Daily Dichotomy

These days, it seems like I have two lives. Most of what's happening revolves around school (student antics, the daily grind, and the upcoming bimonthly "Big Test"), but on weekends and evenings there's church, home stuff, and grocery shopping.

When I'm at work, I hardly think of the other, and vice versa. Although it's not really a new thing in my life, I can't remember a time when it's been as extreme as right now. I think maybe there's so much pressure at work that I shut it all out when I' m not there.

Work at the school is going well, with a few exceptions. My supervisor (교수부장님) is very strict about paperwork, which has led to some overly serious talks on a couple of occasions. My boss, the school's owner and manager (원장님) is a very imposing figure, too, and I'm starting to feel that any encounters with him are best avoided. He doesn't speak English to me unless there's absolutely no one around to translate, and my Korean isn't good enough to understand anything except the most basic stuff or when I already know the context.

My classes are going well, though if you think Korean elementary school kids would be the most disciplined kids on the planet you'd be in for a surprise. Despite the whole "Asian" thing, they are, in the end, just kids. Balancing the requirements of a disciplined learning environment with "keeping it fun" is not an easy task.

My kindergarten students are among the most competive human beings I've ever met. During games it's a bitter struggle to see who can get called on the most. Not that they're concerned about getting right answers, necessarily -- they just want the attention. If it's equal, the smart ones pout. If it's unequal, the "intellectually developing" ones pout. If Emily gets called on more than Diane, Diane pouts. If Diane gets a blue dot on her page for doing everything corerctly, Emily pouts.

It's not just in games or classwork, either. If I list the kids' names on the board, the ones on the bottom will cry, whether I go clockwise, counter-clockwise, or randomly around the room. After I while, I just stopped writing anyone's name on the board.

Until recently, we used to have a "best student of the class period" sticker thing going. The best student of the class gets a sticker. We had to stop because the good kids were getting so many stickers the poorer students felt bad. Parents called in saying their kids weren't getting any stickers, so the directors put pressure on the teachers to be bit more even with the stickers. You can guess what happened then -- Ginny Good couldn't understand why Johnny Rotten was getting the stickers, and started pouting. Every class was like this.

*sigh* Kindergarten egos are so fragile....

Now that there's no sticker chart, things have gotten a lot better, but I still have to be really careful to appropriately, yet not excessively, praise the good students, while still pointing out the benefits of being good in class and paying attention.