7. Hot Showers, Pomegranates, Stress and Elmo
So, I guess I'll start with "Hot Showers"... it's really self-explanatory. I've discovered the secret to getting a hot shower! Or, I should say, my new neighbour Suzanne discovered it (actually, she was enlightened by a friend of hers). Apparently the secret is to not turn the hot water on all the way. The water pressure suffers a little bit, but man, I cannot tell you how much of a difference this makes to my mornings! Not much else to say about that, really. It's just nice to have a hot shower.
Onto pomegranates. As many of you are aware, I love pomegranates. One of the delightful surprises I had when I first arrived was the pomegranetes for sale at the grocery store (in Canada, pomegranate season ends in December). They are remarkably still in season, and it is awesome! I should also mention that it is also strawberry season here (even though it is still winter), and has been strawberry season since I arrived. And to be perfectly honest, I don't know if I'll be able to tolerate Canadian strawberries after tasting these ones. We joke at the office that they are laced with crack, because... honestly... they are incredible!
Next on the list is stress... and I suppose I will start with the stress of graduation, although I am writing this blog entry too late after the fact to fully remember how stressful it was (especially since I'm embroiled in new and improves stress right now -- more on that later). But I will try to explain. We put on a fairly huge 'graduation' program for these kids, or more to the point, for their parents. We were all told this rather late, I remember thinking that I must have been told so late because of when I arrived, but none of us heard about this until about a month before the graduation (which, incidentally, was the end of February). I was told pretty specifically what I was to do with the kids (shown a video and everything) -- I was to do an alphabet poem... you know, "A is for Apple... which ended up with my writing a 26 stanza poem that my 4 and 5 year olds had to memorize (well, they each had 2 or three stanzas to memorize). My Cookie Monster class was the youngest class and they had the longest poem! But I drilled them and they did pretty well with it, actually. If I can figure out how to upload video I'll post that and you can watch it. Anyway... the Korean staff had some very specific ideas about what they wanted from all of us, and their ideas changed almost daily, which meant that the poems, and the actions were changing almost daily which had all of us foreign staff pulling our hair out and all our kids being extremely confused.
The day of graduation came and we teachers were told to be at the school at 1. No kids, no real reason for us to be there, the graduation ceremony was being held at a completely different place... which we went to at around 2. It was held at some sort of fancy office building and it turns out that they hadn't wanted us there at all until after 4... even so, they brought the kids there at 3, which was ridiculous. They were supposed to sit and be quiet for about an hour. It's a lot to ask of a 4 year old. Well, the rehearsal began at around 4:30 (the ceremony began at 6), and we only managed to rehearse about half of the program because hilariously enough (read: rage inducingly) the Korean staff (particularly one Korean teacher named Helen) decided to change a bunch of stuff at the last minute. It should be noted that all throughout the rehearsal and the ceremony, any kids who weren't on stage were locked in a room about half the size of my apartment. The kids were remarkably well behaved, but it was a closed space and therefore beyond noisy. I escaped for about 10 minutes, just to give my head a rest, when Suzanne came out and got me, saying "Oh my God, Jenny, your kids!" I was worried for a second that something horrible had happened, but she continued, "Their costumes! All of the boys look like girls and your girls... ", she just sort of trailed off.
I want it noted before you look at these pictures, that I did NOT pick out these costumes. I had been shown a catalogue by Helen of the costume choices, but she had basically put it in front of me and told me what my kids would be wearing. I barely had time to look, and I didn't give it much thought because... well, they were kids' costumes... how bad could they be?
This was actually the first thing I saw when I entered the tiny room where they were all sitting. This is little, tiny, precious, feisty Annie -- covering herself! When a 4 or 5 year old girl feels exposed, you know something's wrong! I tried very hard to find some tape or ribbons or something that I could use to hold her costume up higher on her chest, but there was nothing to be had. Poor little thing, she felt it the most, I think... she barely smiled for the rest of the night. I was actually worried that she wouldn't be able to do her part, because she'd be covering herself, but she was the consummate professional! She even caught an error that I made!
I don't know if these pictures actually capture this... but with the wigs on, all my boys looked like little girls. One of the other teachers (can't remember who) referred to my kids as the "drag queen portion of the show". Anyway, this is Brian Song (who now goes by Brian).
Some of my kids goofing around before they went on stage. The costumes! Those little girls!!
This is David, trying on one of the wigs. Man, I'll miss this guy when he goes.
This is Thomas, not in my class, obviously -- he just looked so dashing in his little suit. I wanted to put him in my pocket!
Anyway, after the ceremony was finished, we teachers (male and female) were showered with flowers... really elaborate bouquets. It was really very sweet and ended the night on an up note.
All of us with our flowers -- From Left to Right, Irene, Anita, Suzanne, Me, David, Martin. You actually can't see the load of flowers I got, most of them are hidden behind Suzanne. Dave actually got the most of all of us, and quickly 'regifted' them to the Korean staff.
I should include here one of the cute things that happened that night. Justin (who some of you may remember was my major trouble maker) and Grace (sweet girl, top of the class) were "boyfriend and girlfriend". In class he sat beside her if he could, held her hand, carried things for her... it was one of his endearing qualities. Well, after graduation, I had all these kids giving me flowers, and I see Justin with a rose and he's walking towards me, not looking at me, but I assumed the rose was for me and bent down to take it when he suddenly took off. I turned to follow him with my eyes as he ran straight for Grace and gave her the rose! Keep in mind, both of these kids are 5! I saw their parents taking pictures of them together afterwards.
As a follow up to that story, on the last day of school we decided to show the kids a movie (Narnia -- yes, I know... it's not officially on DVD, but there are pirated copies of everything here). I had noticed that morning that Justin had been ignoring Grace in favour of Ashley, and was a bit shocked at this turn of events. Ashley, however, was having none of it, she was interested in Shawn... who returned her affections. (I remember none of this sort of thing from when I was in kindergarten, it baffles me to think that they are thinking about this sort of thing at such a young age!) I actually had to keep physically pulling Justin away from Ashley and Shawn because he kept trying to push himself between them, and randomly punching Shawn. Well, at a certain point during the movie I turned and realized that Justin was sitting against the wall, sobbing, so I told him he could sit beside me and I just sort of held him. He managed to convey to me in his broken English that he was jealous of Shawn ("Teacher, Ashley and Shawn! I'm sad!"). It was really sweet in an odd sort of way and for a few minutes all was calm as I tried to comfort him... but soon his sadness turned to rage, and this will be hard to believe, but Justin is kind of scary when he's angry. He started giving Shawn this look of death and making fists and pretending to punch him. It was rather disturbing. When the movie ended and my class got up to walk back up to their class, Justin jumped up and ran over to Shawn and started pummeling him. He, of course, is a tiny 5 year old, so I basically picked him up and threw him away from Shawn and kept him downstairs for a few minutes to calm down. It was really frightening to see rage like that in a 5 year old. As Suzanne aptly put it later on in the office "he's an abusive boyfriend in the making!". I don't even want to think about where rage like that comes from in someone so young, I can't imagine what he'll be like as a teenager... and I admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that I am relieved that he is not at our school anymore.
Well, onto the 'new and improved stress'... the new school year has started (March 2nd) and... you know that expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, that philosophy is very much not in evidence here. Aside from the graduation madness, all of us were happy last semester... something Mr. Lee was very happy about. There were relatively few complaints from parents. We were all getting along so well that Mr. Lee had managed to get us all to verbally agree to extend our contracts -- most of us until the end of the school year. There were wonderful promises made of breaks and help with prep work, and better prep material... and then none of that happened. In fact, we all have fewer breaks and more classes. I am teaching from 10 AM to 7 PM everyday... and that's all teaching time (except for the hour lunch break, which we actually had to fight for!), I go from class to class for 9 hours. I do have two breaks during the week, but that's it. They've added another kindergarten class, which would reasonably mean adding another teacher, but we've been informed that business plan for this year is to have "6 classes and 5 teachers", which is the reason for all of this madness. The new materials we were promises? Well, we are basically making them. David is doing most of it, which is crazy because he has the most hours of all of us (I think I'm second now, I'm not sure... it's actually kind of a backhanded compliment, how many hours I have). I have been making flashcards for approximately 100 years. Or it seems like it, anyway. We have almost daily tried to talk to the administration about how nuts this is, but it so far hasn't done any good. Our only hope at this point is that the parents are going to start complaining because we can't do the same quality of work we were doing last semester... and Suzanne in particular. She has to divide her time between two classes, which means that they have a Korean teacher for half the time... the parents pay the fees they do thinking they are paying to have an English Speaker teaching their kids. It's really sad because literally 2 weeks ago I had an awesome job with an awesome work environment. Now, I still like teaching, but I'm exhausted all the time, and when we are all in the office, we're all miserable and tired. David's contract ends in April, and so he'll probably be leaving then, which is really sad because he's awesome. Martin's contract is actually over and so he talks about leaving pretty much daily. And don't even get me started on the new 'supervisor' they've hired (and demoted Irene Teacher for). It's bizarre how hiring her has actually given us all more work to do because she really doesn't know what she's doing, but she's the owners best friend so... we're stuck with her.
It has only been a week, so there is still hope for the complaints to come flooding in. Suzanne has already had a few parents express confusion over why their kids are with a Korean speaker so much.
Well, to end with a positive note... Elmo... that's my new morning kindergarten class. It's basically the same class as Cookie Monster was, minus Justin, Mathew, Brian and Grace, and adding two new kids; Helen and Ian (whom I have no pictures of yet). I really like this class so far. Without Justin's disruptive influence, we are able to have a lot more fun together, and without Brian, I have been able to wean "Brian Song" off of his ridiculous name -- he's going by simply "Brian" now. I just didn't want him going through life being named after a 70's football movie -- not a character in the movie, mind you, but the title of the movie itself.
Well, that's it, week two begins tomorrow. Let the complaints roll in!
Onto pomegranates. As many of you are aware, I love pomegranates. One of the delightful surprises I had when I first arrived was the pomegranetes for sale at the grocery store (in Canada, pomegranate season ends in December). They are remarkably still in season, and it is awesome! I should also mention that it is also strawberry season here (even though it is still winter), and has been strawberry season since I arrived. And to be perfectly honest, I don't know if I'll be able to tolerate Canadian strawberries after tasting these ones. We joke at the office that they are laced with crack, because... honestly... they are incredible!
Next on the list is stress... and I suppose I will start with the stress of graduation, although I am writing this blog entry too late after the fact to fully remember how stressful it was (especially since I'm embroiled in new and improves stress right now -- more on that later). But I will try to explain. We put on a fairly huge 'graduation' program for these kids, or more to the point, for their parents. We were all told this rather late, I remember thinking that I must have been told so late because of when I arrived, but none of us heard about this until about a month before the graduation (which, incidentally, was the end of February). I was told pretty specifically what I was to do with the kids (shown a video and everything) -- I was to do an alphabet poem... you know, "A is for Apple... which ended up with my writing a 26 stanza poem that my 4 and 5 year olds had to memorize (well, they each had 2 or three stanzas to memorize). My Cookie Monster class was the youngest class and they had the longest poem! But I drilled them and they did pretty well with it, actually. If I can figure out how to upload video I'll post that and you can watch it. Anyway... the Korean staff had some very specific ideas about what they wanted from all of us, and their ideas changed almost daily, which meant that the poems, and the actions were changing almost daily which had all of us foreign staff pulling our hair out and all our kids being extremely confused.
The day of graduation came and we teachers were told to be at the school at 1. No kids, no real reason for us to be there, the graduation ceremony was being held at a completely different place... which we went to at around 2. It was held at some sort of fancy office building and it turns out that they hadn't wanted us there at all until after 4... even so, they brought the kids there at 3, which was ridiculous. They were supposed to sit and be quiet for about an hour. It's a lot to ask of a 4 year old. Well, the rehearsal began at around 4:30 (the ceremony began at 6), and we only managed to rehearse about half of the program because hilariously enough (read: rage inducingly) the Korean staff (particularly one Korean teacher named Helen) decided to change a bunch of stuff at the last minute. It should be noted that all throughout the rehearsal and the ceremony, any kids who weren't on stage were locked in a room about half the size of my apartment. The kids were remarkably well behaved, but it was a closed space and therefore beyond noisy. I escaped for about 10 minutes, just to give my head a rest, when Suzanne came out and got me, saying "Oh my God, Jenny, your kids!" I was worried for a second that something horrible had happened, but she continued, "Their costumes! All of the boys look like girls and your girls... ", she just sort of trailed off.
I want it noted before you look at these pictures, that I did NOT pick out these costumes. I had been shown a catalogue by Helen of the costume choices, but she had basically put it in front of me and told me what my kids would be wearing. I barely had time to look, and I didn't give it much thought because... well, they were kids' costumes... how bad could they be?
This was actually the first thing I saw when I entered the tiny room where they were all sitting. This is little, tiny, precious, feisty Annie -- covering herself! When a 4 or 5 year old girl feels exposed, you know something's wrong! I tried very hard to find some tape or ribbons or something that I could use to hold her costume up higher on her chest, but there was nothing to be had. Poor little thing, she felt it the most, I think... she barely smiled for the rest of the night. I was actually worried that she wouldn't be able to do her part, because she'd be covering herself, but she was the consummate professional! She even caught an error that I made!
I don't know if these pictures actually capture this... but with the wigs on, all my boys looked like little girls. One of the other teachers (can't remember who) referred to my kids as the "drag queen portion of the show". Anyway, this is Brian Song (who now goes by Brian).
Some of my kids goofing around before they went on stage. The costumes! Those little girls!!
This is David, trying on one of the wigs. Man, I'll miss this guy when he goes.
This is Thomas, not in my class, obviously -- he just looked so dashing in his little suit. I wanted to put him in my pocket!
Anyway, after the ceremony was finished, we teachers (male and female) were showered with flowers... really elaborate bouquets. It was really very sweet and ended the night on an up note.
All of us with our flowers -- From Left to Right, Irene, Anita, Suzanne, Me, David, Martin. You actually can't see the load of flowers I got, most of them are hidden behind Suzanne. Dave actually got the most of all of us, and quickly 'regifted' them to the Korean staff.
I should include here one of the cute things that happened that night. Justin (who some of you may remember was my major trouble maker) and Grace (sweet girl, top of the class) were "boyfriend and girlfriend". In class he sat beside her if he could, held her hand, carried things for her... it was one of his endearing qualities. Well, after graduation, I had all these kids giving me flowers, and I see Justin with a rose and he's walking towards me, not looking at me, but I assumed the rose was for me and bent down to take it when he suddenly took off. I turned to follow him with my eyes as he ran straight for Grace and gave her the rose! Keep in mind, both of these kids are 5! I saw their parents taking pictures of them together afterwards.
As a follow up to that story, on the last day of school we decided to show the kids a movie (Narnia -- yes, I know... it's not officially on DVD, but there are pirated copies of everything here). I had noticed that morning that Justin had been ignoring Grace in favour of Ashley, and was a bit shocked at this turn of events. Ashley, however, was having none of it, she was interested in Shawn... who returned her affections. (I remember none of this sort of thing from when I was in kindergarten, it baffles me to think that they are thinking about this sort of thing at such a young age!) I actually had to keep physically pulling Justin away from Ashley and Shawn because he kept trying to push himself between them, and randomly punching Shawn. Well, at a certain point during the movie I turned and realized that Justin was sitting against the wall, sobbing, so I told him he could sit beside me and I just sort of held him. He managed to convey to me in his broken English that he was jealous of Shawn ("Teacher, Ashley and Shawn! I'm sad!"). It was really sweet in an odd sort of way and for a few minutes all was calm as I tried to comfort him... but soon his sadness turned to rage, and this will be hard to believe, but Justin is kind of scary when he's angry. He started giving Shawn this look of death and making fists and pretending to punch him. It was rather disturbing. When the movie ended and my class got up to walk back up to their class, Justin jumped up and ran over to Shawn and started pummeling him. He, of course, is a tiny 5 year old, so I basically picked him up and threw him away from Shawn and kept him downstairs for a few minutes to calm down. It was really frightening to see rage like that in a 5 year old. As Suzanne aptly put it later on in the office "he's an abusive boyfriend in the making!". I don't even want to think about where rage like that comes from in someone so young, I can't imagine what he'll be like as a teenager... and I admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that I am relieved that he is not at our school anymore.
Well, onto the 'new and improved stress'... the new school year has started (March 2nd) and... you know that expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, that philosophy is very much not in evidence here. Aside from the graduation madness, all of us were happy last semester... something Mr. Lee was very happy about. There were relatively few complaints from parents. We were all getting along so well that Mr. Lee had managed to get us all to verbally agree to extend our contracts -- most of us until the end of the school year. There were wonderful promises made of breaks and help with prep work, and better prep material... and then none of that happened. In fact, we all have fewer breaks and more classes. I am teaching from 10 AM to 7 PM everyday... and that's all teaching time (except for the hour lunch break, which we actually had to fight for!), I go from class to class for 9 hours. I do have two breaks during the week, but that's it. They've added another kindergarten class, which would reasonably mean adding another teacher, but we've been informed that business plan for this year is to have "6 classes and 5 teachers", which is the reason for all of this madness. The new materials we were promises? Well, we are basically making them. David is doing most of it, which is crazy because he has the most hours of all of us (I think I'm second now, I'm not sure... it's actually kind of a backhanded compliment, how many hours I have). I have been making flashcards for approximately 100 years. Or it seems like it, anyway. We have almost daily tried to talk to the administration about how nuts this is, but it so far hasn't done any good. Our only hope at this point is that the parents are going to start complaining because we can't do the same quality of work we were doing last semester... and Suzanne in particular. She has to divide her time between two classes, which means that they have a Korean teacher for half the time... the parents pay the fees they do thinking they are paying to have an English Speaker teaching their kids. It's really sad because literally 2 weeks ago I had an awesome job with an awesome work environment. Now, I still like teaching, but I'm exhausted all the time, and when we are all in the office, we're all miserable and tired. David's contract ends in April, and so he'll probably be leaving then, which is really sad because he's awesome. Martin's contract is actually over and so he talks about leaving pretty much daily. And don't even get me started on the new 'supervisor' they've hired (and demoted Irene Teacher for). It's bizarre how hiring her has actually given us all more work to do because she really doesn't know what she's doing, but she's the owners best friend so... we're stuck with her.
It has only been a week, so there is still hope for the complaints to come flooding in. Suzanne has already had a few parents express confusion over why their kids are with a Korean speaker so much.
Well, to end with a positive note... Elmo... that's my new morning kindergarten class. It's basically the same class as Cookie Monster was, minus Justin, Mathew, Brian and Grace, and adding two new kids; Helen and Ian (whom I have no pictures of yet). I really like this class so far. Without Justin's disruptive influence, we are able to have a lot more fun together, and without Brian, I have been able to wean "Brian Song" off of his ridiculous name -- he's going by simply "Brian" now. I just didn't want him going through life being named after a 70's football movie -- not a character in the movie, mind you, but the title of the movie itself.
Well, that's it, week two begins tomorrow. Let the complaints roll in!
posted by JJ at 6:29 AM
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