Teachers may strike...but Samantha strikes back!

On Mondays, there is always a teachers' meeting before school. Not understanding more than a few odd Korean words and phrases, I usually sit politely in the cornor and zone out. For reasons unknown to me and the other native speaking English teacher Anna (a Korean-Canadian from Toronto) last week the head English teacher asked her to come to the meeting but me to stay behind. I was little perplexed, but not particularly bothered until I learned that the time had been alotted to taking the staff picture! The Provinicial Office of Education warned me that my school tended to racist but I still found this a bit shocking.

It wasn't but three days later before I, albeit inadvertently, got my revenge. Not used to Korean weather, I was shivering from the cold one morning before classes started. Anna handed me an electric heater to plug in next to my desk. After five mintues of warm toasty goodness, a small explosion occured....followed by a bunch of tiny clicks as everyone in the office had their computer shut down and the lights flicker out. Whoops.

(Not to worry - two hours and many replaced fuses later everyone finally got power again.)

Death by fan!

I've recently been informed of a particularly awesome South Korean uban legend called "fan death". Apparently, many Koreans believe that an electric fan left running in a closed room can kill a person by a) depleting the oxygen supply in the room causing suffocation, or b) lowering the temperature in the room causing hypothermia. Because of this widespread belief, fans manufactured and sold in Korea have timer that turn them off after a certain number of mintues.

In case you don't believe me, I've found a particularly amusing proof of this on wikipedia...

"The phenomenon of fan death is accepted by many Korean medical professionals. In summer, mainstream Korean news sources regularly report on cases of fan death. A typical example is this excerpt from the July 28th, 1997, edition of The Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper:

The heat wave which has encompassed Korea for about a week, has generated various heat-related accidents and deaths. At least 10 people died from the effects of electric fans which can remove oxygen from the air and lower body temperatures...

On Friday in eastern Seoul, a 16-year-old girl died from suffocation after she fell asleep in her room with an electric fan in motion. The death toll from fan-related incidents reached 10 during the past week. Medical experts say that this type of death occurs when one is exposed to electric fan breezes for long hours in a sealed area. "Excessive exposure to such a condition lowers one's temperature and hampers blood circulation. And it eventually leads to the paralysis of heart and lungs," says a medical expert. "To prevent such an accident, one should keep the windows open and not expose oneself directly to fan air," he advised.

I'm sure Americans have their share of erronous beliefs. Nevertheless, I must say that I generally find Koreans to be smart, albiet EXTREMELY superstitous people!

Ugh.

Some of you (my mother in particular) may have noticed my recent lack of blog posts. To be honest, I've been hesitant to write about my experiences lately because most of them have been negative and a bit stressful.

...But since it's all part of the package, I suppose it won't hurt to air a few grievances! For starters, teaching isn't exactly the rewarding ball of fun I had hoped it would be. The idea behind the EPIK program is a sort of cooperative teaching effort where the Korean teacher is the primary teacher and the native speaker is the assistant in the classroom. In practice (at my school at least) this is not how it works out. My co-teachers essentially use it as an excuse to lessen their workload. It's somewhat of a consensus among the staff that they don't have to participate in my classes and they generally sit in the back of the classroom (if/when they decide to show up) staring off into space until the bell rings. This is very stressful for me for two reasons.

First, discipline is a HUGE problem. It is very difficult to discipline Korean middle schoolers across a cultural/language barrier - even more so because I am 22 year old white female (a.k.a. I command no respect in Korean culture so kids don't feel any compulsion to listen to me). In many of my classes, I have 40 screaming individuals who eat, talk on their cell phones, play their game boys, and chat through the entire lesson. I often feel as if the co-teacher, who also has no interest in my participating in my lesson, is hanging me out to dry! I'm convinced that if I got more respect from my co-teachers, the kids would follow suit. Unfortunately, they generally set a terrible example.

The second problem is keeping the kid's attention when they don't understand me. The middle school I teach at is very low level. Even after 5-6 years of English, some kids don't know the alphabet (how this is possible I'm not sure) so it's hard to teach them at the expected level for their grade.

To learn to deal with this situation, I've had to develop a thicker skin and not care as much if I don't teach an amazing lesson, or if the kids behave badly. I'm quick to take responsibility for everything which has left me feeling terrible the last few weeks, but the more I'm realizing the impossibilities of my situation, the more I'm relaxing and taking joy in small victories - 10 kids paying attention, or having 15 minutes of class go well. For the most part, I don't blame the kids. They study a ridiculous amount of time everyday and it's not their choice to learn English. By the time an ungraded English conversation class rolls around, I think that I, too, would like to sleep and chill out with my friends. C'est la vie.

Cosmos bipinnatus

As fall approaches, these flowers are growing everywhere. So pretty.