and firsthand perspectives and I can only hope I was able to impart some of my knowledge of the American perspective to them.

Our Reunification Discussion Board

Wednesday

Coming in Wednesday morning, we were thrown for a loop when scheduling was redone at the last second.  As a result of miscommunication, Thomas and I were quickly shifted towards the Korean learning class whom I had never interacted with.  We decided to take it back to basics and focus on introductions.  It was extremely refreshing to meet the faces that I had been seeing around the school.  Our younger demographic allowed us to play games like Two Truths and a Lie as well as Never Have I Ever, allowing us to learn more about the students and for them to learn more about us. 

Thursday

For Thursday, I found my reading club to be so successful that I decided to reuse the same lesson with my subject class.  Although it was on a much more elementary level for the reading club, we were able to get very creative with how we learned each other’s favorite foods in various cuisines such as Korean, Chinese, and American (most kids only knew what hamburgers were).  What was particularly impressive was when we went over the five tastes.  I have been asking them to tell me the Korean and Chinese translations of any English word I teach them, in order to show I am also learning and this has been extremely effective.  But, for the tastes, I asked them to pantomime their reactions to the taste or describe foods that induced this taste.  I received some extremely creative answers with my favorites being bitter as “chocolate with no sugar” and salty as “the ocean water”.

For my subject class, we were able to add layers of complexity as I further delved into food culture.  The students were extremely interested in learning the history of Budae Jigae and its Korean War origins.  We also discussed how the olfactory senses were linked to memory, using a clip from the movie Ratatouille and some pictures of the North Korean Perfume exhibit at the DMZ to relay this message.  I was also able to learn that both Myeong Nam and Hyo Ku’s mothers were experts at making potato dishes and Myeong Nam would make potatoes whenever he missed home.

Our Food Board

The Exhibit

To conclude the day, we discussed the topic of Artificial Intelligence and how rapidly it has advanced through the years.  Discussing how AI has been able to finally conquer the game of Go (Pajun in Korean) allowed us to review large numbers again as the permutations and possibilities of a Go game are almost infinite.  This led into discussion about the future as all three of us will be on the job hunt soon.  Perhaps the most interesting exercise I have partaken in this entire trip was when I discussed the past, present, and future with them and found out all three of us focus on different time periods the most, ie. Hyo-Ku regrets his past, I worry constantly about my future, while Myeong Nam strives to ensure that he is living life to its fullest now.  This allowed me to teach one of my favorite sayings “The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.  That is why they call it the present”

Our Math Lesson Board

Friday

Our bittersweet end came with two very abbreviated and hastily put together periods.  As we had previously not anticipated teaching today, I decided to have a period of surveys and farewells.  The feedback was very elementary “I like you, teacher” or “I like watching videos”.  The latter half of the class was extremely difficult as I asked the boys about how they envisioned life after Jiguchon.  Many told me they thought post-secondary education was a waste of time and they could earn money faster washing cars.  I did not quite know how to impress on them that I thought otherwise and could not find the words to not patronize them.  Instead, I just expressed my hope and belief that they would continue to do well in any endeavor they undertook.  It was very heartbreaking when they concluded class with not a “Goodbye” or a “Zaijian” as we had been saying all week, but rather a “See you again”. 

My goodbye to Hyo Ku ended on a similar note as I surveyed him and asked his future plans.  More of a pragmatist, he simply stated he did not know what he planned to do.  My personal classroom with Hyo Ku ended up forming my closest friendship of the trip and I could not be more grateful for my time at Wooriduel.  The perseverance and dedication that these students exhibit is truly admirable and the work done at Wooriduel Hakyo is extremely important.

Our seventh week in South Korea was the second week at Wooridul School, a special-purpose academy for North Korean defectors and recent arrivals from countries such as China. Each of us were put in charge of our own classes and our own students. The lesson plans were completely up to individual opinion. 

I can’t speak much of the experiences of the other teachers — I did not teach with any of them, and didn’t have the chance to speak with their students on the level that they did. However, I do know that everyone has felt deeply for the school, staff, and the students we’ve been so lucky to meet and teach. 

I was put in charge of a student named Jae Myeong for the Reading Club period, a Chinese boy who had been in South Korea for the past year but had essentially no English or Korean experience, something I discovered when he stared blankly at me during introductions until I spoke Chinese. The other student that was supposed to join our sessions moved to another class, and I spend an hour every morning guiding him through various alphabet and phonetic-based books. In the span of two weeks, he not only learned the names of the letters, but also can understand the phonetics behind each letter, how to sound out words based on letter combinations, and how to comprehend basic sentences.

Jae Myeong’s motivation and budding confidence in English completely blew my mind. His progress was exponential, and I felt encouraged by the little differences from one day to the next. One day, he couldn’t pronounce the letter r, and the next day he was reading “whisper” out of the book. It was progress unmatched to any student I’ve taught in my life, and I sincerely wish I knew more Chinese to properly convey my wonder to him.

For my normal class, I taught a group of 5 students, aged 17-19, who had arrived from China only a few months prior. In the midst of learning Korean, they were thrown into an English-teaching classroom. Their English proficiencies were relatively similar, but varied enough that one student would finish an assignment in 10 minutes, while the other would need side-by-side explanations. 

They had all studied English in China — one girl, MiHye, had studied for 9 years — but didn’t have a listening or speaking ability on par with their reading ability. I tried to speak in several languages during the class (and sometimes used Papago when I was at a loss for words or couldn’t understand a word in Chinese), and I think this helped my students feel more comfortable around me. I was just as much a struggling student of their native language as they were mine. 

Compared to Jiguchon, I feel like it was harder to form connections with the students at Wooridul, primarily because of the age difference and preferred method of communication. The children at Jiguchon could simply hug us and play games with us, but the students at Wooridul wanted to converse and get to know us. With language barriers, it was definitely more difficult to converse about more complex topics outside of the classroom. 

My biggest regret about teaching at Wooridul is that I wasn’t able to form as deep connections as I wanted. My students wanted to spend each class learning as much English as possible, and I tried to accommodate this by filling each period with countless listening and grammar exercises, intertwined with brief conversations. While I feel like my students definitely got more comfortable with using English, I think I would have rather spent a little more time simply sitting with them and talking about wild topics.

One day, I shifted away from the general English lesson — a listening practice using a scene from the Incredibles — and started a conversation about superpowers and morals as a break. For the remainder of the class, we discussed why we all would want a certain power, the harmful possibilities, and the powers within our reach. For the first time, I saw one of the upper-level English students perk up and discuss his sudden want to be a zombie because “it’s hard for them to die,” and another boy who struggled to stay awake because of his late night working hours lit up to a discussion on time control and his love for the Avengers.

Time control would give them more chances. Time, for these students, is a luxury. They would leave my classes early for their part-time jobs, study at their jobs, and sleep for only three hours a night, just to survive in a country where they lived alone. 

Nikki (me),  Martin, and Thomas teaching a class to the Korean-learning classes.

It was an honor to meet, teach, and get to know the students at Wooridul School, and I wish them all the success in the future. With their drive, they can conquer the world.

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We said goodbye to the Jiguchon middle schoolers Monday afternoon. We each received a piece of paper with our pictures and a bunch of signatures from our students. Many expressed their regret that they didn’t get to learn from and speak from everyone, but even so they were grateful for each and every one of us. The students formed a circle around us, and we rotated and said goodbye.

Showing my Jiguchon middle school students English movies.

Oh, middle school. Through teaching these students, I think we have all grown so much as people. To feel the experiential weight of our presence on these kids is a feeling incredibly hard to deal with. We will never really know what they have gone through, and we can’t even begin to comprehend the struggles they will encounter for the rest of their lives. But I hope they will have the courage to face whatever life throws at them, and even if their English level is the exact same as before we came, I hope our impact reaches much further. 

Closing ceremony for Jiguchon middle school

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Jiguchon and Wooridul students, I will miss you very much. 사랑하고 고맙다.

Nikki