playing hooky

Well, I'm not really playing hooky. 

So to top off the week from hell, which started last Friday, I'm sick. I thought I had recovered from Mr. Jerk's comments and emerged from my chocolate hole, but I've continually been tested and found wanting this week. I had great runs on Saturday and Sunday, and I woke up and hit the gym at 6am on Monday morning. Monday was actually our school picnic, so I was kind of excited about that. I didn't have any idea what to expect, so I wore shorts, pigtails, and tennis shoes and headed to school. I didn't bother with a jacket, because it had been HOT all weekend, and the forecast was a high around 70. But then as we were getting on the charter buses I noticed that it was, in fact, quite cloudy and breezy, and it even drizzled a bit as we drove. Sigh. 

I didn't even know where we were going until we got there, but it was, in fact, the Hampyeong International Butterfly and Insect Expo. Hampyeong is a tiny little town not too far away from my other school, and I'm guessing that this "international" (ha!) expo is the big (only) event of the year for them. It was, in my humble opinion, pretty lame. We did a LOT of walking around, but there didn't even seem to be that many things to look at. We didn't go into the live insect building. There was a guy walking around covered from neck to waist in bees, which was the high point for my boy students, but that was about it. It was held at a sort of fairgrounds, and about a third of it was portioned off with carnival games and a few rides (like the Viking and tilt-a-whirl), which was, I suspect, where my kids spent most of their unsupervised time. I walked around a took pictures of them, but then I was forced to eat lunch with the other teachers, which was boring. No one talked to me, obviously, and they kept trying to force me to eat raw fish. Gross. 

The most exciting thing that happened was that a few of our third grade boys apparently picked some fight with much larger boys from a different school. We were all standing outside of one of the buildings when one of the first grade girls came over and grabbed my arm and said something in rapid Korean. The only part I understood was "teacher... there... fighting," but I turned quickly, and sure enough, one of my favorite third graders (who happens to be quite short) was surrounded by about four other boys. There was a lot of posturing, but I just walked over and moved two of them aside and said "Come on," to my student, grabbing him by the arm. I didn't want to ruin his street cred, or whatever, but if he was about to get jumped by 4 boys, I didn't want them to fight. Apparently about three of our boys were involved in whatever incident inside made us all want to fight, and the other school was not to be dismayed by just a foreign teacher, but thankfully my co-teacher also got involved at that point too. The hoodlums from the other school kept surrounding our students and calling the fighters out, and they were really brazen, I was surprised. At one point one of our male chaperones actually pushed the kid away. I couldn't get the whole story from co-teacher about what we were fighting over, but we didn't have any trouble the rest of the day, thankfully. 

[Oh man! Side note: I don't think I remembered to mention this before, but one of my students actually made the equivalent of a "your mother" joke in Korean during class the other day. I laughed for probably an hour. I asked one of my students, in English, "Who is your girlfriend?" And he responded "My girlfriend is 세빈의 엄마 (Sae-bin's mother)."]

Anyway, I was happy when we got back on the bus, because I thought we were going back to school, but then we stopped at the Ecology Park. Which was, if you can believe it, actually MORE boring than the Butterfly Expo. I'm not sure what the concept of the Ecology Park was... the only interesting thing it seemed to have was some bears. The students kept calling them moon bears... I don't know what that means. They were black, and had weird pig-like snouts, but otherwise they weren't particularly interesting. Co-teacher instructed a group of third grade girls not to leave my side, I'm not sure why, which would have been pleasant if they hadn't insisted on actually linking arms with me and dragging me through the whole place. I don't get Koreans and their same-sex hand holding and arm-linking. I guess it has nothing to do with the same-sexness of it. I just don't like holding hands or linking arms with anyone for long periods of time unless we're really close. All I wanted to do was sit down, as I was tired of walking, but instead they followed me around until we finally got back on the bus. I got home around 5:30, and I was so exhausted that I just crawled right into bed... after eating the rest of the pasta from Sunday (cold, out of the pan, standing over the stove), which wasn't actually part of the diet plan. Whoops. 

Yesterday I woke up with a headache, and it didn't go away all day, so I couldn't go running after school as I'd planned. Once again I came home around 5, took some Tylenol, made some poor eating choices (ice cream, cheese stick, pastry), and then got into bed. This time I slept until 9. I woke up feeling feverish and covered with sweat, so I decided not to go running. I chatted with a student on messenger for a few minutes and then went back to bed, sleeping straight through until 6:30am. That's not true... I woke myself up coughing a few times, and had a sore throat when I woke up, so I decided not to go to school. 

This makes me, I guess, a bad person, because Korean teachers never ever miss school. (Korean students seldom do, either.) I'm guessing it's part of some super work ethic, and probably extends to other jobs as well. That's, I imagine, why they sell special designer surgical-type masks for sick people to wear while they're out and about. It's ridiculous-looking. And I probably could have survived being at school all day, but I just didn't think my throat would hold up to talking for three hours straight. Other teachers have an easier time, I suspect, because if they don't feel well they can just tell the students to do pages in the textbook and hit them with sticks if they mess around. That doesn't work in my conversation class. So I decided to stay home and rest and try to feel almost 100% for tomorrow, at good school. Today I stayed in bed most of the day, after eating an obscene amount of cereal for breakfast, and did a little lesson planning, but I need to do a little more now. 

Oh yeah, and I finished a book yesterday: 

15. Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. This is, what, the second non-fiction book I've read? Surprisingly, I really enjoyed this. I found his thesis compelling, and he developed, supported, and explained it in a very concise and interesting way. I'm always skeptical of the sorts of conclusions drawn in these kinds of books, but I think that the model he proposes is certainly a new and interesting way of looking at why some movements take off and others flounder. Because I really like this book, and want to make sure I remember it, I'll describe the major points of his argument, or what I can remember, here: 

Perhaps I should try to apply his three laws of the Tipping Point to my English classroom. 

1. The Law of the Few - The LotF states that there are certain people who are born salesmen, and that you must use them to spread your message, or it'll fail. Thus, I should try to be more charismatic when pitching a love of English, or split my salary with some of these special Salesmen. (The most important example he provides in the book is Paul Revere, who was such a well-connected and compelling Salesman that he was able to prepare all of New England for the impending Revolutionary War in one night.)  

2. Stickiness - The law of stickiness says that if you want your message to take off, you must make it stick in people's minds. I think this is the one element of the Tipping Point philosophy that I particularly work hard at--trying to make English more fun, and thus, more memorable. (His example here is one that should be near and dear to my heart--Blue's Clues, the stickiest educational show since Sesame Street.) 

3. The Law of Context - The Law of Context was the least clear to me, but it states that often the decisions people make have less to do with inner convictions or character and more to do with the situation. I found two examples very compelling. He writes about how cleaning up the New York subways following the Bernie Goetz incident, and cracking down on small crimes (like fare-jumping), changed the mentality of New Yorkers, and caused the crime rate to plummet. The other example was of a study of seminarians. They were all told that they'd have to give a lecture at a nearby hall, and on the way, the experimenters had staged an ill man (who clearly needed help). One group was told that they needed to hurry, as they were already running a bit late, and the other group was told no such thing. I don't remember the numbers, or care to go back and look them up, but adding the context of being late was enough to harden the hearts of seminarians, some of whom stepped literally over the sick man in their haste to get to the hall. I'll look around my English classroom tomorrow and contemplate ways that I can make it more conducive to studying, or think about how I can frame lessons to make students want to speak English more. Anyway, it was a quick read, and I thought it was a little gem. 

And now I just have one book to finish before I'm caught up for April. Nice.