Back in the Swing of Things

The new school year is now in full swing, so I thought I would update anyone who cares to read. I have a new co-teacher this year, and she’s WAY different than my last co-teacher. Mrs. Lee was very soft-spoken and never hit the students, as a result, many of our classes were loud and hard to control. (I’m not saying that I think hitting is good, but in this culture, I think it is necessary. I don’t do it—I refuse to—but I think once you start with corporal punishment, you can’t go back to anything else. More on that to follow). Mrs. Lim, my new co-teacher, is very slap-happy. Forgot your textbook? Slap! Not pushed your chair in all the way? Slap! I find it really upsetting and unnecessary, but I can’t do anything about it. However, she’s very friendly to me and I enjoy getting to know her. (She’s very friendly to the students, too, but more in a “I hit you because I love you” kind of way). This year I’m teaching grades 3-6 which I’m very happy about. Enrollment seems to be down so there are only 3 grade 5, 4, and 3 classes (but still 4 grade 6 classes). My new schedule has me teaching 2 full days of grade 6 only, grade 5 twice a week with one of the grade 3 classes each day and 3 grade 4 classes once a week with the third grade 3 class. Got it? Ha…that’s a bit confusing. It’s really nice because most days I only have to teach the same lesson 3 times in a row with a random grade 3 thrown in. Repeating the same lesson 3 times seems to be my max….by the fourth time, I’m usually really spaced out from boredom and not being a very attentive teacher. I’m still volunteering in the kindergarten classroom this year, which is always a lot of fun and doing English broadcasts on Tuesday mornings. I usually get to school around 8:40am and finish my coffee, write whatever I need to on the board and check my e-mail. Tuesdays, however, I have to arrive at 8:30am to do the broadcast. This is a pretty easy job. At the start of the semester, I wrote about 10 little dialogues. Things like: A: What’s the date? B: It’s March 31st. A: Is tomorrow the start of a new month? B: Yes, tomorrow is April. Or something like that. My co-teacher finds 3 students who want to do the broadcast with me, and we present the dialogue. One of them translates it into Korean, then two people play part A and part B then we do listen and repeat. We’re on video and broadcasted to all the classes. I can be quite a showboat (as my boyfriend would say) but I always find this a little awkward. Anyway, I finally worked up the guts to say that I think it’d be fare if I could leave at 4:30 instead of 5, since I have to work at 8:30 instead of 9. When I asked/told my co-teacher about it, she said “that’s not how we do it in my country”. But she asked the principal anyway and he said, “yes”. One small victory for me! .
I’ve continued with my Taekwando classes and will be taking my red belt test on March 31st and my blackbelt test at the end of May! On a less cheerful note, however, I had a VERY bad experience at one of my classes. I've always had a hard time digesting the sight of corporal punishment in my Korean school but the other night at Taekwando just pushed I too far. I got to Taekwando late and a highschool girl was leading the warm-up, but I didn't think anything of it, because the teacher was participating in the warm-up and was making jokes and pretending to do things wrong. Afterwards, he called one of the younger blackbelts (a grade 7 boy) up to the front and made him get on all 4s and he whipped the bottom of his feet. I realized then that whatever was happening was actually a punishment. For what, I didn't know. He then asked the boy a question and he wouldn't answer, so we had to sit for 15 minutes while the boy made up his mind about whatever mystery question the teacher asked. He finally answered and we all had to move up against the wall while the boy very slowly put on sparring pads. I had a terrible feeling about what was going to happen. I asked one of the highschools girls what was happening and she said "he had a choice, teach the class or fight the teacher". I guess after long deliberation, he had decided to fight the teacher. The blackbelts ALWAYS fight the teacher, but they're never afraid, I guess he knew that he was in for a beating because he had misbehaved then spent so long deciding what punishment to receive. Usually taekwando sparring lasts about....5-8 minutes and usually ends with someone getting too hurt to continue (in my class, anyway). To my absolute horror, the boy had to fight the teacher for 25 minutes and spent most of the time whimpering and crying. The teacher kicked him in the face several times and the back at least once that I saw (you aren't supposed to kick in the back). He even kicked the boy in the same shoulder continuously. He had the wind knocked out of him a few times and was kicked so hard he fell back into the wall. I can't express just how terrible this whole ordeal was. I mean, the boy would just retreat from the continuous kicks because that's all he really could do when up against a grown man... it was so terrible. I have mixed feelings about corporal punishment, but I feel like this really crossed the line. It's really bad, I think, when a grown adult uses their size and strength to hurt a child.... the teacher was really aiming to hurt, not just give a painless but startling tap on the bum like many children in the west receive. I also thought it was really unfair that the teacher took the girl's punishment (the one leading the warm up) as a joke and was laughing and playing around by pretending to be a student. After the incident, I talked to some other English teachers who all tried to help me understand what had happened. At the end of the day, it’s just a different culture. I appreciate the desire that a taekwando instructor or school teacher has for wanting to be respected. Hell, everyday I experience how difficult things are when kids don’t give an frig about you or your authority. I just think this was a bit much. However, the boy who received the punishment came back the next day and everything has been fine. Some people asked if considered not going back to taekwando after that, and I didn’t really. I enjoy my lessons and don’t see what would be gained by not returning. During the time, however, I thought about just leaving to show my protest over what was happening, but I don’t think they would have understood that. I also thought (maybe wrongly) that if I was there, maybe the instructor would go a bit easy on him. Who knows how bad it might have been if there weren’t judgmental foreigner eyes witnessing this whole thing.