Ramblings on education, life, and progress
I gave up trying to motivate my students. Not that I don't care, but it's just that the motivation has to come from within or it's not motivation.
There are about 80 suicides of Korean soldiers every year, and I think the number is increasing (I can't find the article that I read that in). I can't imagine the hell they were going through. It is a sad irony that there is a vicious violence within the thing we created to stop violence.
I've never ever agreed with the ageist narrative that "youth are getting worse and they don't respect elders" but there is truth to it. I hate to admit it's probably true. Mom mentioned it happening in her High School science classes. My HS co-teacher said she sees respect slipping away little by little every year. And on a micro-level I have noticed one of my HS classes rounding the last curve to anarchy, despite the fact that it started out pretty good in beginning of the year.
That same HS coteacher is a really inspiring person to be work with. She stays so positive and doesn't get flustered at all, even when the sinister students mock her. She told me that before the end the semester the Vice principal asked her, casually, how are you, and she broke down into tears.
Today I did something I never do. I yelled at the disruptive HS class "shut up!" and asked them to please respect their classmates who want to learn. I don't get why they can't just shut the fuck up if they have no interest. If you genuinely don't care about school, then it takes less effort to stare blankly or fall asleep than it does to chat nonstop, at a loud volume. They enjoy being disruptive. There is no logic to be found.
I don't always wake up the sleeping students. I have to pick my battles. Sometimes it feels like current conditions are all against me. I would have never imagined being distressed and depressed in Korea, but I am. Mainly because of the job. At least I'm not depressed in Ohio- that's a worse scenario that I am glad to have left.
I still have lots of fun too. Higher highs and lower lows in this job.
Soon I will be teaching my coworkers, the teachers of other subjects, an English class. I am excited to get to know them and to actually teach. I have a weekly adult class and it's totally thrilling because my adult students are so motivated and ask questions.
Pupils listening and eager, it's an insane thing to imagine happening in a school.
I'm starting to enjoy getting older. But on the other hand, I have less and less in common with kids. I definitely don't always get Korean humor, especially youth humor. I have no idea how out of touch I will be when I go home. It scares me.
I miss American culture so much. I mean, I still hate it generally speaking, but I miss positive vibes and slang and talking to strangers.
There are no inherently bad students. If anything it's counterproductive to label a student bad because if they think they are bad then they have no room to improve and plenty of room to decline.
It's like the void of learning on a 3D chart that Principal Skinner showed to indicate Bart Simpson's effect on his classmates. An"unmistakable cone of ignorance" with Bart at the center of the bottom of the hole. Bad students suck the opportunity from people around them. Towards the void.
El abmismo se hace más fuerte con la tristeza. No me importa.
I'm trying a new thing where I just move about all class and ask every student the prompt. Since they refuse to speak or volunteer. It works okay.
I've been reading this before bed and it's given me determination, sadness.
Los poemas siempre se divertiden.
I told Claire about this the other day and we agreed. We worry that there are so many words they don't know, it's hard to even pick an entry point. But as I reflect on the reflection, I think maybe the opposite is true? They have huge vocabularies but can't quite piece together complete ideas. Yeah.
This is the problem that makes me lose sleep at night- in my experience teaching there are equal amounts of big (my entire conception is so wrong) problems and small, isolated (damn that announcement speaker is so loud) issues. They overflow and I am constantly treading water and abandoning entire ships. Totally incoherent.
English is a schizophrenic language. It's complicated beyond reason and there are so goddamn many words. We don't need all these words.
My college Swahili professor once told the class that anger and frustration were the same thing. They scoffed and disagreed, getting angry and frustrated. Then he asked them to explain the difference and they only got more angry and frustrated that they couldn't distinguish the two emotions. They are the same.
Lately though, I can fake it till I make it. If I pretend to be confident in my lessons students respond better. Just yesterday what used to be two unruly classes actually sat and listened and participated and took notes. THEY TOOK NOTES, BY THEIR OWN CHOOSING. NOTES OF STUFF I WAS EXPLAINING. THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED. OK, NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT, IT HAPPENED A FEW TIMES EARLIER BUT I'M STILL YELLING ABOUT IT.
And some of them came up to me and said in Korean that the class was fun.
재미 있었어요
My HS coteacher said she was afraid that foreign teachers would return home and share a negative reputation of Korean students. I assured her it's the same everywhere and it's really a tiny minority of "bad students." Again, I hate that term and the concept that students are just plain bad, but for the sake of brevity I berate the badness. It's not just bad students, the education system is bad.
School needs to address the fact that it is fatally linked to an atrophied capitalist system of exploitation and corporate pillage rather than a sustainable, beneficial model of uplift. Our system makes students bad because it's spiritually bereft and 100% outmoded and doesn't offer enough options.
I am guessing students would still talk in the back of the classroom even if the class was "Video games 101"
I hope any prospective teachers, especially EPIK or other English as Foreign Language teachers, take the time to consider the difficulties of teaching. My line is always open if anyone wants to chat about it. I also enjoy talking about things that are good.
Sam,
ReplyDelete-- In his book Punished By Rewards, Alfie Kohn discusses how the best motivation comes from within and how extrinsic motivators like candy and money have diminishing returns. They're little more than bribery and they can often backfire on students or employees. You're right to note that you can only do so much to motivate your students.
--Teachers classes can be quite fun. I did one in my first semester and it stands out as a highlight of that time. I may have been fumbling with the high school students, but it wasn't so with the adults. The best part was that *these were not English teachers.* They taught health, history, math, and geography. But their enthusiasm made up for their lower speaking levels. We were riffing on the dialogue, tossing lines back and forth, and trading words and definitions in Korean and English. They took notes and so did I. There was no "That isn't in the book!" kind of stuff. No, but we did have a text of dialogues we followed. We asked questions and I explained where certain expressions would work better than what the book had. Despite taking place at 4pm on Friday, classes were jaunty, even energizing. I hope your class goes as well as mine did!
--I agree with you: Getting older feels good, but it increases the age gap between us and the students. Such is life, I suppose. Could the students' humor be explained as a reaction to the deadly serious STUDY OR DIE atmosphere of the classrooms?