The Uncharacteristic Page of Positivity

As some of my blog posts have tended to take a grimmer turn, I have decided to make a separate “Page of Positivity” (an alliteratively sunny title which makes bile rise in my throat) to recognize five of the best things to have happened to me since my latest post. Even though I may be struggling, I still encounter many small things that brighten my days.

May 22 – June 21

1. I am pleased to announce that my life did not in fact end on June 20, 2017 at exactly 16:44 KST, as my Oksan 2^nd grade boys told me it would:

Student 1: “What is destiny? Like death?”

Me: “Um, not necessarily…like fate? Your future?”

Student 1: “Ah, I see. You have no future.”

Me: “Wait, what? I have no future? Am I going to die today?”

Student 1: “Yes!”

Me: “Oh, um, okay. How?”

He and his best friend proceeded to bounce back and forth between different scenarios for the next couple of minutes before settling on a car accident to take place at 4:44 in the afternoon.

Student 2: Starts randomly singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”.

Me: “Oh, well, thank you.”

Student 1: “But you will not marry.”

Me: “Because I will die today?”

Student 1: “Yes!”

2. While playing a quiz game to practice a certain grammar point in class, the following question came up: “I wonder when Robyn’s birthday is.” One team wrote down, “July is when Robyn’s birthday is. Happy birthday soon!” and drew balloons, streamers, and confetti. My heart melted a little bit, and I was like, “Aw, that’s so cute…but also wrong. Minus 1. Sorry.”
3. I got to knock another item off my bucket list by going to a Korean professional baseball game. While it may not be up to the caliber of Major League games in the US, it was still a lot of fun. 
4. While preparing for the upcoming speaking test, in responding to the question “How do you like English class?” most students just copied down one of the example answers: “I like it. It’s very interesting.” or “I don’t like it. It’s boring.” However, one of my host brothers wrote, “I like it, because we play many fun games.” That is when my heart completely melted. Things have definitely been awkward in my homestay life, but I am glad to know that I am at least not making the boys completely miserable.
5. My closest friend in Uiseong recently got the chance to stay in Korea for one more year, and snatched at it. She doesn’t have many details yet, but knows that she will be working in Busan, Korea’s 2^nd largest city. Sadly, though, that means Becky and I will be a few hours apart during the upcoming grant year. We will actually have to plan visits to see one another rather than texting each other to grab coffee in about 15 minutes…

May 1 – 21

1. Apparently Becky and I look so much alike our own students can’t even tell us apart. Several times in the past few weeks, elementary schoolers have said, “Hello Becky Teacher! No – Becky Teacher friend!” as I have walked by. However, as I was walking home from work the other day, two of my second graders said, “Hello Becky Teacher!”

I immediately spun around and said, “Becky Teacher??? What is my name?”

They quickly realized their mistake, but couldn’t come up with my name (which surprised me as they had always been quick to greet me by my name instead of just calling me “Teacher”, as many other students do).

“Uh, pretty girl?” they offered up with sheepish grins. I gave them a look.

“Juliet?” A raised eyebrow.

“Lady Gaga!” I liked that one, so I confirmed that I was in fact Lady Gaga and continued walking, letting them figure things out for themselves.

It wasn’t until I was about 50 meters ahead of them that I heard the two shouting, “Robyn Teacher! Robyn Teacher!” at me, surrounded by several of their classmates who were laughing at them.  I’ve been giving them a hard time about it since then, and likely will for the remainder of my time here…

2. I’m pretty sure my students totally invented a holiday last week. One day, several of them came into the English department office and started giving us teachers hugs. They explained it to me as a holiday – Hug Day. However, when I texted Becky later to ask if she had received many hugs from her students that day, she replied that there was no such occurrence at her school. All the students who came in for hugs were 2^nd graders, so I think it may just be something their class made up. They’re an odd bunch…

   

   Some of these boys were “Hug Day” promoters…

3. I am currently in the midst of a weekend English Camp at Oksan Middle School, which I chose to make murder mystery-themed in order to better engage them. I’m telling you, they pick up on those words quickly. During lunchtime, as three of the boys were stuffing their faces with the remaining food, one of the others walked over to me and said, “I think in their last life they were pigs.”

One overheard and pointed at the student, “In his last life he was a serial killer.”

This rapidly devolved into a vocabulary battle: “No, you were a murderer and a thief…”

4. In one of my third grade classes, I did an activity allowing the students to give me hypothetical injuries, as well as the chance to kill me off. Only three students decided to kill me, which I thought was pretty nice of them, overall. Some of the injuries got pretty graphic, though…

I didn’t notice the profanity until after class… Although to be fair, if my leg did break like that, that would likely be my reaction.

5. The Gyeongsangbuk-do women’s curling team has qualified to represent South Korea at next year’s Winter Olympics, meaning that our Canadian friends Peter and Leanne will be returning to compete in Pyeongchang! Congratulations to them!

April 4 – 30

1. One of the students who always slept in my class last year and never spoke a word of English has now turned into a very active participant. He is now very quick to offer up a cheerful “Hello!” and just last week he voluntarily sat in the front row.
2. While things are often still quite awkward at home, I know my host brothers have a good time in my classes. When we play games, they are often leaders of their teams and are quick to pick up on the humor of my English teacher persona, which I have been informed by my Oksan students is that of an old man.
3. I got called a “hero teacher” for completely destroying one team of 2^nd graders in rock-paper-scissors.
4. At Spring Conference in Jeju-do I was able to catch up with many of my ETA friends for the first time in several months, as well as swap stories with the others who are stuck in all-boys middle schools. The things we’ve been through…
5. Our tiny Uiseong expat group was able to gather one last time before it gets even smaller. Peter the curling coach and his wife Leanne are going back to Canada this week after a competition in which his squad will attempt to qualify for next year’s Winter Olympics. I wish them the best of luck! Hopefully they will emerge victorious, and we’ll be able to meet up again next year in Pyeongchang!

March 6 – April 3

1. In the span of two weeks, the same student called me both a “Daughter of Darkness” and a “Devil Teacher”. He’s one of my favorites. (Seriously, he’s a lot of fun to teach, and we just rag each other a lot good-naturedly.)
2. I taught what I would consider to be my most successful lesson ever two weeks ago. Although it did begin by me walking in on a student changing pants. *facepalm*
3. When playing a game in which students could earn points for having the minority opinion, most of my students were too sweet to say “I think that Robyn is NOT a cool teacher.” Some were bold enough to take the opposite side, though. I gave them a hard time for that… 
4. When I was a good 50 meters away from the school, some students from one of my second grade classes screamed my name out their homeroom window just to say hello to me. I’m really not sure what I did to gain that level of adoration.
5. At a post-volleyball dinner to get to know some of the new teachers over chicken and beer, we did some self-introductions, to which the club president added some details of his own. It was such a nice gesture, and made me feel like I really belonged. (The detail he added for me was that I used to be a long-distance runner… perhaps it was his justification for why I suck at volleyball so much?)

? – March 5

1. I’ve been told by some elementary school teacher friends that my Korean handwriting/my ability to accurately split sentences into words is better than their 6^th grade students. For a college graduate, I’m oddly proud of beating 6^th graders…
2. My listening and reading skills really are getting much better. Speaking, on the other hand…
3. As I was getting off the bus from Andong, I spotted one of my former 3^rd grade students and said hello. I was expecting him, like many boys of his age to give a friendly hello and then book it out of there to avoid any further English interaction, but he actually went out of his way to try to engage in conversation while walking with me for a few blocks. That was quite a teacher victory right there.
4. While playing a game on the first day of class, one of my new 1^st grade students blew me away by whipping out “Language Arts” and “Creative Movement” as school subjects. I think it’s going to be an interesting semester with him.
5. I now have an official teacher’s diary. It makes me feel so legit.

December 4 – 24

1. I’m recognizing a lot more Korean words while both reading and listening. I often still fail to grasp the grammar surrounding them in time to really understand the meaning, but this seems promising, yes?
2. During a conversation lesson with some of my lower-level 3^rd graders largely circling around their favorite songs and why they liked them, one of my students asked me what my own favorite song was. I played them a bit of Mitski’s “Happy” and explained that I typically prefer to listen to indie music. They seemed impressed, and asked why I made life so hard for myself. #coolteacher
3. In order to practice using the phrase “Did you know that…?” I played 2 Truths and a Lie with my 2^nd Their most common lie was the following: 
4. While making Christmas cards at Oksan, my two 1^st grade boys wrote cards to each other, resulting in the grammatically correct, slightly awkward, but strangely touching sentence, “Thank you for being alive.”
5. Soon I will have survived an entire semester at an all-boys middle school, something which a few months ago I had doubted I would be able to do.

November 14 – December 3

1. One of my first grade boys at Oksan totally blew me away with his knowledge of World War II-era tanks. We were doing a lesson during which I showed the class a picture of a sign and asked them to explain what the sign meant, using the word “must”. One picture I used was of a British road sign with a tank silhouette on it. When he saw it, this student perked up and said, “Teacher! This tank’s name is Cromwell! It is English tank!” My reaction: 😮
2. This week, I did speaking tests with the 2^nd graders at Uiseong, where the students had to meet with me individually and answer three questions. At the end of his speaking test, one of my students got up to leave, then stopped and asked, “Teacher, can I ask you a question?” He then sat back down and started talking to me about Donald Trump’s election. Most students booked it out of the room as soon as the test was done, but this ~14 year-old kid went out of his way to try and articulate complicated political concepts in a foreign language. Huge props to him.
3. With my top-level classes, I did a Thanksgiving trivia game. It was very funny making a student try to pronounce the word “Wampanoag” in order to get the question right for his team.
4. For the first time this semester, we were able to gather all five of the foreign English teachers in Uiseong together for dinner. Another 외국인 foreigner, the curling coach from Canada, joined us as well.
5. I recently learned that my own middle school best friend will be coming to Korea to visit me in January! There’s a lot to look forward to this winter break…only four more weeks…

October 25 – November 13

1. When preparing responses for the upcoming speaking exam, one of my lower-level students answered the question “What do you wish you could do better? Why?” with “I wish I could speak English better because I want to speak English teacher.” That nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was one of the sweetest things one of my students has ever said about me.
2. For part of my Halloween lesson, I showed a couple of short scary videos. While some of their reactions were certainly exaggerated, it was still hilarious to make a room full of middle school boys jump and clutch each other in fear. So much hugging. So much hand-holding.
3. The volleyball crew is comfortable enough around me to make fun of me (and my American accent). “Coming up next! Surrrrrrve.”
4. When she found out that I could crochet, my co-teacher Mrs. Kang became very excited and wanted me to teach her. Unfortunately, the crochet hooks I ordered are taking a long time to arrive, and she’s getting a little antsy. She is ready for a new winter hobby.
5. It doesn’t happen often, but from time to time my host brothers will actually speak unsolicited, fairly complex sentences to me, and we’ve shared a few chuckles. Even though they’re shy, they’ve also been some of the leaders in my classes lately, helping others understand what I’m trying to teach.
6. My first grade boys at Oksan now know the word “hangry”. They love it.

October 13 – 24

1. This week, I played a vocabulary game with my 2^nd If a team got a question right, they had an opportunity to win 1, 5, or 10 points by playing rock-paper-scissors against me. (My boys love rock-paper-scissors.) If they won, they gained the amount of points they selected. If I won, they lost that amount. In the final round, right before the bell rang, I allowed the teams to play for 50 points. One of the quiet, low-level students was up last and…won! It was so great to watch his face shyly light up as he became the hero for half the class; English class rarely builds his confidence.
2. While being able to encourage students is one of the best parts of teaching, I also derive joy from destroying them through the aforementioned rock-paper-scissors game. In a different class, I gave a team the chance to win 100 points. One of the students with a lot of swagger was up. I won, taking his team from first place with 21 points to a staggeringly low -79. Mwahahaha…
3. When we played an English pop song listening game in a couple of my classes, I saw some of my students noting down the titles of artists and songs they liked. #coolteacher
4. On his last day at Uiseong Middle School, one of my students gave a brief impromptu speech in class, during which he said he would miss me. ㅠㅠ (Inside I was like, I’ll miss you, too! I actually knew your name…)
5. I got a few more names down this week…I think. It kills me that I know so few of my students’ names. It’s not that I don’t know who they are or don’t care about them, but most of their names simply do not stick.

October 4 – 12

1. I taught four classes entirely on my own, and no one died! There may have actually been some learning going on, too.
2. After a class in which my co-teacher spoke only once to discipline a student, he turned to me and told me it was a “very good lesson”.
3. Some of my lower-level students have been brave enough to come to my office and try to have conversations with me. Mega props to them.
4. When walking down the street the other day, I smiled and said “Hello” to one of my lower-level students who generally makes it a point to sleep in class/ignore me. He looked surprised, smiled a bit shyly, and said “Hello” back. He will soon be mine in class…mwahaha…
5. I’ve managed to squeeze at least a few light chuckles out of my host brothers. Not the easiest thing to do.

September 19 – October 3

Since I skipped a week of blogging, this post will feature 10 positive posts instead of the usual 5:

1. I’ve honestly had some lessons go really well in these past couple of weeks. A couple have kind of bombed, yes, but I may be kind of figuring things out? We’ll see…
2. At one point, I had an entire class of boys howling their hearts out to Adele’s “Hello”. Not sure that there was great educational value to it, but it was pretty hilarious.
3. I did a “The ship is sinking and you can only fit 6 people on the life boat – who would you choose and why?” activity with a couple of classes and got some great responses. Here are some of my favorites:

• CEO – he is big money
• Farmer – he is big food
• Farmer – many rices
• Nurse – nice sub healer (after saying the doctor is a nice healer)
• Professional wrestler – If shark appears, he will strike down the shark.
• Comedian – When people is in fear, he can make laugh everyone.
• Comedian – We have to get rid of sad.

4. More students have been coming up to me to have brief conversations. When this happens, I always try to push it to see how long they’ll keep talking. It’s really funny to watch the panic grow in their eyes as they’re forced to speak more English than they had anticipated and then suddenly break off the conversation with a quick “Teacher, bye!” and run away.
5. I am starting to make more young Korean friends through volleyball and church. It is very difficult to find young people in Uiseong.
6. One of the younger teachers at my school told me that she cried a lot at night because of the students when she started working there a year ago. So I guess that makes me feel better?
7. I was able to meet up with Tien and Cheyenne in Andong again, as well as Lisa, an ETA in Cheongju whom I hadn’t seen since D-Day (Departure Day). It was great to catch up.
8. Tien’s host family invited us all over for a chat over wine. This was the first time I’d had wine since coming to Korea, and it was some good stuff. The conversation was also delightful 😉
9. My Oksan co-teacher’s daughter absolutely loves me. She was so sweet. (And also apparently tried to set me up with her PE teacher before she even met me?)
10. I got an unexpected four-day weekend!

The Uncharacteristic Page of Positivity may at first seem like a strange place to put this, but I would like to mention that this week my grandfather Louis Elrich, whom all of us grandkids referred to fondly as “Pop”, passed away this week. We will all miss him dearly, but his suffering of the past couple of years is now over and he has moved on to a better place. Love you, Pop. 할아버지 사랑해요.

September 12 – 18

1. I have found that bringing candy to a class full of 1^st grade boys makes me a very popular teacher. However, it also causes class to descend into anarchy. I need to continue to tweak my candy distribution system for optimum performance.
2. I have discovered that bringing up chicken is a certain way to capture students’ attention. However, it can also cause class to go very off-topic. I need to continue to tweak my chicken-mentioning system for optimum performance.
3. My 1^st graders at Oksan Middle School can now describe chicken as “heavenly”, so there’s that.
4. My host cousin 아현 Ahyeon loaded me up with bingsu and cute stationery after discovering that I too am a fan of 설빙 Sulbing and the Kakao Friends character Ryan. (Ryan is a lion. In English, those two words simply rhyme, but with Korean pronunciation they are identical.)
5. I got to visit the coast! While it was pouring down rain… It was still nice to be able to gaze out at the harbor from the shelter of a café while sipping on a warm coffee, though.

September 5 – 11

1. After a class that went particularly badly, I took a brief stroll around the school grounds to get some fresh air and relax. One of the teachers and a few students were shooting some hoops, and noticing that they weren’t doing particularly well, I felt comfortable enough asking if I could play. They passed me the ball. I (surprisingly) sunk the shot. The next day, the P.E. teacher asked when I had learned to play basketball. I seem to have developed a reputation for being considerably more baller than I am.
2. I discovered that the boys in all three grades LOVE Hangman. Looks like there will be a lot of Hangman in the lessons to come.
3. When playing Hangman, I wrote the discard letters in an order so that my 3^rd-graders would not be able to have me spell the word “sex” on the board. I am growing wise to their tricks, and they are recognizing that.
4. On the bus ride back from Andong, I listened to one of my favorite artists while watching cranes swoop into rice paddies nestled in a mountain valley. It was beautiful.
5. The first hymn at church today was an old, familiar tune that I have sung countless times at my home church. They unwittingly provided me with one of the most welcoming gestures possible.